Author Sally Christie has answered a few questions on her last novel, The Enemies of Versailles. You can read my reviews of all three books in the trilogy at the following links: The Sisters of Versailles The Rivals of Versailles The Enemies of Versailles When you began writing this series, did you realize you’d be writing about so many women or did you discover them while researching? I actually didn’t set out to write a series – I just wrote the story of the Mailly Nesle sisters (from The Sisters of Versailles) and wasn’t even considering Louis XV’s later mistresses, as I assumed Madame de Pompadour and the Comtesse du Barry would have had a lot of fiction written about them. When I discovered that…

The Enemies of Versailles by Sally Christie The Sisters of Versailles (my review) The Rivals of Versailles (my review) The third in Sally Christie’s Versailles trilogy, The Enemies of Versailles is told by two women close to King Louis XV: his daughter, Adélaïde, and his last mistress, Madame du Barry. While The Sisters of Versailles focused on Louis’ early life (and secession of sister-mistresses) and The Rivals of Versailles was a bit extreme on the sexual depravity of the King, this story showed a wider view of the messy political situation in France shortly before the Revolution. The enemies are, of course, the two protagonists of the story, but also the enmity between du Barry and Marie Antoinette, as well as Adélaïde and “Antoinette”—and many…

The Enemies of Versailles by Sally Christie March 21, 2017 BOOK DESCRIPTION (My review will be posted in March.) In the final installment of Sally Christie’s “tantalizing” (New York Daily News) Mistresses of Versailles trilogy, Jeanne Becu, a woman of astounding beauty but humble birth, works her way from the grimy back streets of Paris to the palace of Versailles, where the aging King Louis XV has become a jaded and bitter old philanderer. Jeanne bursts into his life and, as the Comtesse du Barry, quickly becomes his official mistress. “That beastly bourgeois Pompadour was one thing; a common prostitute is quite another kettle of fish.” After decades of suffering the King’s endless stream of Royal Favorites, the princesses of the Court have reached a…

The Rivals of Versailles by Sally Christie Amazon / Goodreads / Author Website Following on the heels of The Sisters of Versailles, Rivals continues the story of Louis XV’s mistresses with perhaps the most well-known–Madame de Pompadour–and those who wish to supplant her. Jeanne Poisson was a common-born beauty whose glittering future was foretold when she was 9-years-old by a soothsayer: she would be be loved by a king and become the most powerful woman in the land. This she clings to even after marriage and a child. The story chronicles her triumphs, failures and everything in between as she tries to hold onto an amorously insatiable king who falls further into debauchery as the years pass. Among the rivals are Rosalie, a lady-in-waiting to…

The Sisters of Versailles by Sally Christie Amazon / GoodReads / Author Website Early in the reign of France’s Louis XV–before the infamous Madame de Pompadour and the hated Madame du Barry–a series of sisters captured the young King’s heart. Of the five Nesle sisters, all but one became mistress to Louis the Well-Beloved. This sister is the only one who lived beyond the French Revolution, and this is her story through letters and a collection of chapters written in first person by each sister. Because there are five different perspectives, each character has the chance to introduce the reader to her world–and though they were sisters, they were vastly different. Louise de Mailly-Nesle (Comtesse de Mailly), the eldest, was beautiful, demure, and a bit…