Used book - The Queens of France in the Bourbon Era, Volume 3: The Queen and the Favorite, Simone Bertière

Louis XV, bored by his duties because he was given too many heavy responsibilities too early, allowed the women around him to take on a prominent role. Engaged at eleven to a Spaniard, married at fifteen to a Pole, he began his career as a seducer with the three Nesle sisters, before Madame de Pompadour settled by his side for twenty years. His wife, Marie Leszczynska, strong in her progeny, positioned herself as the guardian of tradition in a court where the brilliant favorite, from Parisian financial circles, brought a breath of modernity. The vain efforts to have the Marquise dismissed punctuated a narrative with dramatic or pleasant twists and turns, seeing her bounce back each time, even serving as Prime Minister.

Around these three, the entire family emerges, with cousins from Madrid and especially the children of the royal couple: the Dauphin and his two successive wives, including the charming Marie-Josèphe of Saxony; plus a host of daughters, only the eldest of whom would find a suitor. Births, loves, conflicts, deaths, against a backdrop of growing political difficulties. The absolute monarchy slowly disintegrated, unable to adapt to the changes at work in society: when the favorite died, then the queen, its fate was practically sealed.

This volume contains what makes the charm of the previous ones: a taste for the concrete, a sense of life, a mixture of tenderness and humor.