Born the illegitimate daughter of a monk and a seamstress, Madame du Barry rose from poverty to become one of the most powerful and wealthy women of France. A courtesan, she became Louis XV's official mistress and was fêted as one of France's most beautiful women. On Louis XV's death she became vulnerable to those secretly longing for her downfall. Marie Antoinette had her imprisoned for a year, and in 1793 she was executed by the Revolutionary Tribunal for her aristocratic associations. Joan Haslip's classic biography shares the extraordinary and ultimately tragic story of du Barry's life and, in turn, illustrates the dazzling world of the eighteenth century royal court of France and the horrors of the Revolution.

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 breaking point. Horrified that he would bring the lowborn Comtesse du Barry into the hallowed halls of Versailles, Louis XV’s daughters, led by the indomitable Madame Adelaide, vow eternal enmity and enlist the dauphine Marie Antoinette in their fight against the new mistress. But as tensions rise and the French Revolution draws closer, a prostitute in the palace soon becomes the least of the nobility’s concerns. Told in Christie’s witty and engaging style, the final book in The Mistresses of Versailles trilogy will delight and entrance fans as it once again brings to life the sumptuous and cruel world of eighteenth century Versailles, and France as it approaches irrevocable change.

This historical novel relates the moving story of a remarkable beauty and wit who dazzled king and commoner alike. Marie Jeanne Becu was the illegitimate daughter of a humble cook yet, by the time she was 23, she had become Madame du Barry and the official mistress of King Louis XV of France.

Kings throughout medieval and early modern Europe had extraconjugal sexual partners. Only in France, however, did the royal mistress become a quasi-institutionalized political position. This study explores the emergence and development of the position of French royal mistress through detailed portraits of nine of its most significant incumbents: Agnès Sorel, Anne de Pisseleu d’Heilly, Diane de Poitiers, Gabrielle d’Estrées, Françoise Louise de La Baume Le Blanc, Françoise Athénaïs de Rochechouart de Mortemart, Françoise d’Aubigné, Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, and Jeanne Bécu. Beginning in the fifteenth century, key structures converged to create a space at court for the royal mistress. The first was an idea of gender already in place: that while women were legally inferior to men, they were men’s equals in competence. Because of their legal subordinacy, queens were considered to be the safest regents for their husbands, and, subsequently, the royal mistress was the surest counterpoint to the royal favorite. Second, the Renaissance was a period during which people began to experience space as theatrical. This shift to a theatrical world opened up new ways of imagining political guile, which came to be positively associated with the royal mistress. Still, the role had to be activated by an intelligent, charismatic woman associated with a king who sought women as advisors. The fascinating particulars of each case are covered in the chapters of this book. Thoroughly researched and compellingly narrated, this important study explains why the tradition of a politically powerful royal mistress materialized at the French court, but nowhere else in Europe. It will appeal to anyone interested in the history of the French monarchy, women and royalty, and gender studies.

In this biography, historian Evelyne Lever chronicles the extraordinary life of the most famous and influential mistress of Louis XV: Jeanne-Antoinette de Pompadour - a bourgeois girl of questionable parentage who would rise to the highest ranks of French society and maintain a twenty-year relationship with Louis XV.

Newbery Honor author Kathryn Lasky's MARIE ANTOINETTE is back in print with a gorgeous new package! To forge an incredibly powerful political alliance, thirteen-year-old Marie Antoinette of Austria is betrothed to Dauphin Louis Auguste, who will one day be the king of France. To prepare the princess for becoming queen, she must be trained to write, read, speak French, dress, act . . . even breathe. Things become more difficult for her when she is separated from her family and sent to the court of Versailles to meet her future husband. Opinionated and headstrong Marie Antoinette must find a way to fit in at the royal court, and get along with her fiance. The future of Austria and France falls upon her shoulders. But as she lives a luxurious life inside the palace gates, out on the streets the people of France face hunger and poverty. Through the pages of her diary, Marie captures the isolation, the lavish parties and gowns, her struggle to find her place, and the years leading up her ascendance of the throne . . . and a revolution.