The Enemies of Versailles by Sally Christie….Blog Tour Stop with Exclusive Guest Post

Sally Christie, author of THE ENEMIES OF VERSAILLES, on tour March 2017

Old Maids at Versailles – Guest Blog Post by Sally Christie

 Louis XV, who ruled France for a good part of the 18^th century, fathered 10 children with his long suffering Polish wife: Eight daughters and two sons. Six daughters and one son (the father of the ill-fated Louis XVI) survived to their teenage years.

His two eldest daughters were twins and were known as Madame Elisabeth and Madame Henriette (daughters of the king were always known as Madame, even if they weren’t married). True to royal form, Madame Elisabeth was married off to Spain just two weeks after her 12^th birthday. It wasn’t the most prestigious match – she was only marrying a younger son, not the heir to the Spanish throne – but it helped solidify the France /Spain alliance.

Then, the marrying stopped. Louis XV’s five other daughters – Henriette, Adelaide, Victoire, Sophie and Louise – never married, an almost unheard of situation in the history of royalty. Traditionally, princesses were valuable as pawns for securing alliances between countries and building new ones. So what happened? Why did the five of them never marry?

It was a combination of factors. For starters, there were not as many potential Catholic bridegrooms in a Europe that was half Protestant. Had Charles Stuart, the Young Pretender, succeeded in regaining the British throne, he would have been a good candidate, but his attempt failed and the French king was not eager to ally himself with a stateless pretender.

Louis was also very fond of his daughters, at least when they were younger, and was reluctant to send them away. He was also a wee bit lazy, and never made their marriages a priority. The princesses themselves, of course, loved their father and their life at Versailles, and would not have wanted to leave the comfort and luxuries of (arguably) the most magnificent palace in the world for some inferior court in a foreign country.

The third book in my trilogy about the many mistresses of Louis XV, The Enemies of Versailles, opens in 1750 when the five sisters were between 13 and 22 years old. One of the running themes in the book is their fear of getting married and what they would do to avoid it: the youngest, Louise, was even rumored to stuff one shoulder of her gown to make herself look misshapen and crippled, and therefore unmarriageable! Only Madame Henriette had any semblance of a love affair. She and the handsome young Duc de Chartres, a cousin of the king, fell in love and wanted to wed. The King couldn’t agree, for it would mean the Orleans family would become too powerful and upset the balance of power amongst his nobility.

As they got older and lost some of their youthful charm, the unmarried spinsters became objects of ridicule and figures of fun. As shown in both The Rivals of Versailles and The Enemies of Versailles (half of which is told by Madame Adelaide), the king’s daughters pitted themselves against their father’s mistresses and gradually became more and more estranged from the king and from any sort of influence at court.

The decision to never marry the princesses had serious consequences. Each princess, as a “Daughter of France” had the right to an enormous household, each containing hundreds of officers and servants. This, of course, cost the government a great deal of money. By the time their three nephews (including the future Louis XVI and his wife Marie Antoinette) married and had children, there were more royal households at Versailles than ever before, all of them draining the coffers of the country and increasing its debt, no small factor in the coming Revolution.

– Thanks for this wonderful post, Sally! ~Jillian