It seems that tales about royal mistresses never seem to grow stale, at least in our world's literary market. In the few last years I've seen several books on such women as Nell Gwynn and Barbara Castlemaine, both mistresses of Charles II of England, the various mistresses of Louis XIV of France, and women in renaissance Italy.
Author Sandra Gulland has turned to one of the lesser known mistresses of Louis XIV, known as the Sun King, the monarch who created the palace of Versailles, and put his stamp on a place and time so vividly that no one ever really equalled him. His first official mistress was a young woman by the name of Louise de la Valliere, who is usually overlooked in favour of the king's far more flamboyant mistress, Athenais de Montespan.
When the novel opens, Louise -- known as Petite for her small stuature -- is a half-wild child on her family's small manor. She is particularly in tune with nature, and adores horses. Her father understands and indulges her, but her mother is determined to turn her into a fashionable -- and marriageable -- young lady. But Petite would much rather go and be outside, or be reading her father's collection of prized books.
The turning point comes when she at a horse fair with her father, and she sees not just skills of horsemanship, but a magnificent white stallion, unbroken and wild. Termed Diablo -- the Devil -- he allows no one near, but Petite is enchanted by him. She pleads with her father to buy the horse, and he relunctantly agrees. So begins Petite's foray into the world of adulthood, a rather rocky, and at times, unpleasant one.
For Diablo is nothing but trouble -- Petite, driven with a hunger to tame him, is tempted to use a dangerous spell called 'bone magic' to control him, and while it does succeed, it comes at a terrible price. We also get to see Petite's own desire for entering the religious life and becoming a nun, but her mother has very different plans for her.
When the opportunity comes to enter the household of the Duke d'Orleans household, Petite discovers that being a royal handmaiden and the lives of the aristocracy is quite different than she had expected. And when she mets a young huntsman, her life takes a drastic turn as she falls for the young king of France, Louis XIV.
I have to say, I was prepared to be disappointed with this one; I had read the author's previous series about the first wife of Napoleon, Josephine de Beauharnais, and found it to be not quite what I liked. This time, Sandra Gulland has sharpened her skills at creating narrative and imagry and created a young woman in Petite that is complicated, and satisfying to read about. True, at times, I felt that the heroine would bleed pure sugar if you cut her, but there's just enough there to make her come alive. By the end, I genuinely cared about Louise/Petite, and the extravagant life she was leading in the Sun King's court.
Nor does Gulland neglect the other characters in the novel. Louis XIV is a young king, still untried in many ways, but determined to tame the nobility of his country and rule by his will alone. Gulland brings a bit of humanity to him, and his ever wandering lust for women to life and does it with enough style to make him sympathetic. Especially when the tempetuous, dangerous Madame Athenais comes into view. Here too we get to see a seductive, deadly charm -- you might not like her very much, but you can't help but pay attention to her either. Other minor characters appear as well, from Clorine, Petite's maid, who is full of commonsense and not afraid of speaking her mind, to the equally horse-mad Abbe Patin, who becomes one of Petite's best friends and spiritual advisor. There are some interesting tidbits about the Affairs of the Poisons, the scandal that rocked France at the time, and where Petite gets to learn about true witchery.
I was pleased with this novel, as it is quick moving and compelling to read -- I had it finished within two nights. It's one that I happily recommend for those who enjoy historical novels, with plenty of details focused on the history and grandeur of the time, without going over the top with contrived romances. While there are a few blunders here and there, it's not bad at all, and easily earned a four star rating from me.
As well as the story itself, there is an author's note at the end, a map of France in the time of Louis XIV, and a genealogy chart showing the rather tangled relationships of the Bourbon Kings. The author recommends Antonia Fraser's excellent _Love and Louis XIV_ about the king's many affairs and relationships with women.
