I honestly love writing about Elizabeth of Bohemia and her children and am seriously considering writing a novel just about her when I’ve finished this current book about Henrietta Stuart and the Ripper Novel Of Doom. I have a massive list of books that I want to write though so we shall see.

Today’s tale of seventeenth century romance and shenanigans is brought to you by one of Elizabeth’s sons – allegedly the handsomest and most charming of all. Yes, that’s right, he was even better looking than the rather ridiculously lovely Prince Rupert.

According to embassy despatches to his uncle Charles I, Prince Edward of the Palatine was born at the Hague palace on the 6th of October 1625 to Elizabeth Stuart and her husband Frederick, Elector Palatine. He was their fifth surviving son (another had died in infancy but on the whole the Palatine brood was remarkably healthy – with only three of Elizabeth and Frederick’s thirteen children dying in early childhood) after Henry, Carl, Rupert and Maurice.

The young prince Edward, known as Ed within his rambunctious family, was a charming, high spirited but good natured boy who was not quite so difficult and quarrelsome as his elder brothers Rupert and Maurice. Nonetheless in around 1638, his mother, fatigued by the brawling and occasionally scandalously bad behaviour of her younger sons decided to pack Maurice, Edward and their younger brother Philip off to Paris for a couple of years to learn some manners and how to conduct themselves as gentlemen.

It doesn’t appear to have had much effect on Maurice, who would later become a privateer after the end of the civil war or Philip, who would kill a man in a duel and be forced to flee his homeland but Edward seems to have embraced the Parisian lifestyle wholeheartedly – so much so that aged twenty, he returned to Paris in 1645, converted to Catholicism and secretly married the daughter of the Duc de Nevers.

His new bride, Anne de Gonzague was nine years older than him, blonde, witty in an indolent sort of way and absolutely infatuated with this ridiculously handsome but penniless young prince. Luckily she was as fabulously wealthy as he was church mouse poor and so the couple, who were known at the court of Louis XIV as the Prince and Princesse Palatine lived it up in high style after their marriage. Anne is an intriguing character – it appears that she was intended from an early age to become a nun but instead rebelled against this and fell madly in love with her cousin, the Duc de Guise who had also been destined for a religious career and had in fact been Archbishop of Rheims at one point before having to ditch this in order to succeed his father and elder brother to the dukedom.

It’s believed that Anne and the Duc de Guise married in secret in 1639 and she subsequently disguised herself as a man in order to travel with him. Certainly the two were well known to be having some sort of liaison, either legally or otherwise. Whatever happened, it all went awry in 1641 and the pair went their separate ways, leaving Anne free to marry her handsome prince four years later, apparently untroubled by the continued existence and rude health of what was rumoured to be her first husband.

Her new husband’s formidable and very Protestant mother was predictably FURIOUS when she heard not just about her son’s conversion to Catholicism but also his precipitous marriage to a bride not of her choosing. Her children may have been rapidly gaining a name for themselves throughout Europe as brilliant, independent, hot headed and unconventional eccentrics but this was Going Too Far in Elizabeth’s book and she announced in high dudgeon that she wished that he was dead.

However, to quote her best beloved Shakespeare, all’s well that ends well and in time Elizabeth and her son were reconciled – partially because he seems to have been just too darned charming to remain angry with for very long; partially because unlike the rest of her sons he never ever asked her for money and also because unlike the rest of their children at that point he very obligingly provided her at regular intervals with three pretty little granddaughters. We know that he and his wife visited Elizabeth at the Hague at least once and that she commissioned portraits of them both by Honthorst to hang alongside the rest of her family portraits there. We also have accounts of Edward very cheerfully going on shopping trips around Paris for his mother, acquiring all the most modish and fanciful trinkets for her delight.

Edward was to die in March 1663 after which Anne renounced her previously giddy and somewhat dissipated lifestyle and became really quite devout, in the manner of rather a lot of noblewomen of the time – devoting herself to good works and marrying her daughters off to suitably well connected gentlemen. In the scramble to secure the succession after the end of the Stuart dynasty, the daughters of Edward and Anne were better placed to succeed than the children of his younger sister Sophia but were unable to act on their superior claim and save us from the pudding faced Hanoverians due to the fact that Catholics are barred from the succession.

Their eldest daughter, Louise Marie was married in 1670 to the Prince of Salm. The second girl, Anne Henriette Julie, pictured above in a gorgeous portrait by my beloved and under appreciated Gobert, made the most splendid match of all when she married the Prince de Condé in 1663 and Bénédicte Henriette, the youngest of Edward and Anne’s daughters married the Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg in 1668 and was mother of Wilhelmine Amalia of Brunswick-Lüneburg, who would marry the Holy Roman Emperor Joseph I in 1699.

Further reading:

The Winter Queen: Elizabeth Of Bohemia (Women in History (Sterling))

My novel about Marie Antoinette, The Secret Diary of a Princess seems to have attracted a really nice faction of fans (hello!) and I get emails and comments pretty much every day asking if there will be a sequel. I’m not sure if there will be any more as I have so many other projects on the go but as today is the 242nd anniversary of their wedding day (what stone is that? Kryptonite?), I thought I’d let you see what happens next.

The novel ended with Marie Antoinette and the Dauphin poised to enter the chapel for their wedding. Some reviewers have complained about this as they thought it too abrupt, but I thought it was the perfect place to leave them – poised on the brink of history as it were. This should hopefully please those readers.

Wednesday 16th May 1770, Versailles.

It didn’t take us long to reach the royal chapel and there was a small awkward pause as my ladies hurried forward to tweak my full skirts and, clicking their tongues disapprovingly against their teeth, do their best to hide the wide expanse of lacing at my back, which reveals that my beautiful cloth of silver dress, made from measurements carefully sent from Vienna several months earlier, was now far too small for me.

They tried not to show how irritated they were but I could tell by the way that they sharply tugged and pulled the laces and briskly turned me this way and that, that they were annoyed with me for having had the temerity to grow and show them all up.

‘Good luck,’ Jeanne de Mailly whispered when the ladies in waiting finally melted away, their wide silk and brocade skirts rustling against the cold marble floor. ‘You look beautiful. Look straight ahead and ignore all the staring.’ She gave my hand a quick surreptitious squeeze. ‘You’ll be fine.’

I turned and smiled reassuringly at the Dauphin, who was standing mutely beside me in his diamond and sapphire spangled coat which I am told cost more than my entire wedding ensemble, his pale eyes wide with terror while a pulse beat time in the vein at his temple. Now that I had overcome my own fears, I wished that there was some way that I could bring the colour back into his pale cheeks and stop him trembling. ‘It will be over soon,’ is the lame best that I could manage as he hesitantly took my hand and we stepped forward together into the luminous white and gold light of the chapel.

Ever since I was a little girl I have dreamed of the perfect wedding, complete with a gorgeous dress, handsome prince and all of my family smiling fondly as they watched me sail gracefully up the long crimson carpeted aisle towards the altar. Mama would proudly wipe tears of joy from her eyes and my brother Joseph, tall and handsome in blue watered silk would be waiting to give me away to my new husband, who’d watch me lovingly as I made my way up the aisle. Even though I knew that it was all impossible, that such a wedding could never happen, I’ve still clung to that dream no matter what and in the end, the reality wasn’t all that bad in comparison.

True, my beautiful dress didn’t fit properly; my prince although fair, isn’t exactly handsome and my family were all thousands of miles away but nothing could have prepared me for the breathtaking spectacle of the columned gilt and white marble chapel at Versailles in all its wedding day splendour. The bright spring sunlight shone through the tall windows, sending bright shards of coloured light floating over the assembled congregation while overhead there soared a beautiful painted ceiling which depicts scantily clad angels cavorting against a pure azure blue sky.

Everywhere I looked there were flowers – huge fragrant armfuls of white and yellow lilies, roses and peonies were arranged in vast porcelain vases at the end of each pew and in between the windows while the most enormous displays of all were reserved for either side of the cloth of gold covered altar.

Everyone turned to stare at us as we went past and despite Jeanne’s advice to look straight ahead and pretend not to see them, I couldn’t help letting my eyes nervously slide from side to side, taking in their painted unsmiling faces, the dazzling jewels that glittered like cold fire in the sunlight, the heavily perfumed coloured silks and brocades worn by both men and women. ‘I have come to live among you,’ I wanted to say to them. ‘I want you all to love me.’

Ahead, I could see the tall Duc de Chartres beside his pretty wife who hides a razor sharp tongue beneath a silly, frivolous exterior. Her flounced and lace trimmed dress of primrose yellow silk spangled with diamonds was the very height of fashion and as I drew nearer I saw that she had yellow roses and sapphire stars pinned into her powdered hair. Beside her stood the pretty Princesse de Lamballe, demure in cream satin and pearls and with pink peonies tucked into her cloud of fair hair, who smiled at me shyly and raised her hand in greeting as I drew level.
I longed to smile back, to throw my arms around her and weep with the relief of having someone on my side amongst this sea of unfriendly faces but instead I merely inclined my head and carried on, keeping my happiness to myself. I have a friend here, I thought. Only one but it’s a start.

We were in front of the altar now and the Archbishop of Rheims stepped forward in his opulent cloth of gold robes embroidered with roses, the lilies of France and suns to conduct the service. As he began to speak, I risked a quick look back over my shoulder to the crimson velvet hung balcony high above where the King, standing alone in magnificent solitude, watched the ceremony. I risked a small smile and in return was rewarded with the tiniest of winks and a proud nod. Two friends, I thought.

The Archbishop has the most unfortunate stammer and I longed to catch the Dauphin’s eye and share a smile as he struggled manfully with my name: Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna. He stared resolutely straight ahead though and although there is something about him, a shyness and earnestness of manner, that reminds me of my younger brothers, I do not feel like I have his measure quite enough yet to share anything so intimate as a joke.

Instead, I hopped from side to side, trying to ease the aching of my feet in their high heeled diamond studded shoes which pinched my toes and thought about my family far away in Vienna. On the day of my proxy wedding to the Dauphin, which took place back in April, I wondered about this boy now at my side and tried to imagine how he must be feeling, knowing that in Austria an unknown young girl was in the process of becoming his bride. Now, with him beside me, I thought about my family and hoped that they were wishing me well. They would be, of course. I could picture them easily, sitting around a table in Mama’s apartments in the Hofburg and toasting each other with wine as Joseph grinned and said: ‘At this very moment, our little Antonia is becoming Dauphine of France. Thank God that after all these years, it has finally all gone to plan. I might even get some sleep tonight.’

The Dauphin gave a discreet little cough beside me and with a start, I realised that we had reached a point in the ceremony where we were expected to kneel on the two red velvet cushions that had been placed in front of the altar. Two angel faced altar boys stepped forward in their snowy white robes and began to swing sweetly scented incense over our heads as the Archbishop, really getting into his stride now, raised his voice and began to intone in the most dramatic way.

Behind me I could hear the bored whispers, coughs and occasional muted giggles of the congregation and if I concentrated harder, I could even hear the swishing of the ladies’ silk dresses and creaking of their stays as they fidgeted impatiently, dropping their leather bound prayer books onto the marble floor and clicking the ivory and wooden sticks of their painted and gilded fans between their fingers.

After what seemed like forever we stood again and blushing and sweating nervously the Dauphin took my hand in his and pushed a ring which he almost dropped in his haste to get the task over and done with, onto my finger, while muttering: ‘Marie Antoinette, take this ring as a sign of my love and fidelity. In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.’

A dark haired page boy then stepped forward with a white satin cushion upon which rested a second ring which has been blessed by the Archbishop along with thirteen gold coins, which represented my purchase from my family. I picked it up and, looking him squarely in the eye, I put it onto the Dauphin’s outstretched finger, clearly saying: ‘Louis Auguste, take this ring as a sign of my love and fidelity…’ I was determined not to show the slightest sign of fear in front of these people and I smiled to myself, imagining them all sitting up straight and looking around in consternation as my young voice soared clear and high above them.

The Mass and communion, which we took while standing beneath a silver spangled canopy held by four gentlemen of the court, followed shortly after that and then a great gasping sigh of relief rippled through the chapel as the choir began to sing and we turned to make our way back out again. As we slowly passed beneath the royal balcony, I looked up and smiled at the King then blushed when he bowed and kissed his bejewelled fingers to me.

‘That went well,’ the Dauphin remarked as we reached the doors and found ourselves in the cool marble vestibule again.

‘Did you notice the stammering?’ I said, laughing and turning to my ladies in waiting to share the joke. ‘Jose-pha-pha-pha.’

Everyone else laughed, pleased to lighten the mood and share the relief that the ceremony had gone without hitch but the Dauphin just looked at me reprovingly. ‘The Archbishop is a good man and you ought not to mock him,’ he said stiffly before going red and turning away as I stared at him in astonishment.

There was an awkward silence during which my ladies in waiting looked at us both open mouthed in mingled shock and amusement. I can just imagine the gossip that will flow like water in the salons of Versailles and Paris this evening. ‘Well,’ I said at last, with a forced jocularity. ‘I must say that I feel suitably reprimanded.’ I was seething inside though. Seething. If one of my brothers spoke to me like that, I would tip a drink over his head. Or pull his hair. I briefly considered pulling the Dauphin’s hair, which peeps dark blond and thick from beneath his powdered wig but then regretfully decided against it.

‘Your Highness?’ Jeanne was at my side, her pretty face carefully blank. ‘The King will be waiting upstairs for you to come and sign the register.’ The formality of her manner brought me to my senses and reminded me that we were being watched by thousands of people, all crammed into every nook and cranny of the palace’s public rooms in order to watch us pass by. If I wasn’t careful, reports of my row with the Dauphin would be landing on my mother’s desk within a matter of days and I’d have a delightfully reproving letter to look forward to. Never mind Paris, it is Vienna’s disapproval that I need to avoid at all costs.

‘Of course.’ I longed to stick my nose in the air and sweep straight past my new husband, leaving him all alone in the vestibule to reflect upon the error of his ways but instead I waited for him to give me his hand and then stiffly walked beside him back up the stairs to the reception rooms above while the crowd pressed close and followed behind. I unbent enough to whisper: ‘I don’t think I will ever be able to find my way around Versailles.’

Louis didn’t even look at me. ‘You’ll soon get to grips with it,’ he said without interest.
We retraced our steps through the magnificent series of reception rooms overlooking the gardens and then swept around to the magnificent, luminous Hall of Mirrors again, which was once again crammed with thousands of people, including most of the congregation at the wedding who must have gathered up their heavy skirts and sprinted ahead of us so that they could jostle their way into the best positions in front of the dozens of orange trees that stand between the tall windows, their sweet ripe scent filling the hall and almost masking the rather less pleasant odour of dozens of unwashed bodies crammed together in a small space on a warm spring day.

A pair of footmen in navy blue and red livery swung open the mirrored doors that lead to the King’s council room and the Dauphin took me inside. The entire royal family had gathered there to greet us and as we stepped into the room, they politely applauded us with every appearance of genuine pleasure in our union while King Louis himself stepped forward with open arms to welcome me. ‘You did very well, my dear,’ he murmured, kissing my cheeks, enveloping me with his rich scent of musk and amber then leading me to the large table in the centre of the room where the parish register book had been carefully placed with a large golden ink well and fresh white feather pen beside it.

The King signed first, his signature a tall and elegantly confident underlined ‘Louis’, before handing the pen to his grandson who produced a cramped and off kilter ‘Louis Auguste’. It’s my turn next and I dipped the pen into the ink then proceeded to carefully sign my name. All goes well through the unfamiliar loops and fuss of ‘Marie Antoinette’ but then disaster struck at the beginning of ‘Josephe’ when the pen blurted out an immense splodge of rose scented ink onto the otherwise pristine page.

My cheeks went hot with embarrassment as I heard the Duchesse de Chartres snigger behind me but then my husband whispered: ‘Don’t worry, just carry on’ and so I did, completing ‘Jeanne’ with a triumphant flourish and stepping aside with much relief as one by one the rest of the family – my new brothers and sisters in law, my husband’s trio of middle aged aunts and the Chartres couple stepped up to sign their names after mine.

After this we accepted everyone’s congratulations again and I found myself wondering more and more about the tall unhappy looking boy who stood so silently at my side, not saying a word and clearly wishing that he could be somewhere else. But where?

The sunshine didn’t last forever and shortly after I had returned to my apartments for a brief rest and another abortive attempt to tighten the lacing on my gown as I held onto my bedposts and the maids tugged with all their might behind me, the heavens opened and rain began to first splatter and then slam alarmingly against the thin window panes in my bedchamber. ‘It’s not a proper wedding without a bit of rain!’ Jeanne announced gaily as I pouted with disappointment.

‘But what about the fireworks?’ I said. The King had arranged for an enormous firework display over the gardens that evening and I absolutely couldn’t wait to see it. All of our weddings and celebrations at home in Vienna are marked by fireworks and I felt like it would make me feel closer to home.

‘I am sure that the rain will have gone long before they are due to start,’ Marie-Paule de Chaulnes murmured in her comforting way. Although it is her custom to only ever wear white, in tribute to her status as a virginal wife, she had donned a gown of the palest rose pink with matching roses at her bosom and in her soft fair hair in honour of my day.

The evening celebrations began at the stroke of six with card games in the candlelit Hall of Mirrors, watched closely by a curious throng of several thousand onlookers who passed slowly by behind a temporary gilt barrier and were moved brusquely along by the King’s formidable Swiss Guards should any of them linger over long. Before she left Austria to be married to the Duke of Parma, my sister Maria Amalia and brother Joseph spent a great deal of time teaching me how to play cards and gamble properly as such occupations are central to the life of Versailles where everyone is expected to take part and vast sums are won and lost every night. At the King’s table, however, it is not the done thing to make extravagant bets and Madame de Mailly warned me in a whisper that as a result play can be rather dull indeed.

So dull in fact that I almost fell asleep several times and had to be nudged awake by the Duc de Chartres who sat beside me and took a great interest in helping me with my hands of cards, often at a cost to himself. ‘Bet now,’ he whispered behind his hand upon which an enormous ruby glowed in the candlelight. ‘Hah, look at Madame Adélaïde squirm. She’s cheating as usual but no one is allowed to say anything.’

On the other side of the green velvet covered table, the Dauphin was frowning down at his cards and looking rather miserable. ‘Games of chance are not Louis Auguste’s strong suit,’ the Duc whispered to me with a wicked gleam in his dark blue eyes. ‘Unlike myself he is always far too afraid to gamble even when the odds are in his favour.’

It was still light outside and as we played I could hear music, shouts and laughter drifting up through the open windows from the gardens outside where several thousand people seemed to be having an enormous open air party with stalls of cakes and wine, dancing and even puppet theatres erected between the flowers on the parterre. How odd it seemed that I was stuck indoors playing boring card games in prim silence while outside people were celebrating my wedding day.

‘If the rain holds off, we should still be able to have the firework display,’ the King said to me when we finally got up from the table to make our way to the formal banquet. ‘We haven’t had a really splendid round of fireworks for many years now so I’m looking forward to it.’

‘When we were small, we used to go up on to the palace roof to watch fireworks,’ the Duc de Chartres murmured to me as I handed my small pale blue velvet bag of winnings to Jeanne de Mailly for safe keeping. ‘Perhaps I could take you up there sometime, your Highness? The views across the gardens and park are really quite stunning.’

I looked at him, feeling a little cornered, but could see nothing but an innocent wish to please me in his expression. ‘Thank you, Monsieur le Duc, that is most kind,’ I said, with absolutely no intention of ever taking him up on his offer. If anyone is going to take me up on to the roof and show me the sights of Versailles, it will be my new husband, that painfully taciturn boy who blushed and sighed miserably as he offered me his arm to lead me down the gallery.

‘I hear that you do not enjoy games of chance?’ I said to Louis as we made our way down the marble staircase.

He looked startled. ‘Did Philippe tell you that?’ he asked after a moment’s pause with a look over his shoulder at the Chartres couple who followed close behind us. I could hear the Duchesse shrieking with laughter at one of her husband’s whispered jokes and felt uneasy as I suspected that they were making fun of my ill fitting dress.

‘Yes.’ I nodded, wishing that I could hear what they were saying behind me.

Louis shrugged. ‘You shouldn’t believe anything that my cousin tells you,’ he said, leading me through a mirror lined vestibule and then down a series of galleries to a sweeping white marble staircase that rises up from a black and white tiled floor. Despite the immense bouquets of roses and lilies that had been arranged in front of the windows, there was still a subtle underlying aroma of fresh paint and I looked enquiringly at my new husband.

‘My grandfather ordered that the opera house be completed for the wedding. It’s taken a team of men several months of work to finish it in time,’ he said, leading me up the stairs. It is the most animated that I had ever seen him. He even smiled at one point – or perhaps it was just a trick of the light. ‘There were carpenters, stonemasons and painters everywhere.’

‘What do you think?’ the King turned and smiled proudly at me as we followed him into the marble walled foyer with tall high windows that spilled moonlight onto the polished parquet floor and beautiful crystal chandeliers twinkling overhead. ‘I believe that this is my finest addition to Versailles. I like to imagine my grandfather, the Sun King Louis looking down from Heaven with approval for what I have done here. It is finer by far than the theatre that he installed.’
I looked around myself with true pleasure. ‘It is very lovely,’ I murmured, which makes him smile even more.

‘Oh dear,’ the Duchesse de Chartres said, pointing up to the window with a little moue of disappointment, ‘the rain is coming back.’

‘Perhaps it will go away again,’ the King said hopefully but as we enter the opera house, it began to lash heavily against the windows making them rattle alarmingly. From outside we could hear shrieks of dismay from the thousands of merry makers in the gardens as they ran for cover while thunder rumbled ominously overhead and for a brief moment I found myself wishing that I was with them, running free as a bird through the rain instead of cooped up inside in a too tight dress with a grumpy husband and everyone staring at me.

‘Well, that’s the fireworks cancelled then,’ the Comte d’Artois muttered furiously behind me. ‘That was going to be the high point of the day. There’s nothing to look forward to now.’
If my first glimpse of the chapel was breathtaking then the first time I stepped into the Versailles opera house left me speechless. The smell of fresh paint was even more overpowering now and my mother, who likes the things around her to be old, tarnished and comfortable, would certainly sniff disparagingly at how gleaming new it all is with bright untarnished gilt decorations, shining salmon pink and jade green marble walls and brand new gold tassels on the swagged pale blue stage hangings. I don’t care, though; I think it is beautiful.

Although it is usually designed to be used as a theatre, much of the floor had been raised to the same level as the stage and an enormous table laid out for a splendid banquet had been placed in the centre of it – here we were to sit and dine in state while the rest of the court either milled around lower down in the pit or had staked claim to the mirrored balconies that line the walls. ‘Ingenious is it not?’ the Duc de Chartres leaned in so close to me that I can smell the cloves and wine upon his breath and a furtive scent of something else underneath that made me quickly take a step away from him. ‘It took three hundred soldiers all working together to raise the floor.’

‘How astonishing,’ I said, not knowing what else to say. I sat down on the King’s left hand and smiled across at the Dauphin, who was sitting opposite me then looked down the rose and peony covered table to where the Princesse de Lamballe was sitting opposite her elderly father-in-law, the Duc de Penthièvre, who is the Duchesse de Chartres’ father. She was fussing with her napkin and listening intently to a rambling monologue by the dark eyed, intense Comtesse de la Marche, who is the Italian daughter-in-law of the Prince de Conti.

And how do I know who these people are? Because of my lively new brother-in-law, the twelve year old Comte d’Artois who looks like an angel with high cheekbones, soft pouting lips and pale blue eyes but has the most wicked sense of humour ever. He whispered to me constantly through dinner, telling me about everyone there and relaying the most shocking scandals, most of which cannot possibly be true.

‘I see that you have made friends with Chartres,’ he whispered at one point and not very discreetly either so that I blushed red with embarrassment and looked down the table to be sure that no one had overheard. ‘Be careful around him.’

‘Why?’ I sipped at my wine. ‘He seems very friendly.’ I didn’t mention how uneasy he makes me feel or his offer to take me up on to the palace roof.

Artois raised a dark eyebrow. ‘He seems friendly,’ he said with a meaningful look. ‘He’s always been very adept at pushing himself in where he isn’t wanted. Aunt Adélaïde says that he would like to be King one day but of course all of us are in the way so he can’t be.’ He lowered his voice even more. ‘He was mad as fire when it was announced that you were coming to marry Louis,’ he said. ‘He’s terrified that you’ll have lots of babies and put him even further away from the throne.’

I blushed at the mention of babies and hastily looked across the table at the Dauphin, but he was busy cramming roast chicken into his mouth and hadn’t heard anything. ‘Isn’t he rich enough already?’ I asked, remembering what Jeanne told me about the Duchesse de Chartres’ enormous six million livre dowry. ‘Isn’t it better to be rich and a private person?’ I looked around the hundreds of people who had crammed themselves inside the beautiful opera house just to watch us eat. I am sure that if they were allowed, they’d all be lining up to watch us use the chaise percée afterwards as well. I can’t imagine actually wanting all this fuss and nonsense.

Artois stared at me as if I had completely taken leave of my senses and jumped onto the table to do a striptease in between all of the candelabras. ‘Are you really an Empress’ daughter?’ he asked at last, laughing. ‘Or is it like one of those fairy tales where a maid swaps places with the princess and teaches everyone a lesson in humility?’

I laughed too and gave an apologetic shrug. ‘I am sorry,’ I said, looking mournfully down at an aspic covered crayfish on my plate and pushing it away with my gold fork. ‘It’s just that I hate eating in public. Don’t you?’

‘Not really,’ he said with a yawn. ‘Of course, it is difficult to care as little as my brother,’ he added with a pointed look across the table to where the Dauphin was allowing a long suffering footman to help him to more roasted chicken and rich creamy caper sauce from the magnificent profusion of dishes in the centre of the table. Artois turned to grin at me. ‘He’s always had a good appetite,’ he said, patting his stomach. ‘It’s the Bourbon way. We all love our food.’ He nodded across the table to his other brother, the Comte de Provence and sister Clotilde, who were eating even more greedily than their elder brother. ‘Personally, I’d prefer not to be fat so I try to restrain myself a little.’ He sipped at his wine. ‘It’s more elegant, don’t you think?’

I smiled and nodded, my attention now caught by Madame Adélaïde, who had paused, fork in hand to glare from beneath her thick dark eyebrows up at one of the balconies. ‘Such impudence,’ she muttered furiously to one of her sallow faced sisters, who was shrinking anxiously into her chair. ‘This would never have happened if our sainted maman was still alive.’

I followed her gaze up to the balconies, which were stuffed full of gorgeously dressed courtiers, many of whom were leaning perilously over the edges of their boxes with their opera glasses and, astonishingly, telescopes trained upon us. It didn’t take me long to see who had provoked Adélaïde’s annoyance – in the very central box, directly opposite the stage there sat beautiful Madame du Barry in solitary splendour and dressed as if for battle in glittering cloth of gold with diamonds blazing at her ears, throat and wrists and even spangling the tall white and yellow feathers that she wore tucked into her curled and powdered hair.

‘Oh dear,’ I murmured, blushing as I remembered what Madame de Chartres told me of Du Barry’s rather less than impressive origins – that she is the illegitimate daughter of a seamstress and a monk and walked the streets before catching the King’s eye. It seems incredible that such a woman should end up here at Versailles, looking down at us all from her opera box like some sort of painted deity. As I stared at her, she gave a pouty little smile and lifted one sparkling hand in languid greeting.

‘Did you say something, my dear?’ the King looked up with concern from the pile of oysters that he was working his way through with immense enjoyment. ‘I hope that you are not becoming tired?’
I smiled and shook my head, pulling my gaze away from Madame du Barry. ‘Oh no,’ I said, hiding a yawn behind my hand. ‘I am not at all tired.’

He looked across at his grandson, the Dauphin, who sat on his other side and was busily stuffing roasted turbot into his mouth and eyeing up the elaborate cakes, puddings and sticky sugared fruits that had just been placed on the table by the liveried footmen who lined the back of the stage, waiting to anticipate our every wish. ‘My dear boy,’ he murmured. ‘Is it really wise to eat so much tonight?’

The Dauphin stopped eating and looked first at me and then at his grandfather. ‘Why not?’ he said tonelessly. ‘I always sleep better after a good meal.’

He spoke into a lull in the general conversation and everyone at the table turned to stare both at him and, more pityingly, me. I looked down at my plate, feeling my cheeks go red hot with shame as I heard the Duchesse de Chartres snigger and whisper ‘It looks like more than one firework display has been cancelled tonight,’ to the elderly Duc de Bourbon next to her, who started to laugh then cough into his napkin.

‘My dear,’ the King put his hand on mine and I looked up to see that his grey eyes were full of concern. He looked as though he wanted to say more but really, what can one say?

When the banquet finally came to an end, the King rose heavily from his chair, nodding grandly to the assembled company then with enormous dignity that couldn’t quite mask the fact that he had drunk rather too much of his own fine beaujolais and champagne left the stage, while we all scrambled into place to hastily follow him. The Dauphin, clearly unwilling to leave the food, wiped his mouth and greasy fingers with a fine linen napkin before throwing it aside and offering me his hand.

‘It’s been a long day,’ I said to him as we retraced our steps out of the opera house and back through the palace to my apartments on the ground floor. Our route was lined with courtiers, who smirked impudently at me as I went past. Everyone knew what was going to happen once the Dauphin and I were left alone.

Louis snorted and raised one shoulder as if in half agreement. ‘We have a week of this to look forward to,’ he grumbled. ‘Parties, the opera, a ball…’

‘Oh I love parties!’ I enthused, feeling frustrated by his dour manner and wanting to needle him a little. ‘And balls.’

‘I hate parties,’ he said, still not looking at me. ‘I’d rather be left alone.’ To do what?
The King had originally planned that we make our way in great and dramatic state across the moonlit courtyard from one wing of the palace to the other with running page boys carrying flaming torches to light our way, but the heavy rain and occasional rumblings of thunder put a stop to that. Instead we walked at a swift trot through endless candlelit, crowded rooms and up and down two sweeping marble staircases to get to my apartments on the ground floor of the opposite side of the palace.

Once we arrived there, I was ushered inside and led to a tall screen painted with climbing roses, peacock feathers and my personal cypher MA which had been placed at the side of the bed. After my heavy dinner, unusual amounts of wine and exhausting walk through the palace, I was longing to just tumble into bed and sleep it all off but unfortunately, this was not to be permitted as there was another public ceremony, the coucher, to endure first.

‘Your Highness must be publicly prepared for bed,’ Madame de Noailles whispered, ushering me over to the screen while the Dauphin was taken off to a matching screen on the other side of the bed by his grandfather, who with great ceremony handed him a white linen nightshirt.

I looked nervously around the great crowd of people who had followed us into the room and crammed themselves into the very corners just to watch us be put to bed together. My brother Joseph had warned me about this so I knew what to expect but even so I was unnerved by the sight of them all goggling at me as, with a saucy wink, the Duchesse de Chartres handed me my lace trimmed nightdress and I blushingly stepped behind the screen with my ladies in waiting to be stripped of my heavy wedding dress and changed into it.

‘They can’t see any of me, can they?’ I whispered anxiously to Jeanne, folding my arms in front of myself protectively as one of my ladies deftly undid my laces while another helped me step out of my enormous panniered silver skirts. Oh the relief to be finally free of them at last.

Jeanne’s eyes danced with laughter. ‘Not one little iota can be seen, Your Highness,’ she said, gently prising my arms away from my chest so that I could be eased out of my corset. ‘Only Monsieur le Dauphin will be permitted to lay eyes on you tonight.’

‘I don’t think he wants to,’ I whispered a little glumly as a maid quickly unpinned my hair and then brushed out the light coating of powder so that it fell heavy and warm around my shoulders.
Jeanne shook her head warningly and placed one finger lightly on her lips before producing a bottle of musky rose scent and dabbing it behind my ears, on my wrists and between my breasts.

I stepped out from behind the screen and stood awkwardly for a moment beside the great canopied bed with its elaborately swagged and tasseled raspberry pink silk curtains, waiting for the Archbishop of Rheims to finish the traditional blessing with holy water, while on the other side, the Dauphin also stood, looking awkward and pale legged in his white nightshirt. I wondered if I should smile and nod to him, so that he knew I felt peculiar and scared too, but as he was clearly so resolutely determined not to look at me, I instead turned my gaze towards the King, who was looking at the bed with an expression of great sadness.

As soon as the blessing was finished, I immediately pulled back the heavy embroidered silk coverlet and fine lace edged sheets and hopped into the bed. ‘Madame la Dauphine is very keen,’ I heard someone whisper with a titter. ‘I thought that Austrians were supposed to be a cold blooded race?’

‘Go on,’ the King urged the Dauphin, who was still standing beside the bed and looking down at the coverlet with an indecisive frown between his eyes. ‘In you get, my boy.’
Louis gave a shrug then clambered heavily in beside me, taking great care that no part of him, not even his nightshirt should come into contact with me. I can’t tell you how flattering this was.

The heavy curtains around the bed were slowly closed, plunging the Dauphin and I into gloom and hiding us from view. I listened to him breathing and considered reaching out to take his hand, but before I could do so, the curtains were once again opened, revealing us to the immense crowd of courtiers who smiled, nodded and applauded as though we have done something very clever indeed.

‘Regard,’ the King said to the courtiers with a proud flourish before turning back to his grandson and I. ‘We shall leave you both alone now,’ he said and again there was that slight sad smile before he turned on his high red heel and left the room with the bowing, smirking mob of courtiers in his wake. The Duc de Chartres lingers for a moment as everyone else streams past him and he gives me a sad smile before turning and joining the throng.

The door closed behind them with a click and in the distance I could hear the chatter, laughter and occasional hallooing hunting calls of the court as they noisily made their way up the stairs and back to the main apartments to continue the evening’s revelries.

The Dauphin made an exasperated noise then jumped from the bed again. For a terrible moment, I thought he was going to storm out but instead, to my relief, he merely went around the room pinching each of the candle flames between his thumb and forefinger. ‘Clearly they’d like us to burn to death,’ he muttered as he went about his work.

‘Perhaps your grandfather thought that we might like to see each other?’ I said timidly.

Louis looked at me then. ‘Why would we want to do that?’ he said before pinching out the last candle and plunging us into darkness.

I snuggled down into the bed and listened as he padded across the floor in his bare feet then climbed fumblingly back into the bed again before easing himself against the pillows with a sigh. Surely any minute now I would feel his hands upon me and his breath warm on the side of my neck? Perhaps he would even attempt a light kiss? Some nuzzling maybe? Or maybe something a bit more passionate?

I heard snoring from his side of the bed.

Oh.

Amazon UK: The Secret Diary of a Princess: a novel of Marie Antoinette

Amazon US: The Secret Diary of a Princess: a novel of Marie Antoinette.

I’m writing about Princess Louise Hollandine of the Palatinate’s arrival in Paris today and as she really interests me, I thought I’d chat about her on here as well. Her name’s a bit of a mouthful isn’t it – the next time I get hold of some precious vegetarian marshmallows, I’ll stuff my mouth with them and give it a whirl.

Elizabeth of England, Queen of Bohemia, daughter of James I, sister of Charles I and goddaughter of Elizabeth I.

According to the despatches of the English Ambassador, Princess Louise was born at the Hague palace between 1am and 2am on the morning of the 8th of April (my husband’s birthday, how pleasing) 1622, the sixth child and second daughter of Elizabeth Stuart and her husband Frederick V, Elector Palatine. Unusually for royal parents of the period, Elizabeth and Frederick had wanted another daughter and the child’s names had already been decided – Louise after her paternal grandmother and Hollandine as a compliment to the State of Holland, which had taken them in after their somewhat inglorious departure from Bohemia.

The new baby princess was christened eight days later in the Klooster-Kerke, the former church of the monastery of St Vincent near the Hague. Elizabeth, as was usual at the time, was forbidden by etiquette to attend.

Despite her family’s exiled status, Louise’s christening appears to have been extremely magnificent – the procession, headed by the Prince of Orange himself and comprising the entire court as well as her family and the English ambassador, went on foot from the Hague to the church and the little princess was carried with great solemnity beneath a canopy of state. Her godmothers were Sophie of Nassau Dietz and Amalia of Nassau and among her sumptuous gifts she received a life pension of two hundred pounds a year from the States of Holland, while her godfather, Christian of Brunswick sent, rather charmingly I think, the latest large ransom he had gained from a prisoner of war.

Louise grew up to be a strapping, healthy and witty young girl. The Palatine children were renowned throughout Europe for their good looks, intelligence, outspoken behaviour and occasional eccentricity. Despite the shortness of money, they were certainly immensely fun loving and very fond of sport. Their mother, who had grown up at the very heart of the Jacobean court, had instilled in them all a passion for the hunt and also a deep love of masques, plays and general revelry. We’re told that when in a deputation of English Puritans arrived at the Hague on New Year’s Eve in 1635, they were utterly shocked by the ‘devilish hallooings’ of Louise and her siblings as they danced the night away and staged a hunting masque to cheer up their recently widowed mother. Another favourite pastime was dressing up in her splendid old dresses and putting on plays.

Amongst her entertaining, vivid family, Louise was closest to her elder brother Rupert, who shared her artistic and mercurial nature. At seventeen we are told that the Princess was the only one of Elizabeth’s daughters to love hunting and riding as much as her vibrant mother and that, according to Carole Oman: ‘her nose, had it not belonged to a princess, must have been termed impertinent, but she managed to make people think her a beauty, for her auburn hair and eager expression were highly attractive. In colouring she resembled her little brother Philip, but in gait and carriage she was very like Rupert.‘

Elizabeth of Bohemia and family in an allegory by Honthorst – Louise is the girl holding some sort of plant (a palm?) and gazing up a little reproachfully at her mother. You can read more about this interesting piece here.

Such a lively princess obviously attracted admirers and we know that her cousin, Frederick William of Brandenburg became completely smitten with her when she was about fifteen years old and remained so for several years. Sadly, although her mother was happy with the match, his was rather less so due to Louise’s relatively penniless state and he was forced to marry another wealthier princess, her cousin Luise Henriette of Orange. With typical aplomb, Elizabeth made all of her daughters, including the disappointed Louise attend the wedding ceremony in the Hague. As an aside, Luise Henriette wasn’t happy about this either, she was madly in love with the French prince of Talmont and had also had tender feelings for her cousin, Charles II.

The Brandenburgs looking utterly THRILLED. And a bit sunburned…

It was at around this time that Louise began her art lessons with the painter Gerard van Honthorst, who thought a great deal of her talent.

Her portrait of her younger sister, Princess Sophia.

An allegorical portrait of three ladies and a child by Princess Louise. This was sold by Christies for £34,655 in 2004.

Although Louise appears to have lived a blameless if lively life, there was a brief whiff of scandal in June 1646 when it was alleged that a certain young French exile, Jacques de l’Epinay was paying court not only to her fifty year old but still extremely striking mother but also to the twenty four year old princess and had, furthermore, been boasting far and wide about his amorous success with both ladies. Her younger brother Philip was apparently infuriated by the rumours and had a violent brawl in the street with L’Epinay and his friends on the evening of the 20th of June. The watchman broke up the ruckus but the next night when Philip encountered L’Epinay strolling through the Place d’Armes on his way home from a congenial dinner party, the results were altogether more tragic.

The young prince pulled out a hunting knife and attacked the Frenchman, who had just enough time to take out his sword and make a vague attempt to defend himself before Philip struck the fatal blow, severing his jugular vein. Philip immediately jumped into his carriage and departed post haste for the border, leaving his mother and siblings to deal with the immense scandal that his actions had occasioned.

Elizabeth was devastated – she was already disappointed enough with the wayward behaviour of her sons but this was far worse than anything that even Rupert, who had earned his nickname of ‘Robert the Devil’ while he was still in the nursery, or the equally rambunctious Maurice had managed to cook up. As for Louise, who had all the honourable spirit of her brother Rupert, we can only imagine her feelings on being made the unlikely heroine of such a sordid tale.

A self portrait in a most peculiar hat.

There has been speculation that Louise would later have a bittersweet and short lived romance with James Graham, the Earl of Montrose, who travelled from Scotland to the Hague in February 1649, shortly after the execution of Charles I to offer his loyalty to the new king, Charles II who was then residing there. Sophie, the youngest of the Palatinate princess would later write in her memoirs that when James Graham left the Hague a month later as Lieutenant-General of Scotland, he demanded the hand of her elder sister Louise as his reward for victory. Sadly it would all come to nothing as Montrose was horribly executed in Edinburgh on the 21st of May 1650.

The next big drama in Louise’s life, which occurred when she was thirty six years old was to be pretty huge. I’ll let Carole Oman set the scene:

‘On Wednesday, December 19th 1657, a cover was laid in vain in the hall hung with tarnished gilt leather where the Queen of Bohemia was accustomed to dine at noon. The failure of the artist-princess Louise to appear for the midday meal did not at first cause alarm. She had vaguely mentioned some scheme of visiting acquaintances at Scheveningen. The results of enquiries made in the household as to her expedition, however, were disquieting. No carriage was missing from the stables, no attendant were absent. Neither halberdier, footman, page, lady in waiting nor fille de chambre had seen anything of the princess since last night. She had apparently left the house in darkness, on foot, alone and without money. Her bed chamber was searched, and a note addressed to her mother was found. The gist of this entirely formal document was that when the princess arrived at a destination which was not yet at liberty to disclose, she hoped to inform her Majesty of her reasons for taking the veil in a Catholic nunnery.’

Elizabeth’s household was thrown into absolute uproar as they tried in vain to discover where the errant and always headstrong princess had gone. Despatches were sent forth instructing that the princess be arrested with ‘all civility and respect’ and returned to the Hague but it was too late, she was long gone.

Another search of her room turned up letters between herself and a Catholic friend of her mothers, the Princess of Zollern. These letters revealed that Louise’s plan, long ago made, was to leave the Hague in the early hours of the morning and make her way alone to the port of Delfshaven, where she was to be met by friends and taken by ship to Bergen op Zoom and then on to Paris, where she planned to stay with her aunt, Henrietta Maria of England.

Louise arrived in Paris at the end of December and was received with delight by her aunt and the French court. Henrietta Maria must have felt a great deal of satisfaction when she wrote to Elizabeth to let her know her daughter’s whereabouts and reassure her that she would be well taken care of. The staunchly Protestant Elizabeth had infuriated her sister in law on more than one occasion by condemning her actions during the English Civil War and by continually taking the part of her children, in particular Prince Henry when she attempted her ill fated conversion of him. Elizabeth replied to Henrietta Maria’s pleas for forgiveness by snappily asking how she, Henrietta Maria, would like it if her adored little daughter Henriette Anne, the only one of the English royal children to have been raised as a Catholic, ran away to the Hague with the intention of being converted to Protestantism.

Families, eh?

Meanwhile in Holland, rumours were gleefully spreading that Louise had in fact taken herself off to a convent in order to give birth to an illegitimate child. This was all fanned by her partner in crime, the Princess of Zollern who had found herself a persona non grata at the Hague and in her rancour resorted to spreading lies about the absent princess in order to excuse herself. Louise shrugged the rumours off, although letters went to and fro letting everyone know that she was just as thin as always, but her mother was mortified.

Despite this estrangement with her mother, the rebel princess Louise was perfectly happy in Paris and after a spell living with her aunt and cousin at the Palais Royal, during which time she was converted to the Catholic faith, she moved to Henrietta Maria’s convent at Chaillot as a novice before going on to her final destination, the convent of Maubuisson, near Pontoise, where she took the veil and became a Cistercian nun on the 19th of September 1660.

Louise’s niece Liselotte, who would become Duchesse d’Orléans and add a dash of her family’s signature dark and cynical wit to the court of Louis XIV.

Thanks to the interest of Louis XIV, who seems to have had a great liking for this errant relative of his aunt Henrietta Maria, she would become Abbess of Maubuisson in the summer of 1664 and lived out her days there in great contentment, still painting and making an extremely cheerful nun until her death at the age of eighty eight in February 1709. She would never see her mother again and was the only one of Elizabeth’s children not to get a mention in her will, but we know that other members of her family including Charles II and his siblings and also her niece Liselotte, the daughter of her brother Carl and great favourite of her mother Elizabeth who would marry Philippe d’Orleans after the death of their cousin Henriette Anne, who went often to visit her in her convent.

Further reading:

The Winter Queen: Elizabeth Of Bohemia (Women in History (Sterling))

The Bride: The Story of Louise and Montrose (Excellent novel by Margaret Irwin about the romance between Louise and the ill fated Montrose.)

The Stranger Prince (Irwin also wrote this fantastic novel about Prince Rupert of the Rhine.)

“There is a time to stand on your dignity, but there is a time to abandon it in the interests of your safety. There is a time to smirk behind the hand of cards you have drawn, and there is a time to throw down your purse on the table and say, ‘Thomas Cromwell, you win.’”

Well, it took just over a day but I now return having finished Bring up the Bodies. I’m still crying actually – the last line just made me howl and I’m not even sure why. I think it might just have been released tension as the last part of the book, which covers the condemnation and execution of Anne Boleyn was jaw droppingly tense and had me literally holding my breath in shock as I read it.

This is, without a doubt, one of the most incredible books I have ever read. Long term readers of this blog will know all about my passionate adoration of Wolf Hall and I would say that its sequel, Bring up the Bodies somehow contrives to be even better. It’s as if Hilary Mantel has taken all the grandiose, fanciful and essentially beautiful conceits of language that made Wolf Hall such a joy to read and took them even further, creating a dazzling vision of the Tudor court – venal, lustful and gorgeously opulent in the extreme.

Thomas Cromwell, that most unlikely of heroes, is the star of the show though, and here he is revealed to be even more crafty, intelligent, jocular, likeable and, above all, humane. He is so overbrimming with humanity in fact that he began to seem more real, more life like than actual people I know. ‘I know Thomas Cromwell better than I know my own husband,’ I thought at one point. ‘Or do I?’ I still love him though. Thomas Cromwell, I mean. He’s no angel and, let’s face it, we all know that he had a face that only a mother could love but I still would. Oh crikey yes. As with Wolf Hall, I found myself having daydreams about time slippy wish fulfilment in which I slide into the pages and find myself in Austin Friars. ‘Marry me, Thomas Cromwell!’ I’d say as he examined my iPhone with keen interest and perhaps a little bit of panic. ‘I don’t care about your squashed face, your sausage fingers and your dubious past! Teach me how to swear like a sixteenth century Londoner and then arrange my face before I meet the king. So long as you don’t mind the fact that I have pink hair and talk with a funny accent.’

Ahem. I’ve given rather too much thought to this.

Bring up the Bodies is a much more compact novel than Wolf Hall but it still manages to cover a lot of ground as it examines the events surrounding the sudden and devastating fall of Anne Boleyn. I read it at a gallop and loved every minute of this but it is also a book to savour, to allow to unfold. You don’t necessarily need to have read Wolf Hall either to enjoy this as I think it could stand very well on its own two feet, however I think your enjoyment would be increased if you read both in order as the subtle seeds of what will come are all sown in the first book. Also, I’d hate anyone to miss out on the joy that is Wolsey in all his glory or the budding peculiarity between Cromwell and the breathlessly skittish Mary Boleyn.

As with Wolf Hall, this has an immense cast of characters but each is so distinctly and lovingly drawn that you won’t have trouble telling them apart. You’ll find no cardboard cutout Tudor courtiers here, no two dimensional snivelling toadies in silk doublets. This I think is one of Hilary Mantel’s many gifts as a writer – the ability to give every single character, no matter how obscure, flesh, to reveal the skull beneath the skin.

I don’t think this is a book for the Anne Boleyn fan girls out there to be honest. As in Wolf Hall, she is portrayed as a heartless schemer who will stop at nothing to get her own way, a screeching, shrill, petulant woman who inspires the men around her with fear and uncomfortable lust. I won’t give away the conclusions, ambiguously drawn but I think still clear, that Mantel and by extension Cromwell make about Anne’s much discussed guilt but her trial and execution made me shiver in horror even though I was all out of sympathy with her by the time the blow falls.

Jane Seymour is the surprise here, I think. I’ve never really rated her very much but I like Hilary Mantel’s version – a pale, silent but rather prosaic girl given to surprisingly disconcerting pronouncements. I look forward to reading more about her in the third and last book of the trilogy. I’m also very much looking forward to Mantel’s take on poor little Catherine Howard.

In summary, this is a glorious book, possibly the best I have ever read alongside A Place of Greater Safety and Wolf Hall, that plunges the reader headlong into the murky, fast moving waters of Henry VIII’s court and creates a world, dangerous and terrifying though it may be, that I just didn’t want to leave. An astonishing and brave work. I’m now desperate for the last part, although I know I’m going to fall apart at the end.

Bring up the Bodies

At last, my long ago pre-ordered copy of Bring up the Bodies has hit my Kindle and I’m going to stay up for a couple of hours to get stuck in. I honestly cannot wait to read this book.

I’m so tragic though – my husband sent me for a nap earlier on so that I could get up just before midnight and get a few hours reading in before crashing again. Imagine my rage when it got to midnight and the book failed to magically manifest! I’d say though that on the whole this is one of the very best things about owning a Kindle – you don’t have to wait for that hot brand new release to fall into your mitts!

Mind you, I really wish the big booksellers had taken a leaf out of the Harry Potter excitement and opened up at midnight so that the legions of Wolf Hall fans could get their hands on the sequel! I’d be totally up for queueing up in full on Tudor costume!

Anyway, I’ve just wasted a couple of minutes of PRECIOUS READING TIME so I’ll be off. Anyone else about to start reading? Are you hoping the postman will bring your copy in the morning? I’ll be back with a review just as soon as I’ve finished!

Ah, Thomas Cromwell, how I’ve missed you…

I’ve been quiet, haven’t I? I wish I had an excuse but I don’t really – I’ve just been busy working on my fourth novel, which is going very well indeed, thanks for asking! The young Louis XIV just EXUDES sexiness. Sorry, but he does. Every scene that he turns up in just CRACKLES. Phew. It’s really taking it out of me.

In other news though:

I’VE SOLD MY TEN THOUSANDTH BOOK!

Yes, that’s right. Ten thousand of my books are languishing on Kindles ALL OVER THE WORLD. Unless they’ve been deleted or something. But hey, let’s be optimistic here, there’s probably ten thousand of them OUT THERE RIGHT NOW. TEN THOUSAND PIECES OF MY MIND. Wow.

It’s a bit creepy really.

I know that ten thousand book sales is PIFFLE to most of you, but to me this is a Big Deal because I didn’t expect to sell ANY books. Actually, that’s not true – I expected my husband and maybe four or five of my friends to buy copies. Not the friend who said ‘I won’t buy a copy until someone says it’s any good’. No, not that one. Some other friends though. Thank you to them and er the thousands of other people who bought at least one as well. Seriously, thank you. I think you are all amazing.

What am I doing to celebrate, I hear you cry. Well…

Yup, working on the next chapter, which as you can see involves Prince Rupert, Elizabeth of Bohemia, Paris and um snow.

I’m also counting down the hours until midnight when Hilary Mantel’s Bring Up The Bodies will hopefully be hitting my Kindle. I’m planning to start reading straight away and at once. Oh man, I can’t wait.

Actually, what you really want to know is the HOW and WHY, isn’t it? I’ve covered the basics of Kindle publishing here and can’t really think of much to add to be honest other than to gently implore my fellow self published writers to outsource editing and illustration, DON’T OVERPRICE, think about your online reputation before you get all snarky in public forums, quit the automatic daily spamming of your book links on Twitter, PLEASE GOD NO MORE AUTO DMS about your books to people who follow you and have fun.

High fives all round, I think.

My books:

The Secret Diary of a Princess: a novel of Marie Antoinette

Before the Storm

Blood Sisters

Here’s another thing that I love love LOVE about writing historical fiction – those little serendipitous snippets of research that all come together in the most delicious bundle of WOW and also slightly creepy coincidence.

For example:

I had to do a bit of research into Frances Stuart, who is most famous for completely blowing out the amorous Charles II and making off with James Weasley Stuart, Duke of Richmond instead. I just wanted a few facts and figures to play with before I let her trip in and out of my book (she would have known Henrietta Stuart as a little girl as her father was Henrietta Maria’s physician and her mother was one of her dressers).

The first thing I discovered was that she had a sister, Sophia who was also a bit of a looker. Crikey. Sophia doesn’t appear to have had the same taste for DRAMA! as her elder sister and settled into marriage with Henry Bulkeley, who wasn’t even the eldest son of Viscount Bulkeley. The Honourable Mrs Bulkeley would become a lady in waiting to Mary of Modena, the second wife of James II and is believed to have been present at the controversial birth of Mary and James’ son, who was alleged to have been smuggled into the bedchamber inside a warming pan.

Sophia and her husband had six children, only three of whom appear to have survived childhood. Their eldest daughter, Anne, was to marry James FitzJames, Duke of Berwick-on-Tweed and illegitimate son of James II and Arabella Churchill on the 18th of April 1700 while they were exiled in Paris.

He was quite handsome for a Duke. A bit smug looking, maybe but, hey, if you like that sort of thing…

The FitzJames couple had ten children and THEIR eldest daughter, Henriette (born 16th September 1705) was to marry Louis de Clermont d’Amboise, Marquis de Reynel on the 7th of November 1722. They had four children before her premature death at the age of thirty three.

This is where it gets just too creepy, as their eldest son, Jacques Louis Georges de Clermont d’Amboise, Marquis de Reynel had just one child, a daughter called Thomase Thérèse, who was born in September 1746 and would marry the Comte de Stainville and eventually become mother to Françoise de Choiseul-Stainville, Princesse Joseph de Monaco, one of the very last victims of the Terror in 1794, whom I am a bit obsessed with.

Here’s another one of Anne’s descendants – Laure-Auguste de Fitz-James, Princesse de Chimay, who was lady in waiting to Marie Antoinette.

My husband is extremely unimpressed by all this but I’m really quite excited in a weird sort of way. I mean, I had no idea until literally twenty minutes ago that my heroine, Françoise was actually the ancestral niece of the famous Frances Stuart and now there’s this big family tree and lots of interesting stuff and connections going on. How completely mad is that? I love history.

Okay, maybe I’m the mad one…

I promised yesterday to tell you more about the dashing Lady d’Aubigny and so here you go.

Lady d’Aubigny was another one of those glamorous russet haired Howard girls that pop up every now again in the history books as she was born Lady Catherine Howard, eldest daughter of Theophilus Howard, 2nd Earl of Suffolk and his wife, Lady Elizabeth Home. The infamous Lady Frances Howard, Countess of Essex and Somerset was her aunt while Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk and terrifying uncle of both Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard was her great great great grandfather.

There is no definite date of birth for Lady Catherine but it was probably at some point around 1620. It’s not even known where she was born but it was probably either at her family’s principal country seat of Audley End near Saffron Walden in Essex or at their London residence, Suffolk House near Charing Cross. The family also owned Framlingham Castle until they sold it on in 1635.

As was only natural for a girl of her station, Lady Catherine joined the court in 1638 when she was in her teens and was immediately lauded as A Beauty. It didn’t take long before she caught the eye of the twenty year old Lord George Stuart, Sieur d’Aubigny and second son of Esmé Stuart, Duke of Lennox. The Duke of Lennox died in 1624, leaving his children as wards of his cousin, Charles I, which meant that he had to give permission for their marriages.

Lord George was an extremely eligible match – he was a Stuart after all and his family had enjoyed royal favour for several generations (in the case of his grandfather, Esmé, who was a favourite of James I, it was whispered that perhaps he enjoyed rather TOO MUCH royal favour but who are we to carp?). His eldest brother, James, who was now Duke of Lennox had only a year earlier married the renowned court beauty Lady Mary Villiers, daughter of the murdered Duke of Buckingham and would go on to be created Duke of Richmond in 1641.

For whatever reason, Catherine and George were thwarted in their wish to be together – maybe there was talk about betrothing one of them to someone else or maybe their parents didn’t get on – although I would have thought that Catherine’s parents as head of the Catholic bastion that was the Howard clan would have liked the fact that George had been raised as a Catholic in France until the age of eighteen and had studied at the University of Paris. Anyway, for some reason the match wasn’t approved of and they decided to employ subterfuge and marry in secret in 1638 and without the permission of either her parents or the King. Scandal!

Luckily, it seems that all’s well that ends well and the happy couple were forgiven for their transgression and welcomed back to court, where they enjoyed much favour. Their London residence was on Queen’s Street near Covent Garden and it was there that in January 1640 her younger sister Lady Margaret Howard was married to Roger Boyle, the 1st Earl of Orrery. This wedding is significant because it inspired Sir John Suckling’s A Ballad Upon a Wedding, which is one of the most delightfully florid pieces of Cavalier poetry:

‘The maid (and thereby hangs a tale)
For such a maid no Whitsun-ale
Could ever yet produce:
No grape, that’s kindly ripe, could be
So round, so plump, so soft as she,
Nor half so full of juice.

Her lips were red, and one was thin,
Compar’d to that was next her chin;
(Some bee had stung it newly);
But (Dick) her eyes so guard her face,
I durst no more upon them gaze
Than on the sun in July.‘

Catherine and George didn’t have a poet to commemorate their romantic secret wedding but instead and quite defiantly they posed for Van Dyck.

Lord George is shown here posing as a very grumpy shepherd – the motto on the painting says ‘Love is stronger than I am.’ He really has got a ‘Yes, I’m a shepherd with ENORMOUS SILK SLEEVES AND WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?!’ look about him, hasn’t he?

For her part, his blushing bride chose to be painted holding a garland of roses in allusion to her newly married state. She looks EXTREMELY pleased with herself doesn’t she? I bet the portraits were her idea. He probably just wanted some nice engraved silverware or something but NO…

The D’Aubigny couple were to have two children – Sir Charles Stuart, on the 7th of March 1639 and Catherine Stuart, on the 5th of December 1640.

Sadly it would all go awry very soon afterwards and when the English Civil War broke out, George, along with his brothers naturally chose to take the side of his relative, Charles I, joining the royal army at York in 1642. He’d seen warfare before when he fought with the French against Spain and was no stranger to the soldier’s life. Tragically though he was to be killed at Edgehill, the first major clash of the Civil War on the 23rd of October 1642. He was just twenty four years old.

His younger brothers Lord John and Lord Bernard Stuart would also die in the course of the war. They were the subjects of one of Van Dyck’s best known portraits. The epitome of Cavaliers, I think.

Poor Catherine was left alone in the world with two small children and at first was even beset by financial problems as her husband had died without leaving a will and his estate would not be released to her until June 1647. In the meantime, Catherine, always intrepid and, as is evidenced by her secret marriage, with a taste for subterfuge and DRAMA, made herself useful as a spy by hiding official documents in her ringlets or beneath her petticoats and smuggling them around the country or even overseas although she seems to have been mostly based with the rest of the royal court at Oxford during this period.

I love this portrait of Catherine with her sister-in-law, Lady Frances Stuart, Countess of Portland. There’s a gorgeous miniature of Lady Frances in the Royal Collections:

At some point, she married again to James Livingstone, 1st Earl of Newburgh, but they did not have children. The couple escaped to the continent in the late 1640s and Catherine would die at the Hague in 1650 at the age of thirty, leaving her children to be raised in France with their uncle, Lord Ludovic Stuart.

As an interesting postscript, Catherine and George’s son, Charles, who apparently looked like a Weasley and would succeed his uncle to the title of Duke of Richmond would later take as his third wife the famous society beauty Frances Teresa Stuart, wresting her from the clutches of his cousin Charles II…

I’ll admit it, writing historical fiction CAN be a bit of a slog at times no matter how much you love the past in general and the topic you’ve latched onto in particular. However, there are odd moments of pure joy to be had such as the times when you research a historical event and discover that it happened on the exact same date only hundreds of years ago. I love that.

Today’s serendipity comes courtesy of the wedding of Princess Mary Henrietta Stuart, the eldest daughter of Charles I and William of Orange which took place in the Chapel Royal at Whitehall on Sunday 2nd of May back in 1641.

I’m really fond of Mary as she sounds like she was quite a character (I’ve given her the idiom of Nancy Mitford’s Linda Radlett in my novel about her youngest sister, Henrietta Anne) and she was also the subject of some of my favourite portraits by Anthony Van Dyke.

What could be more charming than his portrait of Mary and William, painted together in 1641 to mark their wedding?

I also love this portrait of Mary aged about six, which was painted in 1637. It was one of her father Charles I’s favourite paintings (a big deal as he is rightly considered to be one of the greatest collectors of art this country has ever seen) and he hung it in pride of place in his rooms at Hampton Court Palace while under house arrest during the English Civil War. When he made his ill fated escape to the Isle of Wight he left behind instructions that ‘the Originall of My Eldest Daughter [which] hangs in this chamber over the board next the Chimney which you must send to my Lady Aubigny‘. I’ll talk about the beauteous and dashing Lady d’Aubigny later as she’s a BIG HEROINE of mine but suffice to say for now that she took the canvas away with her to the Hague where it was reunited with Mary.

The portrait came into the hands of the great and much lamented art historian Oliver Millar many years later and was recently accepted by the state in lieu of death duties when he died. It’s now hanging back in Hampton Court Palace again, where it hangs in the former apartments of her son, William III. Isn’t art history great.

Back to the royal wedding of 1641, which seems to have had plenty of the drama that all weddings manage to engender. In this case, the bride’s mother, Henrietta Maria was a bit narked that her eldest daughter was being married off to a relatively obscure Dutch princeling, while her father would have preferred her to be married to her cousin, the son of the King of Spain. To add further complications, their nephew, the Prince Palatine, who sounds like a most unpleasant chap and who had none of the famous charm of his mother, Elizabeth of Bohemia or other siblings (which included the heavenly but rather grumpy Prince Rupert), rolled up in the country in a right old sulk because he thought the Princess Mary had been promised to him.

Oh dear. Vivacious Mary herself was nine at the time and appears to have seen nothing wrong with her fifteen year old suitor, who was pretty good looking for a prince if a bit quiet. She was escorted down the aisle of the Chapel Royal by her brothers Charles and James and followed by her watchful governess and an ostentatious troupe of sixteen aristocratic bridesmaids. Her father waited by the altar to give her away, while her mother, sister Princess Elizabeth and grandmother, Marie de Medici watched from behind a curtain at the side.

Mary may well have worn the dress in her wedding portrait by Van Dyke as we are told that it was made of silver tissue embroidered with pearls.

The service was the simple and touching and was followed by a family dinner party before they all walked out to Hyde Park to take the air together and show themselves to the people. Whereas most royal weddings at this time were elaborate affairs with masques, banquets and all sorts of expensive fuss, that of Princess Mary had none of this as the mood in the capital was becoming increasingly sour as the country slid further into rebellion and then war. In fact, Mary’s wedding was to be one of the very last celebrations to be held at the court of Charles I.

That evening, the couple were ceremoniously ‘bedded’ together in the Queen’s state bedchamber at Whitehall. There was all the usual ribaldry although probably tempered by the age of the bride and the presence of her parents who don’t seem to have gone in for the crude japes that had been so popular in the days of her grandparents, James I and Anne of Denmark. William very chastely kissed his bride and then lay beside her on the bed. Court etiquette at the time, which was no stranger to the marriage of children, dictated that the marriage could be considered consummated if their bare legs touched and so Henrietta Maria’s dwarf, Geoffrey Hudson stepped forward with a pair of shears and obligingly ripped the Princess’ nightdress up to the knee. How peculiar.

The marriage was not to be properly consummated for several years but Henrietta Maria travelled with her daughter to the Hague the following year so that she could take up residence with her young husband. We are told that as the Princess and her mother sailed from Dover, Charles I rode along the cliff’s edge on his stallion and waved his feathered hat in farewell to his beloved daughter. They were never to see each other again.

Further reading:

Henrietta Maria: Charles I’s Indomitable Queen

A Royal Passion: The Turbulent Marriage of Charles I and Henrietta Maria

Also, I’m currently gripped by the Dorling Kindersley History Quiz. I really should be writing but there’s loads of them, covering pretty much every bit of history you can think of!

I know that I said my book reviews were going to go up on Sundays but I was recovering from a seventh birthday party last Sunday and didn’t really feel able to do anything much other than weep, trip over Moshlings and cram left over chocolate fingers into my face.

However! That was then and this is NOW.

Regular readers of this blog may recall that although I really loved Susanna Kearsley’s The Winter Sea (aka Sophia’s Secret. I do wish they’d leave titles alone – do US and UK readers REALLY need different titles?), I wasn’t quite as taken with Mariana because of the ending and also all the explaining about reincarnation. I have NOTHING against the concept of reincarnation or indeed against the concept of having things explained but there seemed like an awful lot of it, which I ultimately ended up skipping just to get to the actual story again.

However, I read Susanna Kearsley’s other book, The Rose Garden last week and really loved it. In contrast to The Winter Sea, which had a writer going into weird trances and remembering the experiences of an ancestor and Mariana, which had a woman tramping around the countryside at night as she revisited the experiences of someone she was reincarnated from, The Rose Garden had ACTUAL TIME TRAVEL back to the eighteenth century. I know, right.

I’ll admit, I had some problems with this at first as it seemed a bit fraught with issues such as accusations of witchcraft, prohibitively low hygiene, salmonella and so forth but it was all okay in the end as the eighteenth century hero, Daniel happened to be a very broad minded, well read, scientifically interested sort of guy who accepted the heroine, Eva’s excuse of ‘Hey, sorry that I just manifested in your bedroom but I am inadvertently time travelling’ with very little question. Phew.

He also happened to be a Cornish smuggler. Cor, I know. Now, I don’t know about you but when I think of Cornish smugglers, I think of something like this:

Not this, which is sort of how I imagined Daniel in The Rose Garden to look:

However, it happens to us all. For instance, in my books about the French Revolution, I imagine my hot French revolutionaries to all look like this:

When in fact rather too many of them had a distressing tendency to look like this:

Anyway. I really enjoyed The Rose Garden – there weren’t huge amounts of suspense but I found it to be a bit of a page turner once it got going a bit. The romance was nicely handled too – I mean it was obvious what was going to happen but Kearsley allowed Eva and Daniel to get to know each other first and be gradually drawn to each other rather than, you know, an instant of shedding of clothes and all that malarkey. In fact, even when they DO get together, you don’t get to see ANY clothes shedding, just a lot of tender snogging.

There is NOTHING in this book that couldn’t read aloud to a ninety year old lady with a weak heart. NOTHING.

I’d definitely recommend this one and look forward to the next!

So, time slip books – are you a fan? Which ones do you recommend? I tried Diana Gabaldon’s books a while ago and couldn’t get into them at all.

I find the construction of them very interesting, in that they tend to have themes in common with each other: a focus on a building; a dilemma from the past that can be fixed by a couple getting together in the present; the heroine being at a crossroads in her life after a traumatic event such as bereavement or divorce; a choice between two men and so on. I’ve also noted that all the time slip books that I’ve read lately have either been written before everyone and their grandmother acquired a mobile phone or have deliberately eschewed such modern technological nonsense, which to my jaded twenty first century eyes makes the ‘modern’ part of these books feel almost as old fashioned as the historical bits.

I also had a fairly uneventful chat on Facebook yesterday with a couple of people who asserted that time slip novels are actually science fiction as opposed to historical fiction. I’m not a fan of science fiction (I find SF books peculiar, too techy and excessively bleak for my tastes) to be honest and will admit that if they were marketed as science fiction, I’d be really put off by that. How about you?

The Rose Garden