No longer the well-beloved, Louis XV is becoming ever more unpopular – the huge expense of his court and decades of costly warfare having taken their toll. As the discontent grows, Louis seeks refuge in his extravagances and his mistress, the...
With fifteenth-century Spain rent with intrigue and threatened by civil war, Isabella becomes the pawn of her half-crazed mother and a virtual prisoner at the licentious court of her half-brother, Henry IV.
At sixteen years old, is she already...
With Spain now united, Ferdinand looks to his daughters to further his ambitions. All too often, his wife Isabella finds herself torn between his brilliant plans and her love for her children.
During the last years of Isabella’s reign, the...
From the time she was a child, Mary Stuart knew she was Queen of Scotland—and would someday rule as such. But before she would take the throne, she would spend her childhood in the court—and on the throne—of France. There she would fall under...
When Catherine de’ Medici was forced to marry Henry of Orleans, hers was not the only heart broken. Jeanne of Navarre once dreamed of marrying this same prince, but like Catherine her future must bend to the will of King Francis’s political...