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1745 – 1789: What would it have been like to have grown up in the court of Louis XV
The Women of Versailles
What you need to know before your trail
Adelaide is the spirited tomboy daughter of Louis XV, who grows up in the weird and wonderful Versailles court.
Adelaide is at sea in the court of her royal family and hangers on including her father’s bourgeoise mistress Madame de Pompadour, whom Adelaide at first idolises as part of her political and sexual awakening, is not the woman she appears. But as Madame stalks the Palace corridors alone forty-four years later, under the looming shadow of the revolution, what has happened to the hopes of a young girl and the doomed regime in which she grew up?
Travel Guide
Versailles
Such an iconic setting for a coming of age story. Have you ever wondered what it must have been like to have been in this palace leadingup to the 1789 Revolution?
The palace in all its pomp and circumstance is lavish, luscious and fascinating. It’s a series of corridors, palace rooms, chambers a “Galerie of Glace”, gardens which curl and curve for miles… A labyrinth of series in more ways than one.
Life in these times comes to life with evocative detail:
“Do they love their King? When they visit the palace to celebrate his Saint’s day every August, they say that they love him, but behind closed doors, or on the cobbled streets of PAris, their worlds are different.”
The gardens at the rear of the palace:
“Here, you wouldn’t know that Versailles has been invaded , but the surface of the Canal is disturbed, covered in tiny ripples, like a small sea”
The author points out in her author note that she was intrigued to write about a girl, a princess who was supposed to have everything only to discover that she lives in a gilded cage.Madame Adelaide and Madame de Pompadour were real characters but their relationship and actions are of course ficitonalised.
Streetview Maps
A) Versailles - The palace
C) Versailles - The Gardens and museum
Booktrailer Review
Susan: @thebooktrailer
I’ve been to Versailles and it is a very impressive place. Built on history, bloody and otherwise, the palace is often a hidden and secretive place in the history books Now of course the people themselves can visit it for themselves who would have been barred from its gates back in the 1700s.
To go inside the walls and the gardens and to see and feel them as they would have done back then, is a very exciting and rich historical experience. I liked the idea that the characters were based on real people and the level of research was impressive to imagine what Adelaide’s life in particular must have been like.
There’s a lot to this novel – a study of women and female roles, the Royal family in France and the upcoming revolution, a coming of age story and so much more. It’s a veritable feast of a story and I was enthralled throughout.
Booktrail Boarding Pass: The Women of Versailles
Destination: Versailles, Paris Author/Guide: Kate Brown Departure Time: 1745 – 1789
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