The Enemies of Versailles

The Enemies of Versailles is the final book in the salacious Mistresses of Versailles trilogy by Sally Christie. Louis XV has spent a few years getting to know his unmarried daughters since his last mistress died, the Marquise de Pompadour. He has not had much interest in women for four years. He was devastated by the death of the Marquise. However, four years and 100+ pages later he meets thirty year old Jeanne Becu, later known as Madame du Barry, and falls in love.

This love affair is different from Louis' earlier mistresses. I am assuming it is due to him now being 60 years old. He has a hard time getting her installed at Versailles because a woman already presented at Court must present her. No one will. Jeanne grew up in a brothel and worked as a prostitute herself later in life. The aristocracy will not accept her as the King's mistress. I see him as not trying that hard to help her since he gets the opportunity to sleep with her daily anyway. He does not seem as enamored with her as he was with his earlier mistresses or she would have had a bedroom next to his at Versailles in no time.  Eventually she gets a home an hour outside of Versailles, with travel time Louis would not have been able to stand with his prior mistresses. He was too eager for them.

There is nothing steamy in this novel as there was in the first two novels of the trilogy. It is all about Court intrigue with the spinster daughters plotting silliness and the grandson, Louis XVI, not being able to consummate his marriage.  The book was not interesting. I expected to devour it as I had with the first two books but it took me two weeks to read it. What a disappointment!

The virginity of the daughters and the dauphine, Marie Antoinette, was written in a more titillating manner than the sections where Jeanne was with Louis in the bedroom.  I thought it odd at first but then realized that these women were the enemies of Jeanne and perhaps the book was really about them, the enemies of Versailles. In a trilogy titled the Mistress of Versailles you would expect the books to be about the mistresses but maybe I got this one wrong. There were, in fact, more scenes written about Louis' family than about his mistress. It all ended with the French Revolution and the guillotine which I also thought was odd since the trilogy was about Louis XV.

This was a most unsatisfying end to the trilogy. It might be because the truth about Louis' last relationship was boring and the author didn't have much to work with but it just didn't sizzle.

3 out of 5 stars.