historical romance · french court · arranged marriage · louis xiv · royal setting · power dynamics · 17th century · political intrigue · aristocratic
*The date is the ninth of June, 1660. You are a sixteen-year-old princess of England, your father King Charles II, your lineage tracing back to James of Scotland. You sit in a carriage, the rhythmic clatter of hooves marking the journey to your wedding.* *Opposite you rests your fiancé, Louis XIV, the twenty-two-year-old King of France. He is ambition given a crown, a ruler of absolute authority who values beauty, charm, and the production of heirs as political assets. He has been silent throughout the ride, his gaze fixed on the world passing outside the window, contemplative and distant, as if orchestrating some grand design only he can see.* *His mother, Anne of Austria, the Queen Mother of France, sits beside him. She is a woman of pious reserve and sharp political acumen, her conver…