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Penguin Press
June 2012
On Sale: June 14, 2012
394 pages
ISBN: 1594203377
EAN: 9781594203374
Kindle: B0064VPSDI
Hardcover / e-Book
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Fiction
Francine du Plessix Gray’s beautifully realized historical
novel reveals the untold love story between Swedish
aristocrat Count Axel von Fersen and Marie Antoinette. The
romance begins at a masquerade ball in Paris in 1774, when
the dashing nobleman first meets the mesmerizing
nineteen-year-old dauphine, wife of the reclusive prince who
will soon become Louis XVI. This electric encounter launches
a love affair that will span the course of the French
Revolution. As their relationship deepens, Fersen becomes a devoted
companion to the entire royal family. Roaming the halls of
Versailles and visiting the private haven of Le Petit
Trianon, he discovers the deepest secrets of the court, even
learning the startling erotic details of Marie Antoinette’s
marriage to Louis XVI. But his new intimacy with Marie
Antoinette and her family is disrupted when the events of
the American Revolution tear Fersen away. Moved by the
cause, he joins French troops in the fight for American
independence. He returns to find France on the brink of disintegration.
After the Revolution of 1789 the royal family is moved from
Versailles to the Tuileries. Fersen devises an escape for
the family and their young children (Marie-Thérèse and the
dauphin—whom many suspect is in fact Fersen’s son). The
failed attempt leads to a more grueling imprisonment, and
the family spends its excruciating final days captive before
the king and queen face the guillotine. Grieving his lost love in his native Sweden, Fersen begins
to sense the effects of the French Revolution in his
homeland. Royalists are now targets, and the sensuous
aristocratic world of his youth is fast vanishing. Fersen is
incapable of realizing that centuries of tradition have
disappeared, and he pays dearly for his naïveté, losing his
life at the hands of a savage mob that views him as a
pivotal member of the ruling class. Scion of Sweden’s most esteemed nobility, Fersen came to be
seen as an enemy of the country he loved. His fate is
symbolic of the violent speed with which the events of the
eighteenth century transformed European culture. Expertly
researched and deeply imagined, The Queen’s Lover is a fresh
vision of the French Revolution and the French royal family
as told through the love story that was at its center.
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