Malice

Set in the court of Louis XIV, at the glittering pinnacle of France's ultimately doomed monarchy. Louis' Court at Versailles in the late 17th and early 18th centuries was home to several thousand courtiers, a hot-house community frequently vicious and virtually a law to itself. For the novelist, a mine of intimate information is provided by such as Mme de Sevigne, the Duc de Saint Simon, and the graphically outspoken letters of the second wife of Louis XIV's younger brother Phillippe, Princess Elizabeth Charlotte of the Palatine, known as 'Madame'.