This melodramatic sliver of European history stars a doltish king, a 2,800-carat diamond necklace and a befuddled cardinal, not to mention, centre stage, that sweet shepherdess Marie Antoinette. Entrapment, flight, intrigue, theft and armies of powdered wigs a timid novelist wouldn't touch it.
Jonathan Beckman, a young literary boulevardier (this is his first book), tells his complicated tale with gusto. Cardinal Louis de Rohan, prince, bishop of Strasbourg, provisor of the Sorbonne and grand almoner of France, imagines himself a successor to the omnipotent cardinal-ministers of the Richelieu variety, but both Louis XVI and the queen despise him. Meanwhile, Rohan is in thrall to blue-eyed Jeanne, the brash and wildly extravagant Comtesse de La Motte-Valois. But she is an impoverished schemer, her royal heritage "dubious and dilute".
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