Explores the life and court career of Madame de Maintenon. A study in queenship, it reveals how the dynamics of power and gender operated within the realms of early modern high politics, church-state affairs and international relations while providing unique insights into the Sun King and his court.

Mark Bryant is senior lecturer in early modern European history at the University of Chichester.

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"This is first rate research. Byrant is among the first people to bear insights drawn from modern gender history on Maintenon, who was one of the most powerful women in early modern Europe. Every scholar interested in the history of Louis XIV's Europe will read this book and it will be a vitally important addition to early modern women’s history." James Collins, Georgetown University and author of The State in Early Modern France

"Bryant ably demonstrates how, over time, a number of Maintenon's protégés were appointed to privileged and influential positions and that, by the early eighteenth century, her own status was 'quasi-ministerial'. Determining Maintenon's precise role in matters such as the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 ... or disputes over Spanish succession in the following decade is ... no easy task. Bryant's meticulous and nuanced investigations into these complex questions draw on an impressively wide range of primary materials, notably Maintenon's own writings and especially her voluminous correspondence with a large number of agents, including courtiers, members of various royal families, ambassadors and popes, as well as her personal confessors." TLS

"Queen of Versailles thoroughly explores the roles Madame de Maintenon played in the reign of Louis XIV. Mark Bryant follows Maintenon through the morass of seventeenth-century politics, religious controversies, and court factions to produce a truly impressive work of scholarship, demonstrating a confident command of a vast array of sources." Kathleen Wellman, Southern Methodist University and author of Queens and Mistresses of Renaissance France