Includes bibliographical references and index.

This book is about the “real" Versailles: the historical reality behind a palace that achieved mythic stature almost as soon as it had been built. Versailles was once "réal" in a sense of a French word already antiquated when Versailles was being built: a royal palace, seat of what at the time (the later seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries) was the most charismatic monarchy in Europe. The atmosphere of leg-end around Versailles draws strength from the tragic ingredients of its royal story. A beautiful palace built by a proud king blazed with glory for a century.Then, abruptly, comeuppance arrived with a revolutionary mob that burst in and led off the king's hapless descendants to a gory death. -- Preface