Courting the Sun
“A rich journey through 17th century France in all its aspects—its bucolic countryside, the still-unmatched splendor of the court of Louis XIV, and the struggling French colony in Canada.”
~ Margaret George, New York Times bestselling author of Elizabeth I, The Autobiography of Henry VIII & The Memoirs of Cleopatra
France, 1670. On her sixteenth birthday, Sylvienne d’Aubert thinks her dream has come true. She holds in her hands an invitation from King Louis XIV to attend his royal court. However, her mother harbors a longtime secret she's kept from both her daughter and the monarch, a secret that could upend Sylvienne’s life.
In Paris, Sylvienne is quickly swept up in the romance, opulence, and excitement of royal life. Assigned to serve King Louis's favorite mistress, she is absorbed into the monarch's most intimate circle. But the naïve country girl soon finds herself ill-prepared for the world of intrigue, illicit affairs, and power-mongering that takes place behind the shiny façade of Versailles.
This debut historical novel from Peggy Joque Williams captures the vibrancy and quandaries of 17th century life for a village girl seeking love and excitement during the dangerous reign of the Sun King.
The Historical Background Behind
Courting the Sun: A Novel of Versailles
by Peggy Joque Williams
The genesis for Courting the Sun is rooted in genealogy research during which I discovered that two dozen of my 7th- and 8th-great-grandmothers emigrated from France to Canada via a program sponsored by King Louis XIV to help him grow a colony there. Today these women are called the Filles du Roi (Daughters of the King).
King Louis wanted his own colony, but all he had in New France were fur traders, soldiers, and a scattering of farm families. So, from 1663 through 1673 he recruited nearly eight hundred young women, offering to pay their passage, provide them a dowry and a trousseau, and a bonus if they had ten or more babies. And…they could choose their husbands from among the eligible bachelors. That sounds like a pretty good deal if your prospects for marriage are slim to none in France. But still…to risk an ocean voyage of two to three months in a three-masted ship? To start a new life in an untamed wilderness?
My driving question for Courting the Sun became: "Why would a young woman leave everyone and everything she knows and journey to the other side of the world just to find a husband?"
Of course the women who took Louis up on his offer had any number of reasons, some were impoverished, some were orphans. But I decided to let my imagination run wild, and I created a character unlike any of my ancestors.
When Sylvienne is invited to the court of the Sun King, she lives the life of her dreams. Until things are no longer quite so dreamy. And eventually she is put into the nightmarish position of having to make a hard decision about her life.
Originally, I intended to write one book inclusive of Sylvienne’s time and troubles in France and her eventual journey to New France. But her story took on a life of its own in her hometown of Amiens, then in Paris, and finally at Versailles, which was still under construction at the time. So the historical backdrop of this book, while still acknowledging the Filles du Roi (one of Sylvienne’s closest friends is recruited), became focused on Sylvienne’s life at court under the tutelage of Louis’ premier mistress, Athénaïs de Montespan, and the mentorship of his brother, Philippe, Duc d’Orléans, who everyone called, simply, Monsieur.
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| Château de Versailles, Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain. |
I came to love those royal characters: Louis who believes himself to be ordained by God to be monarch and who builds a world within a world at Versailles. Athénaïs, the most famous of his mistresses, who held her position for a good two decades and whose aura outshone the that of the Queen. Philippe, who enjoyed sleeping with men more than with his wife, but who was jealous of the King’s attentions toward her. And Philippe’s young wife, Henriette, whose own bright light would be snuffed out far too soon.
Sylvienne spends her childhood dreaming of court, but she has no idea what life there is really like. She gets swept up in the parties and balls, the literary salons, the extravagant ballets in which the lead dancers are the king and his retinue, gambling and drinking. But the courtiers live a life controlled by one man—King Louis. He plays them like pawns in a game of political chess. And before long Sylvienne become a pawn as well.
There was so much that was wonderful about France at that time—a burgeoning arts scene, innovations in science, an abundance of philosophers, novelists, and playwrights, a rising middle class of merchants and artisans. But there was an underbelly of oppression.
Louis required everyone to be of his chosen religion, even though he himself was denied communion for his flagrant infidelities. He built the immense complex of Versailles with its numerous gardens, which at its apex housed or employed upwards of 5,000 people. But he funded it at the expense of the common people who were taxed by the nobility, who themselves didn’t pay taxes, only collected them.
Louis reigned for seventy-two years, setting the stage for the discontent of the common people. Their frustration would fester through the near sixty-year reign of his successor, Louis XV, and would eventually boil over in the late 1700s when the people turned on Louis XVI and his queen, Marie-Antoinette.
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| Galerie des Glaces, Wikimedia Common, Public Domain. |
Sylvienne, in Courting the Sun, faces her crisis long before any of that happens. She must make decisions about her future while France and the court at Versailles are basking in the glow of a still relatively young Sun King.
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| Sun King emblem on the gate of Versailles. Public Domain. |
The sequel, Braving the Dawn: A Novel of New France, is scheduled for release in January 2026 by Black Rose Writing.
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Peggy Joque Williams
Peggy Joque Williams is the author of Courting the Sun: A Novel of Versailles and co-author of two mystery novels, On the Road to Death’s Door and On the Road to Where the Bells Toll, written under the penname M. J. Williams. She is an alumnus of Michigan State University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
A retired elementary school teacher and avid researcher, Peggy's fascination with genealogy and her French-Canadian, European, and Native American ancestry inspires her historical fiction. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin.
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