He’s also twelve years older than her, crippled, and so scarred he’s called the Monster of Toulouse.

Her father considers it a very good match: Angelique will take her dower-property of lead mines, with her and Joffrey de Peyrac is wealthy and well-behaved. The family’s fortunes improve and Angelique is eventually pulled out of school at the age of seventeen to be married….to a thirty-year old man, the third partner in the business scheme between her father and the Steward.

Another thread that comes back majorly later is her thwarting of a plot by her cousin’s family against the life of the young King (Louis XIV, I think), by stealing a bottle of poison. She agrees nonetheless to keep her mouth shut about it, in return for the promise of a husband, a deal that seems reasonably fair to a ten-year-old.

Instead, he forms a partnership with a commoner (Steward something or other, forgot his name), in a trade-off that young Angelique witnesses but doesn’t quite understand at the time. Her father is so incredibly poor he is actually considering turning his mule-breeding hobby into a trade, if such a thing can be imagined. Plot: Book 1 follows Angelique from her childhood as the independent and vivacious “Little Fairy of the Marshes,” born into an impoverished patrician family. The movie was obtainable through youtube a decent little flick. The listing having the same last name piqued my interest, as it meant they were either married and still somehow ended up on the list of the star-crossed and author-tormented, or were…well. How the heck did I stumble over them? Well….I was actually searching for pictures for the Tarzan Tuesday feature, and happened on a site with a list of “famous fictional lovers.” Pictures of the Claytons acquired, I was scanning the list for unfamiliar names (Judith and Holofernes? Really?) and spotted Angelique and Joffrey de Peyrac. The genre is historical romance, and, for romance novels, it’s quite…well, quite readable. Together they recount the early life, rise, fall, and regrouping of the titular Angelique in the early 1700s France. Angelique, the version I acquired, is a 1957 novel compiled together with its 1958 sequel, Angelique: the Road to Versailles.

Angelique and the King by Anne Golon