The Exchange of Princesses
Chantal Thomas, the winner of the 2002 Prix Femina for Farewell, My Queen, has here written another novel rooted in fact but reading almost like a fairy tale. At its heart is the story of two traded princesses, whose journeys through life, just like their journeys through early 18th-century Europe, do not end as predicted. Political pawns in the hands of relatives and diplomats, they are exchanged as present or future consorts of present or future Kings: the four-year old Mariana Victoria, Infanta of Spain, to marry the eleven-year-old King Louis XV of France; and the twelve-year-old French princess, Louise-Elisabeth de Montpensier, to marry the young Prince Luis of Asturias, heir to the Spanish throne.
This is a literary novel written to dazzle. It encompasses a variety of points of view and includes excerpts from contemporary letters. The language is sensual and precise: the Infanta, admiring violets in a mossy dell, ‘sticks her nose in their golden-yellow centres, explores the tiny tracery of the moss, strokes its velvety softness.’ At the same time its tone is acerbic – ‘When she died, the Duchess of Burgundy took her zest for life with her. She didn’t have time to pass it on to her son.’ The psychological portraits painted of the characters and their milieu are intense: the King and Queen of Spain, parting from their daughter, advise her coolly to ‘forget your Spanish years’, whilst little Mariana Victoria wishes only ‘to slide to the floor and be comforted’.
This novel encompasses loneliness and madness, indulgence and folly, great endurance and some eventual happiness. It is a work of literary brilliance which succeeds as a crossover between adult and young adult fiction. Its subject matter and its emotional honesty would make it an excellent choice for the teenage reader.
