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This page contains all the extended 'spoilers' in chronological order
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Angélique: Marquise of the Angels
The book begins in 1648 during a time of insurrection, terror and revolt in a divided France. Angélique de Sance de Monteloup, a vibrant twelve-year-old tomboy, is the daughter of a simple nobleman impoverished by taxes and the worries of looking after his many children, retainers and the peasants who rely on the lord of the manor for protection.
Angelique joins the local peasant children in their games, ranges the ancient forests and swamps of Poitou, and takes charge when bandits visit destruction and rapine on the humble villagers.
By chance, while visiting influential relatives with her father, who is there to plead for patronage, she foils a plot to poison the young king, Louis XIV, who is battling for his throne.
Later, sent to complete her education with the nuns, she comes across the future St Vincent de Paul, and returns a beautiful young 17-year-old to hear that her father has arranged a marriage that will provide her family with a handsome dowry and Angélique with a suitable match.
Horrified to learn that her husband to be, the Comte de Peyrac de Morens, Lord of Tolouse, is twelve years older than her, disfigured, lame, and has a reputation as a magician with a pechant for dissolute habits, Angélique reluctantly agrees to marry him for the sake of her family.
Frustrated in an attempt to experience true love at least once with her childhood friend Nicholas, she is married but is determined to kill herself rather than submit to the embraces of such a monster.
Yet she is somewhat taken aback when, on her wedding night, Joffrey de Peyrac, realising she is terrified of him, does not insist upon his conjugal rights, but instead determines to win her through the art of courtly love.
Fascinated in spite of herself, Angélique gradually realises the true depths of this remarkable man - a poet, artist, scientist, raconteur, swordsman and a great lover of life.
Taking a keen interest in his revolutionary scientific experiments, she realises she loves him and becomes threatened by the artifices of the Archbishop of Tolouse, who believes Joffrey is an alchemist who has discovered the secret of the transmutation of gold.
By now the young Louis XIV has secured his throne. Joffrey and Angélique, as the lord and lady of Tolouse, attend Louis' wedding to Marie-Therese of Spain, and accompany the wedding party to Paris, along with their young son, Florimond.
But Joffrey is arrested in the night and disappears. Unwilling to surrender to the threats and bribes of the power brokers determined to destroy Joffrey, a pregnant Angélique braves all, including a confrontation with the jealous Louis XIV, in order to save Joffrey from oblivion, and to win his acquittal of the charges of witchcraft levelled against him.
As the forces of evil try to separate Joffrey and Angelique, she risks everything to save him, and the book climaxes in the decision of the court, its horrific aftermath and the traumatic birth of Joffrey's second son, Cantor.
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Angélique: The Road to Versailles
Desolate, penniless and alone in the streets of Paris, Angélique is obsessed with revenge. After falling in with a band of the cutthroats and beggars that infest the Paris underground she discovers their leader is her old childhood friend Nicholas, who promises to kill Conan Becher, the man who helped destroy Joffrey.
Numbed by her losses and experiences, Angélique becomes Nicholas' mistress and lives a life of degradation in the Paris sewers for a while until her mothering instincts reawaken. Visiting her children after a battle between the beggars for control over the Paris streets, she finds Florimond (abandoned by her disapproving sister with whom she left them) starving and living in a kennel with a dog, and Cantor stolen by gipsies.
Desperate to save him, Angélique is forced to offer herself to the ogre-like captain of the guard, whom she had previously rejected in horror, in order to persuade him to rescue Cantor with his troops.
Reunited with her children, Angélique swears they will never want for anything again, and manages to find honest employment working for Maitre Bourjus, an innkeeper who had allowed his inn to deteriorate after the death of his wife. Using the skills she learnt with the nuns, Angélique helps to revitalise the inn and is climbing towards her goal of self-sufficiency when disaster strikes.
A drunken party of masked noblemen run riot in the inn, castrating and murdering Maitre Bourjus and burning down the inn. Coming on the scene, Angélique barely escapes rape when she is siezed by the noblemen, but is saved by the dog of Joffrey's lawyer, now a thief-catcher, which siezes the neck of the man about to rape her - the king's brother in disguise. Angélique is able to unmask all 13 nobles, but cannot save the inn.
Eager to see justice done, Angélique enlists the help of her lover, Claude Petit, the gutter poet, who tells the citizens of Paris of the shameful deed through his outlawed pamphlets.
Each day, another of the nobleman is uncovered and disgraced until - just as the last three are close to being unmasked - Angélique receives an offer originating from the king, who is unwilling to see his brother incriminated.
Enriched by the king's 'reward', Angélique prospers and within a few years has become one of the richest merchants in France. But she is determined to restore her sons' noble heritage, and, unwelcome at court because of her supposed common origins, she looks for a suitable alliance.
Finally, she is faced with one of her greatest challenges - can she overcome the vicious brute to whom she becomes married, or will he destroy her?
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Angélique and the King
Angélique has now known great love, great loss, trauma, poverty and violence, and although she has regained her social position, her heart is empty.
Determined to make the best of things, she sets out to win the love of her new husband - the handsome but cruel Marquis Philippe du Plessis Bellerie. But he is equally determined to humiliate her and ensure she is never received at court.
Angélique has determination, valour and her feminine wiles, while Philippe is prepared to go to almost any length - including kidnap and violence - to win.
Although they are almost equal adversaries, Angélique outwits him, and during a brief period of truce, she bets him that he will end up in love with her.
Meanwhile, Louis XIV, now secure on his throne and in the process of building his reputation as the Sun King, recognises the girl who defied him five years previously, and forgives her, partly motivated by her outstanding beauty.
Through a series of adventures, the King becomes increasingly enamoured of her, while at the same time Philippe is reluctantly drawn to her. Her tempestuous relationship with Philippe abates to a degree when Angélique bears him an heir.
Later Angélique hears the news that her second child, Cantor, has died while accompanying a French admiral as a page, his galley sunk by a renegade buccaneer known as Rescator. Philippe rides for three days from the war to comfort her and to admit he has fallen madly in love with her.
Recovering from Cantor's death, Angélique and the court visit the front to see the progress of the war, but after a few brief and happy days in Philippe's arms, Angélique is woken to be told that he is dead, his head blown off by a cannon ball.
Angélique retires to her estates to grieve, and after a period of mourning she is summoned back to Versailles by the King.
Colbert, the king's chancellor, learns of her business skills, and she provides him and the King with invaluable information and wins the confidence of the Persian Ambassador, rescuing his mission from disaster, based on a mutual misunderstanding of cultures.
The King is encaptured by her beauty and her brains, even while he is pursuing a passionate affair with Athaenis de Montespan. The beautiful, brilliant and ambitious Athaenis, once Angélique's friend, is furious and determines to rid herself of her rival.
Battling the intrigues of her rival and her growing attraction to the power of the King, Angélique overcomes witchcraft, poison and treachery, only to face a decision that will make the difference between winning the love of the king and becoming an outcast once again.
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Angélique and the Sultan
Enraptured by the possibility that her beloved Joffrey may still live, Angélique flees Paris in direct contravention of the King's orders and follows Joffrey's trail to Marseilles.
Following a clue that Joffrey may have set sail for the Greek island of Crete, she tries to find a ship, but no-one will take a noble lady aboard, fearful of attracting the notorious Barbary pirates that infested the Mediterranean.
Hunted by the King's agents, in desperation she trades herself and her favours in exchange for passage with Admiral Vivonne, commander of the navy.
During the voyage she is appalled to discover that Nicholas is one of the slaves, having sat on the Kings benches for 10 years. During a thunderstorm Nicholas escapes and with his fellow slaves slaughters the crew, only to be shipwrecked.
Briefly detained by wreckers, Angélique quickly escapes with the help of Savaray, a learned and ancient medic who had accompanied her on her journey. However, she is soon recaptured, this time by Captain D'Escranville, a renegade French nobleman known as the terror of the Mediterranean. D'Escranville brutally rapes her but, weakened by her ordeals, she is saved from further assaults by falling into a month-long fever. Upon recovering, D'Escranville tries to woo her but when she rejects him he vows to strip her naked in the public slave market and sell her to the highest bidder, and tortures Angélique until she agrees to stand submissively on the auction-block.
In the slave market at Candia (Iráklion) in Crete, Angélique manages to communicate with the wealthy knights of Malta and promises she will repay them from her fortune if they outbid the other bidders. They agree to go to 20,000 piastres.
Thus begins the most infamous auction of all time. Angélique is slowly stripped as the Knights, a rich merchant, the Grand Eunuch of the King of the Turks' harem and others battle for her.
The knights of Malta are forced to drop out and, as Angélique stands naked, the famous pirate Rescator appears and kills off the auction with a bid of 35,000 piastres - enough to buy a fleet of ships. On Rescator's ship Angélique is reassured by his gentlemanly manner but when a fire breaks out among the moored ships, Savary, who has set the fire, rescues her and they sail on to search again for Joffrey.
Picked up by the same knights of malta, they are ambushed and, after a great battle, Angélique is captured by the infamous Mezzo Morte, Rescator's greatest rival.
Delighted by some secret knowledge, he hands her over to Osman Bey, chief eunuch of Mulay Ismail, the Sultan of Morocco, as a gift.
During the long journey to Fez Angélique begins to develop a friendship with Osman Bey, the power behind Mulay Ismail's throne and, although he has plans to install her as the Sultan's third and favourite wife, he agrees to hide her in the harem until she is ready to cooperate.
The sensuality and idleness of the harem begin to affect Angélique, who is terrified she will weaken and give in, but she is revolted by the Mulay Ismail's cruelty and his disregard for the lives of his Christian slaves but is attracted by his magnetism.
Torn between her friendship with Osman Bey, her fascination for the Sultan's power and the power and goodness of Colin Paturel, the long-suffering and magnetic leader of the Christian slaves in Fez, Angélique must decide between giving in to the sensual temptations of the harem and attempting the impossible.
She must become the first woman to escape from the impregnable harem and journey across the pitiless desert to freedom.
Meanwhile, Colin Paturel, Angélique's lover and one surviving companion of their horrific escape, is simply a humble seaman back on French soil. Dismissed by Monsieur de Breteuil, the king's envoy, who has arrested Angélique, he leaves, shattered to discover Angélique is of noble birth.
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Angélique in Revolt
Taken under guard to her chateau, Angélique is devastated to lose Colin Pautrel's baby during the hair-raising coach journey, and feigns weakness when informed of the King's demands.
She is ordered to return to Versailles in disgrace, offer her apologies and fealty to the King, and serve him in any capacity he desires, including as his mistress. She has until autumn to decide, the alternative being incarceration in the Bastille.
A coarse musketeer, Captain Montadour, is charged with guarding her, while at the same time attempting to convert the Protestants of Poitou to Catholicism.
As Angélique regains her strength she is joined by her children, Florimond and Philippe's son, Charles-Henry. She learns of the beatings, murders, torture and rape her Protestant vassals are undergoing at the hands of Montadour's men and is able to slip into the forest to warn the aristocratic leader of the Protestant rebel forces of a trap. Gradually she becomes embroiled in the rising tide of rebellion engulfing the province.
As the unrest increases, Montadour and his men are forced from the chateau and Louis XIV's autumn deadline approaches.
At first determined to hold out, Angélique finally gives in to the pleas of her steward to sends word to the King, telling him of the over-zealous work of his men and asking for help. But too late... That evening, fresh from battle and harried by the local populace, Montadour and his men break through the ranks of the defenders and sack the chateau. A night of rapine and violence leaves Charles-Henri with his throat slit, most of Angélique's friends slaughtered, and Angélique brutally violated. Consumed again by revenge and revulsed by what has happened to her, she rallies the protestant troops and throws herself into battle. Poitou erupts into flames.
Fleeing from their orgy of violence, Montadour' troops are massacred as they sleep, and his head is delivered to Angélique, to whom it provides a disturbing pleasure.
Angélique is horrified to realise she is pregnant as a result of the rape and she tramps through the forest to the witch Melusine, forcing her to give her herbs to make her abort.
However, after a terrible night writhing on a 'fairy stone' she realises the drugs did not work and she is forced to bear the unwanted child, aided only by Melusine.
Angélique leaves the newborn girl at the gate of a local orphanage before returning to her men, but is reproached in a dream by St Honore, and when she encounters her daughter again, on death's door from neglect, she reluctantly reclaims her.
For the next two years Honorine grows up on her mother's saddle as Angélique leads her troops in an ever-desperate rearguard action against the King's men. Finally, her peasant troops defeated, Angélique plans to rendezvous with her few remaining friends, only to find them betrayed and hanged. Trapped, she seeks sanctuary with the monks of the Abbey of Nieul, who take her in but rebuke her for her sins. Angélique comes to realise that her life has become obsessed by hatred, and, after confessing and being absolved, begins to feel healed.
Leaving the abbey she is caught up in the ambush of a convoy of merchants by starving brigands. Knocked unconscious in the melee, she recovers to find herself mistaken for a Protestant and allows herself to be branded with the Fleur de Lys - a fate reserved for common criminals and Protestants - rather than be discovered.
Desperate to find Honorine, who she had left in the snow-covered forest, she is overjoyed when one of the merchants comes to 'claim' her from prison to do penance as his serving maid, and reveals he has rescued Honorine from the snow and wolves.
Vowing to repay Maitre Berne, a prosperous La Rochelle merchant, Angélique soon becomes an indispensable part of his devout Protestant family trying to cope with the rising tide of religious intolerance in a Catholic country.
While helping the leaders of the Protestant community in La Rochelle to flee from persecution, Angélique simultaneously learns that they have been betrayed.
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Angélique in Love
Fleeing the wrath of the King of France along with her band of fugitive Protestants, Angélique finds herself aboard the Goldsboro, captained by the same mysterious Rescator who had paid an emperor's ransom for her on the slave-block in Crete years before.
The Goldsboro sails en route to the new lands of America, tossed by storms, while the refugees huddle below decks and reflect on the loss of their possessions and homes.
Soon, their gratitude for their salvation turns to bitterness and distrust.
As trouble brews between the God-fearing Puritans and Rescator's crew, who have been gathered from the dregs of the world, Angélique's loyalties are torn between her friends from La Rochelle and their frightful yet intriguing rescuer.
As Angélique uncovers Rescator's unbelievable secret, a confrontation erupts that threatens to shatter her future and everything she has fought for over the years.
Angélique is forced to fight for what is hers, and to gain more than she could ever have hoped, but she must somehow find a way to keep faith with her past and her present in order to ensure her happiness in the future.
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The Countess Angélique
Blissfully reunited with her beloved Joffrey de Peyrac and sons Florimond and Cantor, and openly acknowledged as Joffrey's wife, the Comtesse de Peyrac de Morens d'Isritru, Angélique is overwhelmed with joy.
But with winter approaching, Angélique, Joffrey and their party must battle through the wilderness to Joffrey's outpost at Katarunk, threatened by Acadian representatives of France and warring Indian tribes.
After reaching an accommodation with the gentlemanly Count Lomenie-Chambord and his troops, they are betrayed and a massacre at Katarunk leaves the reunited lovers with their house dishonoured, threatened by a horde of savages seeking retribution.
Face to face with Outakke, the feared and barbaric Mowhawk chief who has sworn to destroy her, Angélique confronts her most primitive and dangerous foe alone in the wilderness.
Together, with the lives of their children and companions at stake, Angélique and Joffrey must gamble everything on a course of action that is as fraught with risks as it is audacious.
Their refuge for the winter destroyed, the only hope for the survivors of Katarunk is to make for the pitifully small mining outpost at Wapassou, a tiny refuge in an overwhelming wilderness.
Threatened by scurvy, isolation and disease, Angélique faces a new enemy that cannot be beaten head-on - hunger. Bravely she tries to marshal her fellows in a desperate attempt to build the scant resources of their tiny community and ward off the ravages of winter.
Cut off from civilisation, the visitors who miraculously reach her bring shame and death, inspired by the fanatical Jesuit Sebastien d'Orgeval, who is intent on his personal crusade to rid the New World of these heretical interlopers.
With rumours spreading that Angélique is the mythical She-Devil of Acadia, who is prophesied to bring death and destruction to Acadia by a visionary nun, her new-found friends are forced to decide if she is a force for good or evil.
As Joffrey and Angélique learn more about each other and the people they have become during their fifteen-year separation, their enemies' schemes threaten to destroy their rekindled love before it has a chance to burst into flames.
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The Temptation of Angélique
En route for Goldsboro after their winter ordeal and courted by the English, the French and their Indian allies, Joffrey and Angélique tread a diplomatic tightrope where one slip could plunge the region into bloody war.
Determined to consummate his holy war against the non-believers, Sebastien d'Orgeval, the Jesuit mastermind, succeeds in separating Angélique and Joffrey as she heads to an English settlement to return a young girl rescued from captivity by the redskins.
Caught in the onslaught of d'Orgeval's Indian converts against their English foes, she is captured by their leader, Piksarret, chief of the Patsuiketts.
Using her almost magical influence over the superstitious savages to lead them back towards her husband's lands, she is threatened by abandoned pirates - scum rejected even by the renegade Gold Beard - whose attempts to take Goldsboro by force are beaten off by Angélique's friends.
Betrayed by her own kindness, Angélique finds herself captured by Gold Beard, and subject to an appalling temptation rising from the shadows of her past.
Naked in the arms of a lover from the past, yet barely remaining faithful to Joffrey, Angélique escapes Gold Beard's clutches in the company of the dour Jack Merwin and his companions.
Unaware that Joffrey believes he has been betrayed, she hastens to return to him, but comes close to death when the sea tries to claim her for its own.
Finding herself under the power of a Jesuit priest, ally of her nemesis Father d'Orgeval, she nontheless returns to Goldsboro, unaware of Joffrey's wrath over her supposed unfaithfulness.
Devastated by his rejection, she must make a choice when Joffrey and Gold Beard stand face to face to fight for the woman they both love.
Angélique and the Demon
Still bruised from their estrangement, Angélique and Joffrey are denied the peace they need to rebuild their relationship when the beautiful but unsettling Ambrosine, Duchess de Maudriborg, and her entourage of King's girls are shipwrecked on the shores of Goldsboro.
With Joffrey called away on an unwelcome but essential diplomatic mission, Angélique is threatened by strange forces and by a mysterious band of pale strangers creating discord and mayhem in the region.
As the minions of evil surround her, Angélique and her friends combat poison, skulduggery and treachery. Aided only by her son Cantor and the comical but stout-hearted Govenor of Acadia, Monsieur de Ville-d'Avry, she battles for the life of her closest friend Abigail who is awaiting the birth of her first born.
Mesmerised by the compelling wiles of the brilliant and charming Ambrosine, our heroine's fey instincts are clouded and her judgement impaired.
Unsure of Joffrey's love, not knowing whom to trust and fearful for the safety of her children and friends, Angélique must discover the ringleader of the evil that threatens them before it is too late. Surrounded by shadowy figures, isolated from her friends and entangled in a web of deception, Angélique stands alone as she confronts her most chilling foe - the Demon She-Devil of Acadia.
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Angélique and the Ghosts
Shattered after her victory over the Demon but overjoyed to be reunited with Joffrey, Angélique paces the familiar decks of the Goldsboro on its journey towards Quebec.
Heading for the King of France's territory at the invitation of the Governor of Acadia, Monsieur de Ville-d'Avray, Angélique and Joffrey again risk betrayal in order to cement their position as leaders of an independent stronghold between two warring powers.
But as they invade the king's fiefdom, Angélique, still an outlawed woman in France, is anxious, sensing a plot against Joffrey.
Heading up the Gulf of St Lawrence, Angélique's sense of intuition, developed by her close affinity for the virgin countryside, strengthens and warns her evil afoot. Foiling attempts on new friends, she encounters a figure from her past - one who brings with him echoes of shadowy ghosts, manipulating events from afar.
With Angélique recalling old friendships and developing new ones, and with events marching steadily towards a climax, their progress up the freezing estuary brings them to their destination.
For the first time in fifteen years, Angélique and Joffrey stand together on the outskirts of a bustling French community - the cloistered and claustrophobic capital of French Acadia, Quebec.
Original 'World of Angélique' website created by Graham Carter who retains the ©
Archived 'World of Angélique' website can be found at Web Archive Org
This recreation comes under the authority and protection for preservation purposes of www.jannaludlow.co.uk who retains the © of this version
Page created : 7th April 2017 - refreshed :