"The Life of La Grande Mademoiselle" "Her name was Anne Marie Louise d'Orleans, Duchesse de Montpensier, but to the glittering court at Versailles and to the rest of 17th century Europe she was known as La Grande Mademoiselle. Her life was a fascinating one, filled with political intrigue and scandal, filial devotion and great romance, remarkable triumphs and bitter defeats. And in the hands of Vita Sackville-West, a distinguished novelist and historian, Mademoiselle's story becomes an absorbing and entertaining biography. "The author reveals all the glamour, excitement, and tragedy of Anne Marie's event-filled life: her unwavering loyalty to her disreputable father (the younger brother of King Louis XIII); her active participation even on the battlefield (in the Fronde uprising); and her remarkable popularity with the Paris mobs. Miss Sackville-West shows, too, the irony and tragedy of France's most eligible heiress - the victim of innumerable political matrimonial schemes - who nevertheless remained unmarried. But here too is the story of Mademoiselle's passionate attachment to the egotistical Comte de Lauzun - a handsome captain of the King's Dragoons - her crushing disappointment when a royal decision suddenly prohibited their marriage - Lauzun's tedious imprisonment and exile, and - through it all - Anne's Marie's steadfast loyality to her ungrateful and indifferent lover. . ." [from the dust jacket]