“The first scholarly biography of the woman who was the wife of Louis XIII and the mother of Louis XIV. Traditionally, scholars have dismissed Anne as almost a nonentity—lazy, fat, stupid, and of little influence in the government. Kleinman offers convincing revisions of each of these assumptions.”
—Choice

“This bright, never sluggish biography by a professor of history reconstructs Anne’s difficult marriage and her trying times as regent for her young son immediately after the death of her husband. Kleinman’s account is important historiographically, for it establishes the heretofore rather indistinct Anne as a definite figure of quality and of consequence in the maintenance of the French monarchy; it will also prove enticing for general readers of royal biographies, for it is exceptional in depicting how royal lives were led in the seventeenth century.”
—Booklist