Olympe de Clèves - The King's Actress - Book 3: A New Translation

By Alexandre Dumas

Book Overview

When passion collides with royal intrigue, two lives ignite-and burn.

Avignon, 1727. Banni re, a young Jesuit novice consumed by theatrical passion, glimpses the dazzling actress Olympe de Cl ves through his convent window and is struck by a thunderbolt of desire. In a heartbeat, he abandons his religious vows and flees to the theater, where a twist of fate lands him onstage-and into Olympe's tumultuous world.

Olympe is magnificent, tempestuous, and fiercely independent-a woman who lives by her own rules in a society that demands her submission. Just abandoned by her aristocratic lover, the Comte de Mailly, she finds herself drawn to the passionate, impulsive Banni re. Together they flee toward Lyon, chased by scandal, torn by jealousy, and hunted by ambitious courtiers with sinister designs.

At the glittering court of young King Louis XV, the Duc de Richelieu orchestrates an elaborate conspiracy to corrupt the twenty-year-old monarch by providing him with a mistress. Their chosen target? The incomparable Olympe de Cl ves. As political machinations tighten around them, Banni re's love descends into obsessive jealousy, driving him to the edge of madness-literally locked away in the Charenton asylum, declared "mad with love."

A sweeping tale of theatrical brilliance, forbidden passion, and devastating sacrifice-where love and theater blur until life itself becomes the greatest performance of all.

Written by Alexandre Dumas in collaboration with Auguste Maquet, Olympe de Cl ves features one of literature's most complex and accomplished female characters: a woman who refuses to be owned, even by the king himself.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0G2GXDXLB
• ISBN13: 9798274601115
• Release Date: November 2025
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 354 Pages
• Weight: 1.04 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.0" x 9.0"