Quicksilver Reading CompanionIn July 1688, Eliza writes from the court of Versailles to the French ambassador in the Hague, detailing the shifting political and financial tides of Europe.
“d’Avaux” — Jean-Antoine de Mesmes, Comte d’Avaux was a premier French diplomat and Louis XIV’s primary intelligence gatherer in the Dutch Republic. He spent years attempting to warn the French court of William of Orange’s secret plans to invade England.
“The Prince of Orange did this not because I desired it” — William III, Prince of Orange, was the Stadtholder of the Netherlands and a lifelong adversary of Louis XIV. His primary motivation for taking the English throne was to bring England into his coalition against French expansionism on the continent.
“la Palatine” — Elizabeth Charlotte, Madame Palatine, was the sister-in-law of Louis XIV and a prolific letter-writer whose correspondence provides historians with a brutally honest, often scatological account of life at Versailles. Stephenson’s annotation: “She was a German princess who married the King’s brother, and she hated the French court with a passion that only a German could muster.”
“SOPHIE” — Sophia of the Palatinate was the Electress of Hanover and the granddaughter of James I of England. A formidable intellectual and patron of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, she was eventually named the heir to the British throne by the Act of Settlement 1701, though she died just weeks before she would have become Queen.