The Queen's Necklace

First published in serial form between 1849 and 1850, The Queen’s Necklace (Le Collier de la reine) is Alexandre Dumas’s richly plotted historical novel, set at the court of Louis XVI in the years preceding the French Revolution. At its centre lies the notorious Affair of the Diamond Necklace, a scandal involving Marie-Antoinette, the ambitious Jeanne de La Motte and Cardinal de Rohan, whose desire for royal favour leaves him vulnerable to an elaborate deception. As rumours spread and private ambitions collide, Dumas transforms a real episode of courtly intrigue into a drama of appearances, manipulation and political consequence. His narrative moves through the gilded world of Versailles, where reputation is a form of currency and a single jewel can threaten the standing of a queen.

Part of Dumas’s Mémoires d’un médecin cycle, the novel combines historical research with the momentum of popular serial fiction. Working with his frequent collaborator Auguste Maquet, Dumas brings the intrigues of the ancien régime to life while exploring the fragile relationship between public image and private truth. Written in the aftermath of the Revolution of 1848, the novel also reflects a period of renewed political uncertainty in France, lending its portrayal of royal scandal a resonance beyond the eighteenth-century setting. Suspenseful and richly atmospheric, The Queen’s Necklace offers a compelling portrait of a monarchy whose splendour conceals the tensions and mistrust that will ultimately undermine it.

From the book

“Each deceived the other only because the other wished to be deceived.”

— Alexandre Dumas, The Queen’s Necklace

On The Queen’s Necklace

“Dumas locates at the centre of his intrigue the figure of the queen.”

— Reading royalty in Dumas’ Le Collier de la reine, Textual Practice