Andrée's Last Winter

Andrée de Charny's story runs across the entire six-volume Marie Antoinette Romances, from her introduction as a young noblewoman under Cagliostro's mesmeric influence in Joseph Balsamo through her marriage to Count Charny and her decades of devoted service to the queen. This two-chapter story imagines her private reckoning during the winter before the monarchy's final collapse — a woman who has organized her entire adult identity around service to a crown that can no longer protect either the family she serves or her own increasingly uncertain place within it.