The Memoirs of Duc de Saint Simon takes places in the hot-bed of intrigue which was the French 17th century court.

They say it is a seminal influence on Proust's "Remembrance Of Things Past". They say you'll have to wade through pages upon pages of tedious reportage about 17th century French military campaigns to get to the yummy gossip about life in Louis the XIV's court. The duke is accused of being frequently long-winded and terribly ungrammatical in his sentence structures (sigh). But the soap opera of the machinations and power struggles and the aura of a certain era dwindling into the twilight of myth.... It' s a hot read!