Remembering his exile and determined not to go traveling again, Charles II hid his secret political game with Louis Quatorze under a cloak of gay immorality. His objects were to keep religious strife and revolution away from his country and the crown on his own head.

Of the women who ministered to his pleasure at this period, three were more important to him than others: Nell Gwynthe orange girl who graduated to actress and Kings mistress; Louise de Keroualle, Duchess of Portsmouth, sent by Louis into England to act as his spy; and Hortense Mancini, the most beautiful woman in the world, who came to escape a mad husband obsessed by purity. Each is here vividly recreatedand with them the famous courtiers, Buckingham, Rochester, and Charles Sackville and the Dukes of York and Monmouth.

But above all, the story is dominated by the Kingoften careless, rarely malicious, but forever amorous.

Description from the 1971 Pan edition:

Charles II, determined his people shall know peace and religious freedom, intrigues with Louis XIV for the money that will keep him independent of Parliament and dispel the shadows cast over the throne by his son Monmouth and his own brother, the Duke of York.

When politics tire the Merry Monarch, there are always women ready to please him, and the Kings passionate nature finds full rein in pretty, witty Nell Gwyn; the babyish good looks of Louise de Keroualle; and the languid beauty of violet-eyed Hortense Mancini