For one (and first and foremost), albeit that Suzanne Martel (who also seems to be the translator of her own work, of Jeanne, fille du Roy into English) certainly manages to textually capture an authentic and realistic feeling sense of geographical and physical time and place with The King's Daughter and provides an interesting and fascinating look at the daily life of French settlers in 17th century New France (in what is now the Canadian province of Quebec), main protagonist Jeanne's (the King's Daughter of the book title) unfolding relationship with her new husband, with Simon, it basically (and in my humble opinion) follows every romance novel cliché there is.

And thus, while I absolutely adored The King's Daughter as a fifteen year old, reading the novel in 2023 (and yes, the revised 1998 edition, but more on that later), this has actually been not really all that nostalgic and fun for me, but more like a a bit of a reading chore, a frustrating slog.Īnd well, there are two main reasons why The King's Daughter has rather majorly lost its textual shine for me in 2023. I read the original 1980 English language translation of Suzanne Martel's 1974 young adult and French Canadian themed Jeanne, fille du Roy in 1981 when I was going through a historical romance as a favourite genre phase as a teenager (a reading preference I outgrew decades ago).

Jeanne, fille du Roy by Suzanne Martel