I was chatting with a French woman, but I only know bits of French history. I’ve read French, English, American, and European history books – and a few others on World History – but what I retain more often comes from novels, and then relating certain periods and monarchs to one another. I asked ChatGPT for a list of books to span this history . Here’s the list. Additional commentary follows.

Historical slot	Work	What to hang on it
778 / Carolingian myth	La Chanson de Roland	Charlemagne, Franks, Christian heroic culture, the legendary France before France
early 1300s	Maurice Druon, Les Rois maudits / The Accursed Kings	Philip IV, dynastic succession, England-France entanglement, road towards the Hundred Years’ War
1482	Victor Hugo, Notre-Dame de Paris	Louis XI, late-medieval Paris, Church, crown, urban society
1572	Dumas, La Reine Margot	Catherine de’ Medici, Wars of Religion, St Bartholomew’s Day massacre
1625 onward	Dumas, The Three Musketeers*	Louis XIII, Richelieu, Anne of Austria, court politics
1660s	Dumas, The Man in the Iron Mask	transition into Louis XIV’s personal rule
1789–94	Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, then Hugo’s Ninety-Three	Revolution first as cultural myth, then 1793, Terror, Vendée and counter-revolution
1815–1830s	Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo*,**	Napoleon’s return, Bourbon Restoration, Louis-Philippe
late 1820s / 1830	Stendhal, The Red and the Black	Restoration society, Napoleon nostalgia, aristocracy versus bourgeois France
1815–1832	Hugo, Les Misérables**	Waterloo aftermath, poverty, policing, July Monarchy, June Rebellion
1860s	Zola, Germinal	Second Empire, industrialisation, mines, labour and class
1870–71	Zola, La Débâcle	Franco-Prussian War, Sedan, fall of Napoleon III, emergence of Third Republic
1914–18	Henri Barbusse, Le Feu / Under Fire	French soldiers and trench experience in the First World War
1940–occupation	Irène Némirovsky, Suite française	collapse of 1940, exodus from Paris, German occupation

It’s difficult for me to keep all of the Rois Louis in check. As the ‘What to hang it on’ suggests, the Three Musketeers reminds me of Louis XIII and Cardinal Richelieu, which leads to Louis XIV. The good thing about XIV is the geezer rules for 70 years, building the palace of Versailles in his tenure. It may not be high scholarship, but the Netflix show Versailles is my historical source for the middle of Louis XIV’s reign. Quite obviously, his son was Louis XV, the penultimate king, as Louis XIV, found his end at the guillotine in 1793, a few years after the start of the French Revolution in 1789.

As I write, I decided a film/small screen version would be nice, too. Here it is.

Approximate slot	Film / series	Mental hook
1572	La Reine Margot (1994)	Wars of Religion, Catherine de Médicis, Henri de Navarre, St Bartholomew’s Day massacre
1620s	The Three Musketeers adaptations *,**	Louis XIII, Richelieu
1640-ish	Cyrano de Bergerac (1990)*,**	seventeenth-century France, literary/cultural rather than political anchor
1660s–70s	Versailles**	Louis XIV, court, absolutism
1671	Vatel (2000)	Louis XIV’s aristocratic court culture
1780s	Ridicule	Louis XVI’s Versailles, wit and patronage
1780s	Dangerous Liaisons **	aristocratic libertinism, late ancien régime
1770s–1789	Marie Antoinette (2006)	Versailles immediately before the Revolution
1789–94	La Révolution française (1989)	broad Revolution narrative
Napoleonic era	Napoleon (2023)	huge visual hook; history treated rather elastically
1815 onward	The Count of Monte Cristo *,**	Restoration France, post-Napoleonic world
1832	Les Misérables **	June Rebellion, July Monarchy
Second Empire	Germinal (1993)	industrialisation, miners, labour/class conflict
1870–71	La Débâcle, where available, or documentaries	Franco-Prussian War, fall of Napoleon III
1914–18	A Very Long Engagement	First World War France
1940–44	Army of Shadows	Resistance and occupation
1940–45	Un village français / A French Village	occupied France at civilian scale

Please note that I can’t vouch for these, as I haven’t read or seen most of them – hence the ChatGPT inquiry. I liked the older version of Les Misérables film and The Count of Monte Cristo; The Three Musketeers wasn’t bad. I read Cyrano de Bergerac when I was 11 or 12 for school. I think it was fine. I think I watched Dangerous Liaisons in the late ’80s or early ’90s. I don’t recall that is was bad, so… Finally, there’s Versailles. I think it was on Netflix. It’s not particularly historically accurate, but it was decent enough.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for now. If you’ve got anything to add, including opinions, share them in comments.

* I’ve read these titles, Le comte de Monte Cristo in French
** I’ve watched this on video.