At all times, marriages of royalty have attracted everyone's attention. But most often, the splendor of magnificent royal weddings hid tears, tragedies, secrets, because the monarchs did not marry for love - they were driven by state expediency and sober calculation. Young princess-brides were just a card in the political combinations of their royal fathers. What were the wedding nights of the crowned spouses, who often saw each other only on the eve of the wedding? Full of love and passion, like Louis IX and Margaret of Provence, or disgusting, like Marie-Louise of Orleans? Juliette Benzoia lifts the curtain of secrets on the first wedding night of monarchs, like the canopy of a royal bed.