"Marie Antoinette's Confidante" is a biography of the Princesse de Lamballe. What's good is that it does give us insight to the elite court from beyond just the view of the Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. What's frustrating is that the book, like many others before it, fall for the lure of Marie Antoinette's story and moves her to primacy of place in the narrative. (Indeed, she's the name in the title.) Given that the subject is the Princesse de Lamballe, while acknowledging the tight connections between the Princess and the royal family, I would have preferred a tighter focus on the Princesse as a member of the ancien regime aristocracy in its final throes.