La favorita de su majestad

King Philip IV met the actress María Inés Calderón at a performance of a comedy at the Corral de la Cruz in Madrid. He was captivated by her and did not stop until he had made her his own and his favorite. The birth of a son to María Calderón and the king (Juan José of Austria) definitively changed her destiny: she entered the Royal Monastery of San Juan Bautista el Real in Valfermoso (Guadalajara) against her will, because "the woman who has been the king's cannot be any other man's, only God's." The novel depicts court life, its entertainments, the open-air theaters, literature, society: the passion, religion, and splendor of the Golden Age.