Jean Plaidy is actually a pseudonym for author Eleanor Hibbert. She also wrote under the names of Victoria Holt and Philippa Carr, among others. Hibbert's books on royalty are historical fiction and should be taken as such, but the woman knew her stuff. Although the conversations and some of the minor characters are imagined, the actions of all of the major characters in her books are where they were supposed to be and doing what they were said to have done during that time. She was prolific too, and wrote about all sorts of European royalty from the Plantagenets to the Spanish Habsburgs to George III, she covered a lot of territory.