The Queen's Necklace is loosely based on the Affair of the Diamond Necklace, an episode involving fraud and royal scandal that made headlines at the court of Louis XVI in the 1780s. Itpresents an idealized portrait of Queen Marie Antoinette but also shows the decadence of the nobility of the time. Alexandre Dumas was a French writer whose works have been translated into nearly 100 languages. His historical novels include The Count of Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers, The Corsican Brothers, and The Man in the Iron Mask.