Elena Maria Vidal (1962- ) is a Catholic novelist and noted blogger, living in State College, Pennsylvania. She is also a keen amateur historian and a campaigner for home schooling.
Her novel Trianon was published by St. Michaels Press in 1997 and it is a historical novel, based on the lives of King Louis XVI of France and his Austrian queen, Marie Antoinette. This was followed in 2000 by its sequel, Madame Royale, based on the life of the couple's eldest daughter, Princess Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte, the Duchess of Angoulême, in the aftermath of the French Revolution.
Vidal's third novel, The Night's Dark Shade was published in 2009. Like her previous two works, this is an historical novel set in France and it pays close attention to the religious environment of her characters. However, The Night's Dark Shade is set centuries before Vidal's previous works and focuses on an aristocratic marriage set during the Cathar controversy, which rocked medieval Catholicism.
Vidal has been the guest in a number of interviews and lectures, including a February 2006 appearance on the EWTN Bookmark program with Doug Keck. In this she revealed that Elena Maria Vidal is a pen-name used to honor her late grandmother.