Author: Veronica Buckley
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0374158304
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 557
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Book Description
Françoise d’Aubigné, marquise de Maintenon and secret wife of the Sun King, Louis XIV, was born in a bleak French prison in 1635, her father a condemned traitor and murderer, her mother the warden’s seduced daughter. A timely pardon and a hopeful Caribbean colonial venture failed to mend the family’s fortunes, and Françoise was reduced to begging in the streets. Yet, armed with beauty, intellect, and shrewd judgment, she was to make her way to the center of power at Versailles, the most opulent and ambitious court in all Europe. At fifteen, she was married off to the forty-two-year-old satirical poet Paul Scarron, a former roué now grievously deformed by rheumatism—“a sort of human Z,” as he described himself. Despite his ailments, Scarron presided over the liveliest and most scandalous literary salon in Paris, and Françoise quickly became its most prized ornament. After Scarron’s death, she enjoyed a merry widowhood in the fashionable Marais district, in the company of the courtesan Ninon de Lenclos and the King’s splendid mistress, Athénaïs de Montespan, who made the young widow governess to her brood of illegitimate children. The appointment transformed Françoise’s life, but was fatal to the temperamental Athénaïs herself, with the King soon turning his attentions to the graceful governess. Françoise was raised to the nobility as Madame de Maintenon—and, unofficially, “Madame de Maintenant,” the lady of the moment. The acclaimed biographer Veronica Buckley traces the extraordinary story of Françoise’s progress from pauper child to salonnière to the compromised position of Louis’s secret wife and uncrowned Queen. An absolute ruler, Louis turned away his many other mistresses to live with Françoise only, trusting her as his closest confidante and remaining in love with her for forty years. Sparkling with the irresistible wit of contemporary chroniclers such as Madame de Sévigné, this exactingly researched biography is a pinnacle of the form. In vibrant colors, The Secret Wife of Louis XIV paints a portrait of Europe in an age of violent change, and the Sun King’s France in the process of becoming its modern self.
Author: Mark Bryant
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0228004322
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 564
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Book Description
Explores the life and court career of Madame de Maintenon. A study in queenship, it reveals how the dynamics of power and gender operated within the realms of early modern high politics, church-state affairs and international relations while providing unique insights into the Sun King and his court.
Author: Antonia Fraser
Publisher: Anchor Canada
ISBN: 0385672519
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 466
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Book Description
The superb historian and biographer Antonia Fraser, author of Marie Antoinette, casts new light on the splendor and the scandals of the reign of Louis XIV in this dramatic, illuminating look at the women in his life. The self-proclaimed Sun King, Louis XIV ruled over the most glorious and extravagant court in seventeenth-century Europe. Now, Antonia Fraser goes behind the well-known tales of Louis’s accomplishments and follies, exploring in riveting detail his intimate relationships with women. The king’s mother, Anne of Austria, had been in a childless marriage for twenty-two years before she gave birth to Louis XIV. A devout Catholic, she instilled in her son a strong sense of piety and fought successfully for his right to absolute power. In 1660, Louis married his first cousin, Marie-Thérèse, in a political arrangement. While unfailingly kind to the official Queen of Versailles, Louis sought others to satisfy his romantic and sexual desires. After a flirtation with his sister-in-law, his first important mistress was Louise de La Vallière, who bore him several children before being replaced by the tempestuous and brilliant Athénaïs, marquise de Montespan. Later, when Athénaïs’s reputation was tarnished, the King continued to support her publicly as Athénaïs left court for a life of repentance. Meanwhile her children’s governess, the intelligent and seemingly puritanical Françoise de Maintenon, had already won the King’s affections; in a relationship in complete contrast to his physical obsession with Athénaïs, Louis XIV lived happily with Madame de Maintenon for the rest of his life, very probably marrying her in secret. When his grandson’s child bride, the enchanting Adelaide of Savoy, came to Versaille she lightened the King’s last years – until tragedy struck. With consummate skill, Antonia Fraser weaves insights into the nature of women’s religious lives – as well as such practical matters as contraception – into her magnificent, sweeping portrait of the king, his court, and his ladies.
Author: Susan Holloway Scott
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101082186
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 388
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Book Description
From the author of The King's Favorite-a new novel based on a dazzling and decadent true story of Restoration England. The daughter of a poor nobleman, Louise leaves the French countryside for the court of King Louis XIV, where she must not only please the tastes of the jaded king, but serve as a spy for France. With few friends, many rivals, and ever-shifting loyalties, Louise learns the perils of her new role. Yet she is too ambitious to be a pawn in the intrigues of others. With the promise of riches, power, and even the love of a king, Louise creates her own destiny in a dance of intrigue between two monarchs-and two countries.
Author: Nancy Goldstone
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 0316449318
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 600
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Book Description
The vibrant, sprawling saga of Empress Maria Theresa—one of the most renowned women rulers in history—and three of her extraordinary daughters, including Marie Antoinette, the doomed queen of France. Out of the thrilling and tempestuous eighteenth century comes the sweeping family saga of beautiful Maria Theresa, a sovereign of uncommon strength and vision, the only woman ever to inherit and rule the vast Habsburg Empire in her own name, and three of her remarkable daughters: lovely, talented Maria Christina, governor-general of the Austrian Netherlands; spirited Maria Carolina, the resolute queen of Naples; and the youngest, Marie Antoinette, the glamorous, tragic queen of France, and perhaps the most famous princess in history. Unfolding against an irresistible backdrop of brilliant courts from Vienna to Versailles, embracing the exotic lure of Naples and Sicily, this epic history of Maria Theresa and her daughters is a tour de force of desire, adventure, ambition, treachery, sorrow, and glory. Each of these women’s lives was packed with passion and heart-stopping suspense. Maria Theresa inherited her father’s thrones at the age of twenty-three and was immediately attacked on all sides by foreign powers confident that a woman would to be too weak to defend herself. Maria Christina, a gifted artist who alone among her sisters succeeded in marrying for love, would face the same dangers that destroyed the monarchy in France. Resourceful Maria Carolina would usher in the golden age of Naples only to face the deadly whirlwind of Napoleon. And, finally, Marie Antoinette, the doomed queen whose stylish excesses and captivating notoriety have masked the truth about her husband and herself for two hundred and fifty years. Vividly written and deeply researched, In the Shadow of the Empress is the riveting story of four exceptional women who changed the course of history.
Author: Anthony Levi
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 430
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Book Description
In the seventeenth century France was Europes most powerful nation, and its monarch, the flamboyant and headstrong young Louis XIV was almost an object of worship. Popularly depicted as the sun god Apollo, and known as Le Roi soleil, he was invested with unprecedented power and privilege. For almost 50 years he was the magnificent public face of an exceedingly rich, diverse culture. Louis XIV was also one of the most politically effective European monarchs ever, able to present himself within France and throughout Europe as the model of royal absolutism. But as a man he was irredeemably flawed and his reign proved ultimately damaging both to France and its monarchy. At the core of Levis enthralling biography lies the conflict between Louis role as custodian of the grandeur of France, and his undoubted sense of personal guilt at the effects of his rule on France and its people. It might be said he confused Frances glory with his own, and this was behind his prodigious expenditure and the lavish brilliance of his court. Levis attempt to understand this most extravagant of rulers leads him to ask, who was his father? Was it really Louis XIII? More likely, Levi claims, it was Cardinal Mazarin, the man with his hands on the reins of power during the regency. A fascinating psychological portrait of the king is explored in the context of this possibility. Levi looks in particular at what created in Louis the unlikely mixture of devotion and promiscuity that was his hallmark. This intricate, controversial and absorbing account fully examines the lengthy and testing role that fate cast for the Sun King in European history.
Author: Lynn Wood Mollenauer
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271029153
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 225
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Book Description
The Affair of the Poisons was the greatest court scandal of the seventeenth century. From 1679 to 1682 the French crown investigated more than 400 people&—including Louis XIV&’s official mistress and members of the highest-ranking circles at court&—for sensational crimes. In Strange Revelations, Lynn Mollenauer brings this bizarre story to life, exposing a criminal magical underworld thriving in the heart of the Sun King&’s capital. The macabre details of the Affair of the Poisons read like a gothic novel. In the fall of 1678, Nicolas de la Reynie, head of the Paris police, uncovered a plot to poison Louis XIV. La Reynie&’s subsequent investigation unveiled a loosely knit community of sorceresses, magicians, and renegade priests who offered for sale an array of services and products ranging from abortions to love magic to poisons known as &“inheritance powders.&” It was the inheritance powders (usually made from powdered toads steeped in arsenic) that lent the Affair of the Poisons its name. The purchasers of the powders gave the affair its notoriety, for the scandal extended into the most exalted ranks of the French court. Mollenauer adroitly uses the Affair of the Poisons to uncover the hidden forms of power that men and women of all social classes invoked to achieve their goals. While the exercise of state power during the ancien r&égime was quintessentially visible&—ritually displayed through public ceremonies&—the affair exposes the simultaneous presence of other imagined and real sources of power available to the Sun King&’s subjects: magic, poison, and the manipulation of sexual passions. Highly entertaining yet deeply researched, Strange Revelations will appeal to anyone interested in the history of court society, gender, magic, or crime in early modern Europe.
Author: Aurora von Goeth
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 1526726408
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 230
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Book Description
A concise, straightforward biography of the seventeenth-century French monarch and his seventy-two-year reign. Innovator. Tyrant. Consummate showman. Passionate lover of women. After the death of King Louis XIII in 1643, the French crown went to his first-born son and heir, four-year old Louis XIV. In the extraordinary seventy-two years that followed, Louis le Grand—France’s self-styled “Sun King”—ruled France and its people, leaving his unique and permanent mark on history and shaping fashion, art, culture and architecture like none other before. This frank and concise book gives the reader a personal glimpse into the Sun King’s life and times as we follow his rise in power and influence: from a miraculous royal birth no one ever expected to the rise of king as absolute monarch, through the evolution of the glittering Château de Versailles, scandals and poison, four wars and many more mistresses . . . right up to his final days. Absolute monarch. Appointed by God. This is Louis XIV, the man. We will uncover his glorious and not-so-glorious obsessions. His debilitating health issues. His drive and passions. And we will dispel some myths, plus reveal the people in his intimate circle working behind the scenes on the Louis propaganda machine to ensure his legacy stayed in the history books forever. This easy-to-read narrative is accompanied by a plethora of little-known artworks, so if you’re a Louis XIV fan or student, or just eager to know more about France’s most famous king, we invite you to delve into court life of seventeenth-century French aristocracy, the period known as Le Grand Siècle—“The Grand Century.”
Author: Ralph Dekoninck
Publisher: Intersections
ISBN: 9789004432253
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 734
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Book Description
"Quid est secretum? Visual Representation of Secrets in Early Modern Europe, 1500-1700 is the companion volume to Intersections 65.1, Quid est sacramentum? Visual Representation of Sacred Mysteries in Early Modern Europe, 1400-1700. Whereas the latter volume focused on sacramental mysteries, the current one examines a wider range of secret subjects. The book examines how secret knowledge was represented visually in ways that both revealed and concealed the true nature of that knowledge, giving and yet impeding access to it. In the early modern period, the discursive and symbolical sites for the representation of secrets were closely related to epistemic changes that transformed conceptions of the transmissibility of knowledge"--éd.
Author: Hall Bjørnstad
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022680383X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 247
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Book Description
Introduction. The problem with absolutism ; Beyond mere propaganda ; Approaching absolutism differently: royal glory and royal exemplarity ; The dream of absolutism -- The grammar of absolutism. The dream of a book like no other ; Taking Louis XIV's Mémoires seriously ; Absolutism, explained to a child: "The first and most important part of our entire politics" ; The utility of "These Mémoires" ; The paradoxes of absolutist exemplarity ; Conclusion: "So many ghastly examples" -- Mirrors of absolutism. Introduction: Our body in this space ; An age of mirrors ; A gallery celebrating greatness ; Making the king see what he felt ; A mirror for one ; In lieu of conclusion: Mirrors for a future without a past -- Absolutist absurdities. Exhibit A: The royal historiographer and the unparalleled greatness of Louis XIV ; Exhibit B: Absolutism from the cabinet of fairies to the cabinet of the king ; Conclusion: Seven theses on the dream of absolutism.
