VIII.3. DRAMAS THAT SHOW HOW THINGS WORK

 "AT LAST I AM KING!" CRIED LOUIS XIII FROM A PALACE WINDOW, AS THE CROWD CHEERED HIS THUGS ASSASSINATING A USURPER

"I played the child," Louis would say of pretending to be retarded. At age 15 he had absorbed the court's duplicity: "Everything becomes cleverness, design, false deference, boundless flattery and and bitterness at heart..."

-- Madame de Maintenon, Louis XIV second wife, in dans Madame de Maintenon, "The Age of Conversation" by Benedetta Craveri, 2001, p. 236 (in French).

• The consequence of upstaging a king: A fête that brought a famous downfall (please scroll down).

• A prostitute who (almost) rose up from the street and became the most prolific French writer.

• Crime that shook the Sun King's court: a witch and a royal mistress.

• Catholic nobles become saints and heroes

• "If  your son marries my daughter I'll give you Palais-Royal"

• A tantrum changes the course of history... for awhile: the fall of queen Marie de Medici.

• Revolt at la Bastille: the swan song of the independent nobility.

• Love wins out —  unfortunately: Passion breaks caste barriers... .

• "Bonjour, Sire!" A greeting announces calamity

• Marie-Antoinette attains grandeur

• Louis XVII, a story that has no end

• An intelligent ogre checks in: Adolphe Thiers leads 40 years of repression.

• Empathy from a countess alone: Breaking the rules brings siding with rebels.

• An unaware general steps into the fray: La Commune begins.

• Escape by socializing with the enemy: how two Communards survive the repression.

• Love humanizes an icon: Louise Michel, heroine of La Commune.

• Catholic martyrs whom even the Church forgets

• The fate of a political painter: Gustave Courbet, target of revenge.

• How France became a republic

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Next,

VIII.4.

The importance of anomolies and details