VIII.3. DRAMAS

STORIES THAT SHOW HOW THINGS WORKED 

 "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).

As well, 

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

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

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

• Crime that shook the Sun King's court: the "Affair of the Poisons"

• The consequence of upstaging a king: Nicolas Fouquet's too-spectacular fête

• Catholic nobles become saints and heroes

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

• "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, leader of 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

• A prostitute who (almost) rose up from the street

• How France became a republic

*    *    *

Next,

VIII.4.

The importance of enigmas and details