Louis XIV, whose great prestige earned him the title of "the Sun King," is the most famous of all the French kings. He ruled France in one of its most glorious periods, and remains to this day the supreme symbol of absolute monarchy. Now, in a brilliant new biography, Prince Michael of Greece has revealed a darker side to the Sun King. Drawing on detailed evidence from contemporary records, letters and memoirs, he explored the possibility that, underneath it all, this epitome of kingship was a shy, weak, unstable man of unexpected and intriguing complexity. Prince Michael assesses the continued and enduring influence of Cardinal Mazarin and Louis' mother, Anne of Austria, on the little boy who came to the throne at the age of five but who learned early on to hide his profound insecurity behind the ever more elaborate trappings of monarchy. Here, then, is a vivid portrait of a not particularly intelligent king, secretly poring over textbooks, preferring to command sieges rather than battles because they were more convenient, whose voracious sexual appetite right into his seventies flouted the very conventions he himself tried to impose on a reluctant court at Versailles. Without simply debunking Louis, Prince Michael of Greece succeeds in presenting an iconoclastic biography which shatters many of the accepted myths about the man and his century. The result is a glimpse of the human frailties and inadequacies that lay behind the arrogance, protocol and pageantry of France's greatest king. - Jacket flap.

Louis the fourteenth XIV : the other side of the sun

Louis 14

Michel, Prince of Greece, 1939-

Michael, Prince of Greece

Prince of Greece Michael

Michel de Grèce

HarperCollins Publishers

New York: Harper & Row

Longman Publishing

United States, United States of America

1st U.S. ed edition, April 1984

1st U.S. ed, New York, c1983

New York u.a, 1983

Bibliography: p. 411.
Translation of: Louis XIV : l'envers du soleil.
Genealogical table on lining papers.
Includes index.

An unhappy father
An abandoned child
The struggle for power
The storm-tossed monarch
Mazarin's revenge
Love affair and marriage
Louis asserts himself
Mythical king and mythical state
Of wars and women
Upsets in the royal family
The French Goliath against the Dutch David
The mistress and the governess
Montespan's golden crown
Poison in the air
Out-and-out imperialism
Decor for a theatrical king
La Maintenon, the reluctant bride
General exasperation
The first troubles
"France is one great hospital"
Battles of will
Europe accedes, then fights back
Fire on all fronts
Defeats, intrigues and miseries
Louis' "Great Winter"
The incalculable consequences of a woman's affair
Unexpected reversals
Race against the clock
The senile sun

Translation of: Louis XIV : l'envers du soleil
Bibliography: p
Includes index

2023-06-28