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In her new film Marie Antoinette, Sofia Coppola presents the doomed queen and King Louis XVI as mere humans crushed by a monarchy deformed by artificiality and ossified tradition. Coppola's film is based on Antonia Fraser's 2001 biography, Marie Antoinette: The Journey.
You could call Fraser's new book, Love and Louis XIV: The Women in the Life of the Sun King, a sort of prequel. It was the Sun King (1638-1715) who set himself up as the all-powerful constellation around which his court, his queen and his mistresses rotated. The traditions and structures that elevated Louis XIV would crash down on his great-great-great grandson.
Fraser's book focuses on the women who adored a monarch who clearly did not struggle with his self-esteem. The British biographer argues that despite Louis XIV's historical reputation as a sex fiend with a court teeming with mistresses, in fact he was a religious man who valued intelligence, wit and loyalty in his women.
Among the Sun King's loves:
*The witty Athenais, the Marquise de Montespan, who bore him six children and became a philanthropist.
*The idealistic Louise de La Valliere, who became a nun after bearing Louis two children.
*The demure Madame de Maintenon, a widowed commoner who served as governess to Athenais' offspring and ended up the king's secret wife.
The woman who established the emotional template of Louis' life was his mother, Anne of Austria, a beautiful, proud, pious Spanish-born queen. She worshiped her firstborn, who arrived after 22 years of infertility; she saw him as a miracle from God and treated him as such.
Through sex, Louis rebelled against his mother's piety. But his mistresses were often intelligent conversationalists racked by guilt.
What makes Fraser's book so compelling is her psychologically astute insights into what motivated these historical figures. You might say it was mother's love that shaped the ego that built Versailles.
Love and Louis XIV: The Women in the Life of the Sun King
By Antonia Fraser
Nan A. Talese/Doubleday
388 pp., $32.50
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