I have just returned from my very first trip to France. I am still jet-lagged. I apologise in advance for my difficulties with sentence construction and any other mistakes I may make. While in France I visited Paris and the Loire Valley. Both were spectacular and despite too many years of anticipation to mention, I was not disappointed. The Palace of Versailles was on the top of my to-visit list. I studied the French Revolution in history class at school and was quite obsessed with the content for a long time. Although Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were of less interest me than Robespierre and Danton, the revolutionaries who ended up suffering the same fate as their King and Queen, the palace has always captured my attention.
My pre-travel preparation included a lot of reading and watching French movies and TV series. My favourite was the excellent SBS series Versailles. A French produced English language series about the building of Versailles, and its humble builder, Louis XIV. I admit Louis XIV became a figure of interest to me before we departed the country. I could not have foreseen how ubiquitous this man would be throughout France. Although Napoleon Bonaparte removed many statues of Louis and unassumingly replaced them with statues of himself, Louis the XIV, the winner of the modesty wars, still smiled down from his self-described “Sun King” face at me, everywhere I went.
Seeing the moderate and prudent way in which Old Lulu, as I have begun to call our self-effacing friend, lived and treated his people was eye-opening. Lulu’s great grandson became Louis XV and then Louis XV’s grandson, Louis XVI, married Marie Antoinette. He inherited a load of debt and an even bigger load of dissatisfaction from his long suffering, high tax paying plebs. The people lopped his head off with the guillotine.
Marie Antoinette, or Queen Deficit, as she was affectionately known, was a spend thrift and told the people who couldn’t afford bread to eat cake. Even so, I believe the impetus for the revolution started gaining momentum when Old Lulu made the builders at Versailles work themselves to death so he could move his entire court from Paris. This allowed him to control the court and their every move. Insisting they watch him rise (like the sun) in the morning and prepare for bed in the evenings. He lived a life of complete opulence and believed he was God’s chosen King on Earth.
Despite an outrageous lifestyle, Old Lulu’s actions did eventually lead to The Enlightenment. He also left an amazing amount of palaces, castles, fountains, and gardens for common peasants, such as me, to ooh and aah over. Which I did. Here are some pictures so you can too.
Ps. The featured picture is The Louvre, or Palais du Louvre, which Louis XIV decided was too small and not grand enough for his requirements. I could not physically capture Versailles in one photo without a drone (which is not allowed…)
You can read more about Versailles at https://en.chateauversailles.fr.
Want to read more of Kylie’s writing? Or at least something coherent? Find it here.
