Chevalier - Not Recommended

     . . . Chevalier was a great disappointment for many reasons.  Its fast and loose playing with the known facts of Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges's biography, and of history even -- Marie Antoinette did not give him his title, that was Louis XV -- are only the beginning.

It's such a shame that this man, who I first learned of via reading letters of (later to be President) John Adams, who was so accomplished, who did so very many important things, just starting with music composition and musicianship, was reduced to an affair with an aristo.

 He is the most accomplished Man in Europe in Riding, Shooting, Fencing, Dancing, Music. He will hit a button on the Coat or Waistcoat of the Masters. He will hit a Crown Piece in the Air with a Pistol Ball.

 Recall, that among his many achievements, he successfully led an all-black regiment in the French army -- until, Napoleon erased all Black people of achievement from their positions and out of history, particularly those of military achievement, not least, Alexandre Dumas's father. 

La légion de Saint-George

This film is the equivalent of making a film of the life of Frederick Douglass, and reducing everything he did and created to the single matter that he married a white woman.

Additionally, thereby, the filmmakers chose to navigate precariously closely those waters on which sail a mainstay of porn, the enslaved black stud and the white lady.

I am not the only person to feel this way.  For a single example our (Black, Haitian) friend who is a symphony orchestra director, composer and conductor, who has been conducting performances of the Chevalier's music in many cities, just HATES this film.  He, like el V, is particularly outraged by the cutting game between the Chevalier and Mozart that opens the film -- this is something Blues musicians only began, here, in the USA.  As per usual, movies, particularly made by Americans, cannot imagine a Black experience that isn't African American.  Moreover, it seems that the two composer/musicians were friends, not rivals, with Mozart even living in the Chevalier's house for a short time. But then, movies/tv very, very, VERY seldom know who and what musicians -- or artists generally -- are -- musicians particularly.  Really, as Joseph and Amadeus were about the same age, it is far more likely they joyed to make music together than tried to cut each other down.  Musicians really like to do that, you know?

The positive for the film is several really fine female actors with juicy roles, even though the characters' depictions are either utterly fantasy or historically wrong for the time -- or non-existent. The exception to this might be the Chevalier's mother. 

However, if only inadvertently, the above does point to the essential truth of  success in which Napoleon was tutored by those who survived both the Revolution and the Terror, into the Directorate, that in France, "Women are politics."  Alas one of the ways this point is made is the filmmakers claim that Marie Antoinette was the reason there was a French Revolution.

Chevalier!

    . . . .  In advance of Chevalier's opening on the 21st, we've been given the passwords to private streaming next Tuesday. We had the choice of watching in a screening theater, or streaming.  Another wish come true. Ha!

The Accursed Kings series by Maurice Druon

     . . . Prior to the opening of The Iron King, the first novel in the series, Iron King Philip, so named for his iron fist implementing his iron will, has dissolved the Knights Templar on trumped charges of sorcery. 

He has imprisoned and tortured as many Knights as could be caught by his forces. With the connivance of certain well-placed Archbishops and Cardinals inside and outside the Inquisition, both Church and King have appropriated the Templars' wealth, and incidentally, destroyed the records that could be found of their enormous debts to the Templars. 

At the start of the narrative proper, the Iron King gets the cooperation of the Church to burn at the stake the Knights Templar Grand Master, Jacques de Molay. As the Grand Master burns with his closest and oldest friend, he lays a curse upon the king and his line. The night the Grand Master burns, concurrently, the Queen of France and her sister are committing adultery with two young men about-court, for which they too are soon arrested, thanks to the scheming of the Iron King's daughter, Isabella (the she-wolf), the Queen of England. From the arrest of the Templars and the royal adulteresses follow all of what happens in the series of seven novels, which end with the end of the line of the Capets.

This post is evidently provoked by the inability to escape the frantic bleating of media of every kind around the coming premiere of the final season of HBO's Game of Thrones.  GRRM really did pull more inspiration from the novels of The Accursed Kings than he ever did from the Wars of the Roses.

This re-read of the the French historical fiction series revealed even more information of how much the first three volumes of ASOIAF took from the English language translation of Druon's retelling of the end of the Capetian dynasty. This dynasty, at the conclusion of the series, is replaced by the Valois (though, of course, the replacements were also related to the Capetians, just as the Capetians themselves were growths from the Merovingian and Carolingian families). 

When I say ‘inspiration,’ I don't mean only such Westros governing administrative bodies such as 'the small council,' the names of characters such as Loris, Brienne, figures that certainly are prototypes of the Clegane brothers, twins, dwarfs, etc., as well as place names, but so much else, such as 'banner' and 'bannerman'. 

'Bannermen'  is not French per se.* In French this affiliate to various lords would probably be called something more like 'moyens' the middles, as they were of middling ranked status, with lands -- but not nobility, nor peasants, some of which also small lands.

In English,'bannerman' derives from Scotland with Edward I’s conquest, coming into Norman-French speaking England, and then brought to France via his combined English and Scots forces. These campaigns play out in The Accursed Kings by the two final volumes, which is why the final volume is titled King Without A Kingdom. Here are the roots of the 100 Years War between France and England, as the Capets are replaced by the Valois.

To my historian’s mind, the most significant inspiration GRRM took for his fantasy history Game of Thrones, was The Iron Bank of Braavos. There are no banks in Lord of the Rings, thus they have seldom been part of medievalist fantasy or historical fiction until the Iron Bank of Braavos.** Occasionally there are Jews in historical fiction who provide the funds and credit by which nobility and royalty can carry on their endless wars, as in Ivanhoe, by the creator of historical fiction. However, in The Accursed Kings, the historical consortium of 13th- 14th century Lombard money lenders, credit extenders, and investors are essential to not only to the expensive military and political events (not least marriages and coronations) that take place over the course of series, but also to individual characters who make the wars. Even Gucci, the very young nephew-scion of the most important Lombard banker in France, Tolemei – a continuing, significant character in his own right -- is an ancillary character,who becomes more a featured player in the books’ events as he matures, even as he has a private life, which the consequences are, at best, bittersweet. -- and with which The Accursed Kings concludes.

Among the historical cultural elements that The Accursed Kings does include that ASOIAF doesn’t, is the place of artists and poets within this elevated society of churchmen, royals, nobles and bankers. We meet the father of the poet Boccaccio, who wants to retire from the Bank and just write poetry; Dante and his work is invoked, particularly in an affecting scene in the tent of an exception to most of the lords running French army. The army’s bogged down under a summer’s relentless rain and mud, this lord keeps his men’s spirits up by having Dante’s Inferno recited, encouraging the discussion and hoots of appreciative laughter when particularly disliked figures – whose deeds are very familiar to the men, some of whom, or their families do, have actual skin in the game -- are described suffering in hell. Did we know the Inferno  a/k/a The Divine Comedy had funny bits? These poets and writers also play a role as messengers, negotiators and information gatherers.

Inversely, partly via Sam Tarley and mageisturs, but primarily via crones’ folk tales, Game of Thrones does emphasize the importance of scholars and historians; the fabulous past is part and parcel of High Fantasy. Significantly, in this inversion of High Fantasy tropes, no one pays attention to them, or acts on what they learn, unlike Aragorn requesting information the herb athelas to heal Frodo and Eowyn, or Gandalf in the archives of Minas Tirith.

It is equally the case in The Accursed Kings that few learn anything from the past, beyond, occasionally the new king thinking over what his predecessor did for good or ill, so there are no historians or scholars as characters. What we do have is a large, fractious, rebellious faction of nobles who think everything will improve by returning to the ‘good old days of chivalry’ of Saint Louis IX in the 13th century. In those days the lords of the land weren’t obligated to follow rules decreed by a king. They behaved with impunity in their own lands and against each other. These short-sighted retrogressive nobles play an important role in bringing down the Capetian dynasty by demands that obligatory allegiance to the king’s central authority be voided. Thus the dissolution of Philippe IV’s first painful steps progressing to France as a nation state, not a state made of many individual feuding states and statelets. This too leads to the end of the Capetians.

I admire these books as perhaps the most honest historical fiction I’ve encountered that is focused solely on the figures who rule: royalty and nobles, popes and cardinals; and most of all, bankers. Druon does not glorify anyone and sticks as best he can to actually what happened. He dramatizes why the Salic Law was implemented, that the line of monarchy cannot go through the female/queen line.

 I can't figure out why the series was so successful in France as these novels are set during one of the worst eras of French descent into dysfunction, anarchy, poverty and suffering -- and in the middle we have the Black Death --made even worse, the historians tells us, through the idiocy of the Capetian kings, the Church (the era of the papacy removing to Avignon from Italy) their nobles and their rivalries. When adapted for television, all of France watched, with enthusiasm. Here in the US there would be no market for novels or television series -- or even histories themselves -- that provide a narrative of the pile-up of stupidities that make a pile-up of failures on the national and international stage. Instead there would howls of outrage accusing the creators and historians of lying and tearing down the country. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

*    Curiously, when one searches online for the French translation of 'bannerman', what one gets as examples are all from ASOIAF. 

**  Alas, then, allowing the conviction be imprinted among so many readers of this sort of fiction, who are so young they know no history, that there was no money in the European Middle Ages, just as there were no people of color in the European Middles Ages, and no women of power and agency in the European Middle Ages. This medieval historical fiction series would show them differently on all three fronts.

Colette (2018)

     . . . . Keira Knightly as the title figure and Dominic West as Willy, with other recognizable Brit television actors in secondary and supporting roles.

Colette's an old-fashioned period piece Hollywood big movie featuring two internationally recognizable faces, playing recognizable celebrity faces of the time, expensive, slick and glossy.

    Emphasis on celebrity. The author and her husband, and the infamous Claudine books (1900 - 1904) she ghost wrote and Willy took the credit for (and all the very significant profits, which he threw away profligately on race horses, the gambling tables, wine, women and song), were indeed all the rage when they came out. Yet these celebrity sequences seem more like now than then, yah?

As usual with historical drama, it's rather too clean and flat in panorama, mise-en-scène and close-up to be convincing (no broken down horses pulling public hacks, no manure in the streets, no bad teeth).  As Colette and Willy are writers, and writing is not a dramatic moving, action act, we have lots of tasteful noisy sex instead.

This viewer found the all-British cast and production hilarious, as everyone speaks in posh Brit English, but, when they write, we’re shown French pouring out of the nib, voiced-over in the posh English. 

Further hilarity ensues due to Dominic West as Willy, who is best known for playing Usian Baltimore detective cad-to-women, McNulty, on The Wire, and lately, for at least 4 seasons, the Usian novelist cad-to-women, Noah Soloway, on The Affair. Another point of hilarity is the current Poldark’s Demelza’s actor, Eleanor Tomlinson, playing bisexual sex scenes, in one of the worst so-called Southern accents evah – she’s supposed to be from New Orleans. Brit actors always murder Southern accents, seemingly not even understanding that there are very many different Southern ways of speaking. (Personal unpopular opinion -- Tomlinson's Demelza annoys the heck outta me. So far there's been no indication that Tomilinson can act, whether in period Agatha Christie's Ordeal By Innocence (2018), or on Poldark or in Colette.)

Points in favor of the flick: if not provocative of thought, it's gorgeous to look at; Knightly impresses with her non-body double or stand-in lengthy action scenes that involve a variety out of the standard repertoire of theatrical skills, from miming to dancing; Knightly is more convincing -- despite not being believable for a second as a 17-year-old - as a fin de siècle, Gilded Age figure than she was as the Georgian era title character, in The Duchess.

    ....(Colette eventually goes on the stage after leaving Willy, traveling music halls and theater throughout France, many of them ramshackle and many a gig that doesn't pay much more than for wine and cheese. This is part of her biography, but the film makes it look far less grueling and impoverished than Colette's own testimony, and those of others, inform us.)



    .... (Knightly was as wrongly cast for that one as Winona Ryder was in Scorsese's Age of Innocence, her Gilded Age flick -- though Michelle Pfeiffer was perfect as the USian Polish Countess-by-marriage -- Knightly even looks like Winona Ryder in this. Her body type did not conform in any way to the fashions as they were, nor did her body language, just as Ryder's did not.)

(2008)

Michelle Pfeiffer, Daniel Day Lewis, Age of Innocence (1993)

Colette’s life in truth was messy, unlike this adult coloring book of luxe La Belle Époque France movie, which is splashed as “true feminist story!” Nor was Colette particularly feminist.  So much of her fiction, despite the bisexual frissons, was about women victimized by, sighing, dying for love – love of a male cad.

   



... (Her Chéri novels were a refreshing exception to that, as it is the young lover infatuated with an aging, retired courtesan is the one who dies for his love. The 2009 film, Chéri, centering one of my favorite to watch actors, Michelle Pfeiffer as Lea, the exquisite, retired courtesan from the days of les grandes horizontals, whom Chéri cannot grow beyond, is exquisite in all the right ways, faithful in tone and attitude to the novels.)

MIchelle Pfeiffer as Lea, Chéri, 2008

It was a holiday yesterday, but still the theater held a respectable number of audience members.  The variety of the audience was interesting: lesbian couples of various age cohorts; young hetero couples (one of whose male half kept getting up and coming back, disturbing everybody in lumbering oafish style for extended periods of time going and coming -- even clanging metal -- what? ); and a surprising number of young male-male couples, though these I had no way of knowing whether they were gay or not, and single young fellows.

The conversation in the line for the ladies room after the showing was disheartening due to the enormous amount of misinformation being bandied about as fact about Colette and her work.  I seem to have been the only one there possessing solid grounding in her life and the period she lived in, and the only person who had actually read her work.

A last point of hilarity: in the ladies room line, it was being repeated from the closing epilogue text verbatim, that "Colette was the most important woman writer in France. She changed fiction forever."  

This book, this edition, is still on my shelves.

This book is still on my shelves too.  I re-read it again, just last year.

I kept hearing Simone de Beauvoir's outrage. I recalled her gleeful, merciless dissection of Colette's helpless, hapless feminine dependency on having the love of a man, of being in love, in order to have meaning, significance and identity,  especially in The Second Sex (1949). This, though in many ways, hilariously, hers and Colette's novels have much more in common in this area than Beauvoir herself realized: so much doomed love, clothes making the woman, intellectual and creative and sexual rivalries as they contain. The difference though, is that Beauvoir’s stand-in in her autobiographical novel, She Came To Stay (1943), Françoise, literally, with her own hands, kills off her rival for Pierre’s devotion.  Perhaps Beauvoir believed Colette earned her condemnation by being too femininely weak to do the same . . . .  Actually, She Came to Stay is period novel I'd love to see turned into a film.

Provence! The Perfect Dream

     . . . . Monday, May 1, we were in  Nîmes, sitting in a Roman arena, built approximately 70 A.D. 

Statue of the matador behind the Roman arena in  Nîmes;  as well as music concerts and other spectacles, corridas and bullfights are staged there today.  A bullfight festival was scheduled for this week.  This is another indication that we were on the "Spanish" side of the Roman Mediterranean coast in  Nîmes, whereas Nice and Avignon are on the Roman / Italian side.

The festival of the Roman Games had just concluded, a day late, because the day of the biggest events got rained out, so had to be postponed to the following day. The temperature was chilly, the sky over the yellow sands was overcast and threatening the rain that did follow us all the way from Marseilles to Cannes, to Bar-sur-loup and hung on Tuesday morning. At the Nice airport for departure I wore a sweater under my leather jacket. 

Arrived in NYC, May 2, the temperature was 90 degrees. We sweated all way in from JFK. 

I'm trashed. This despite sleeping occasionally and even being able to stretch out, relatively speaking on the endless flight home. As the season barely begun, the flight from Nice was not at all full, so it was a lot more comfortable, thank goodness. It was the same on the flight to Nice.  Nevertheless, as it is -- what a wreck I am.  And jetlagged.

But -- what a wonderful. beautiful, perfect, dream vacation.

This vacation made many of my life-long dreams came true. This isn't an exaggeration. Ever since I was a very small child, I poured over illustrations, photographs, reproductions of paintings in encyclopedias, history text books, my piano practice score books. I passionately wanted to see these places with ruins from antiquity, gothic architecture, narrow, winding streets that had cascades of flowers and the slender pencils of poplar in the landscaped hillsides behind, the 'Roman' tiled rooftops -- and yes, even 18th century neo-classical forms such as the Jardin de la Fontaine in Nîmes. Then, to have that garden and the ruines of the Temple of "Diana"located  together -- which was all the better for the adult historian that I have become, knowing that this ruin was part of one of the many temples dedicated to Emperor Augustus, erected throughout the empire to remind the provinces that Rome was in charge. To have been given this opportunity to make an historical journey that covered them all in our limited time -- this is priceless. 

And the beauty, the food -- this journey was a life-time blessing. Nothing I did to earn it or deserve it -- it was just given me by D and I and el V. I am most grateful. 

Due to our hosts for the beginning and the conclusion of the trip, this was so much about the best ways of growing and preparing food, maintaining the food supply, sustainable horticulture and agriculture. 

Temple Saint-Martial. Building began in the mid 1350's, concluded in 1402.

Further, concerning the region in the medieval era: there was the Temple Saint Martial, just about directly across from our Avignon hotel, the Bristol, which had been the site of one of the earliest colleges. Its great subject of the 'new' scholarship was the formation of phytothérapie. The students sat outside, their classes held in the sections between the gothic church's buttresses, looking into the surrounding grounds. The grounds were gardens of therapeutic and medicinal plants and herbs. To this day, across from this church there is the Pharmacie, the first floor of which is a splendor of natural and homeopathic botanic treatments. Not to mention the many tours and conferences offered throughout the region for food and wine experiences (and I'm sure the entire of France) that include serious history and study of the past and current therapeutic and medicinal approach to what we eat and drink. I suppose this could be called holistic, though I didn't see that term used -- but then, I don't know French. All of this by way of seeing what D, I and their community are doing in Bar-sur-loup, and particularly I's approach to meals and dishes --she's a professional chef -- as part of a long, historically French continuum of eating and drinking. 

And now, when I first sat down this AM,  long before 7 AM our time, it was still quite warm. This afternoon NYC got up to 93°. When we left for Provence it was still definitely winter here, late late winter, perhaps, but winter. Climate change -- France, and all of the people like D and I and their community of their beautiful village perché (where last summer's wildfires's smoke and flames could be seen from behind the Alp that bounds their backyard), who are working on methods to keep people eating, have a great deal to do!

I filled 70 pages in my moleskine notebook.  I took many, many photos. Most of them are still on my memory card. When I'm a little less tired, I will download them to my hard drive and gloat over my memories.

Versailles (2017) Season 2

     . . . . Adoring Versailles (BBC 2) season 2  It's sumptuous, gorgeous, bitchy, poisonous (in more ways than one!), gossipy, cross-dressing, witty, over-the-top.

The Sun King played by George Blagdon

THE two actors playing King Louis XIV, George Blagdon (the muchly reviled byaudiences after a certain point, Athelstan, captured monk and object of life long yearning of Vikings's Ragnar) and his 

Philippe I, Duc de Orléans, Louis XIV's brother, played by Alexander Vlahos

brother Monsieur, Philippe I, Duke de Orléans, Alexander Vlahos, who played Mordred in Merlin, make a great job of their roles, because they know better than to be sérieux. It's only the astounding gowns and suits -- and scenery -- that anyone takes seriously. Beats the hella outta the earnest endless emo of Reign, while managing to stay far closer to history than that travesty. (There really was an epidemic of poisonings at Louis's Versailles, and spells cast, etc -- or at least so the court was convinced, and people were executed for it.)  

Though again, with contemporary historic costume drama set in courts and filled with royals, the protocols are much truncated and people are much too familiar with these figures for historical reality. Not even the maîtresse-en-titre would be allowed to take the lead when the wife of a royal Duke arrives in a room -- especially in the Sun King's Versailles.  Montespan would have been required to rise and curtsy -- the Princess and Duchess does not sit in a corner and wait to be noticed by her. But all those endless heralding, bowings and curtsies and other formalities would eat an entire episode's time if done accurately, and following the forms correctly allow for less delicious cattiness.

Princess Palantine, Wife to Monsieur, Philippe I

This season was added the character of the German Princess Palantine, Elizabeth Charlotte, second wife of Monseiur -- and she's fabulous.  Happy, healthy, hearty, smart, pretty -- not scrawny -- sensible, she rapidly became my favorite lady, no matter what the court ladies may have thought.

She wasn't this pleasant to other people in real life, however.  In her real life, haughty and filled with self-importance, and quite homely, she took to having heralds preceding her and following her, announcing her presence where ever she went -- in other words she was as much a theatrical raging queen as Philippe I, her husband. Which, from this vantage point in time I find hilarious rather than the disgusting class bs that it was, and which helped bring in the Era of Revolutions

Amusing it is, this series set in Louis XIV's France, but produced by Brits and played by Brit actors.  They are all talented professionals, who do a praiseworthy job of not tripping on their lines, robes or high heels or the writers' fooling with the manners of the period. There are many familiar faces from many other series, including The Tudors and Got.

The film locations included many of France's most fabulous palaces and châteaux, not least including Versailles itself.

The horses' beauty, elegance and grace are more than equal to that of the inhabitants of the palace.

There will be at least a third season, which makes me happy. 

Season 1 and 2 stream on Netflix.

The Normans + Capetians

     . . . . Last night: 

                               Before and during and after William the Conqueror's time, the Norman duchy wasn’t very peaceable – those Norse, and those Norse kiddos! – as various sons, legitimate and bastards, and other rebellious factions fought over possession.

During the Conqueror's own rule there was dispute between two of his three sons as to who would have Normandy and / or England.

William Rufus, i.e. William II and Robert Curthose II both demanded possession of duchy and the kingdom of England. Their conflict was only repressed by the Conqueror himself.

Further, the French king, Henry I schemed, promised and intrigued with the Conqueror's sons to turn them against this powerful, vital, energetic ruler who had conquered England -- whether with or without the Capetian monarchy's approval (it was a regency at the time, under the control of the child king Philip I's mother) and encouragement (the deceased Henry's brother Odo and his army enthusiastically participated in William's invasion). The pope seems to have given his blessing to the enterprise only after the fact.

    . . . .This is the delightful part, which provoked minutes of laughing: after the death of the Conqueror's death, his oldest son, Robert Curthose II, PAWNED the duchy of Normandy for 10,00 marks (which, somehow he never repaid – did he pawn Normandy to Jewish merchants?), the duchy which had been ceded to William Rufus! -- to finance Robert's participation in the first Crusade.  Imagine!-- pawning a duchy, like your dad's old gold watch!  I just couldn't get over that.

Before Robert returned from Crusade, William Rufus had gained possession of Normandy with the help his father.  When both father and Robert died, he got England too, but England did not like William Rufus. Additionally, William II seems to have been a lazy and inattentive English ruler, and ultimately the younger brother, Henry,  got the crown of England on his own head, partly via intrigue, diplomacy and purchase, becoming England's first Henry.

We see every variety of the English - French inter and intra bloody quarrels for the coming centuries already in place at this point, if not before.

Wednesdays Are About Reading: The Middle Ages, U.S. Civil War, Novels

     . . . . So non-inclined to deal with social media, blogs, any of it these days.  I am online a great deal, digging through newspapers published in the Red River Valley in 1880 - 1911, among other online activities. I keep up with a variety of news (current affairs / politics) sites.  I write a lot, including in my journal, in my Word program.  But I've had no energy to write online, for some reason.

There's a great deal going on in the offline life, all kinds of things, and some of it, believe it or not, is actually positive for us personally, in many ways, including paying work, despite the political billionaires' and religious whackos' derangement of objective, ideology, utterance, attitude and action having taken over seemingly the whole world, except -- maybe -- for France?

Therefore, perhaps it is particularly rude of us to keep laughing at the French as we make our way through Capetian France 987 - 1328?  This is the read-aloud-before-bed book that succeeded Havana and the Atlantic in the Sixteenth Century (el V's favorite century!) which was all about the plundering, corsairing, privateering and pirating of Spain's ports, ships and fleets by all of Europe's powers in mostly the 16th century, through about 1628.

Both of these books have been terrific reads, before bed, hough in a different ways. It was particularly pleasant to have them when I went down with a very nasty virus two weeks ago, and couldn't read for myself.  One of the symptoms was eyes that watered constantly, making vision iffy at best -- not to mention the lack of concentration. What I did mostly during that period was lie in the dark, listening to book streamed from Overlook.

     . . . . As far as the Capetians are concerned -- what is up with us and the French and laughter? As soon as el V and I began reading my history of the Capets with each other, as opposed to me reading the book by myself, we got the giggles.  Evidently even when they weren't French, but Goths (Merovingians) and Franks (Carolingians), which is when this laughter began earlier in the year, they were sufficiently French to be amusing and good company?

The Capetian monarchy is not only post-Carolingia, but post Vikings and the Dark Ages. We begin to see what political historians have called feudalism as an administrative organizational structure becoming the predominate system, along with the proliferation of castle-building -- which reached its peak in France in the 11th century.

I'm getting a sense that with the Norse now integrated into Francia at every level of society (though probably not in the peasantry?), so much of what they severely disrupted in the kingdoms after Charlemagne was no longer around to hold things together, in many ways all systems from trade and taxes to governance and land holdings had greatly stabilized.  In other words we have now entered what historians used to regard as the Middle Ages and have emerged out of what historians used to call the Dark Ages.

By the way, the Norman kingdoms were very well organized and administered, the best of them all. As far as we've gotten, the Normans are about poised to take over kingdoms in Sicily and southern Italy -- not to mention England.

This is so interesting! But, I wonder, if anywhere else in this vast, densely populated city, in June, 2017, anyone else is considering these matters? I have the feeling that only here, in this apartment, in this building, is this happening. One indication is that these books from the graduate school library haven't been taken out in years and years. And their publication all date from the 1970's, at the latest.

      . . . . What have I listened to?  The most entertaining was James Buchanan: The Worst President Ever (2016) by sports journalist >!< Robert Strauss. It's a fairly light-hearted treatment of the guy who did nothing to keep the Union together (though he did a lot to allow it to fall apart, They Say).  There are lengthy digressions into the author's own childhood and the father with whom as a boy he shared an obsession for US presidential trivia.  There are further lengthy digressions into playing basketball at his gym and elsewhere in Philadelphia, where he was born and continues to live, and more yet about his wife and daughter.  His historical method, as far as it goes, is to compare and contrast Buchanan's biography and presidency with that of the other 44 (as of his writing) presidents, to make the case that Buchanan was The Worst Ever.  However, Buchanan's got a real run for his title going these days.  One wonders if the author would have been so off-handed about the mess JB helped make if he were putting the book together today.  OTOH, in the stuperous state of my whole sick system, that was about as much cogitation as I could manage.

I listened to two novels via Overlook. The first was Daphne DuMaurier's Frenchman's Creek (1941).  She was so good at what she did.  And one must get to the very end to see just how good at it she was.  Through much of the book one of the lesser character's wife is pregnant.  He's deeply concerned about his wife and the coming delivery, hoping for the best, fearing for the worst, which was the outcome far too often in the 17th century of King Charles II, which is the time the book takes place.  That this becomes a major plot  point won't even be clear until the very end!  I was so impressed.

The second novel was Ann Cleeves's second title in her Shetland Islands series, White Nights.  I've read all the others but it took this long for the replacements to show up at the NYPL after the others were worn out.  In my opinion this one is far superior to the others.

I am also listening to three other fascinating, books, The First Muslim: The Story of Muhammad (2013) by Lesley Hazleton (NPR review here) The Crucible of Command: Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee: The War They Fought, the Peace They Forged (2015) by William Davis

A UK Guardian review of the book here.

 -- and the brilliant The Crusades: The Authoritative History of the War for the Holy Land (2010) by Thomas Asbridge.  This latter is big -- 784 pages -- because he tells the politics of the crusades from both Christian and Islam's contexts of the times.  I've been listening to it for weeks, as one can only check out an audio stream book for a maximum of 3 weeks, and I usually only listen to them while working out. It's a popular title and then I have to wait until whoever else had it on hold expires it to get it back again.  (The Overlook system that has highjacked all the public library systems is truly awful and stupid in every way.)  I've now reached the fifth crusade.

It's really been books this month, far more than television / movies, due to my eyes being so bad from being sick.

Looking For Louie Louie : lwi - Louis

     . . . . As the France's Carolingian period isn't among my historical specialties, I have put in an inordinate amount of time these last few days trying to track down why the contemporary name Louis, for one of Charlemagne's sons, shows up in his family tree lines.

Why call him Louis when the other sons don't have latinized - frankified names? Before Louis shows up, and when he shows up, and after he shows up, one sees Lothars in the tree, but no Ludovics or Ludowigs etc. These are germanic forms of Louis, They Say.

But I had learned that Louis is derived from Clovis -- and as we know, of course, it is a Clovis who was the first Merovingian king, and there were many other Clovii in Merovingian history.  But no, no, no! exclaimed another friend.  From the dox we know that Ludwig and variations are the names from which Louis derives, she informs.  That was puzzling enough to make me doubtful. If Louis comes from Ludwig, why did so many other scholars and historians state so confidently that Louis, pronounced 'lwi', derives from Clovis?

No wonder it's so difficult for English speakers to get a handle on early French history -- especially if like me, they don't know latin, German and French!  I haven't had time yet to begin my short stack of Charlemagne books, beyond finishing Towns and Trade in the Age of Charlemagne (1994) by Richard Hodges. These books might have given me the clues to follow, but, as said, I haven't had the time to immerse yet -- though, yah, without a clue I did foolishly devote hours digging in the web. But I couldn't find anything until a friend gave me a couple of links.

These links didn't provide any linguistic information of the sort I was looking for -- but from them I did learn something fundamental -- so fundamental that it is duh -- but only if I'd read these Charlemagne books which I haven't yet read would it be duh --

i) WIDEGO (-[after 22 Jun 823]). "Widegowi filii Warini comitis..." witnessed the charter dated 6 Jun 799 under which “Bernherus” donated property "in pago Rinensi in Locheim" to Lorsch[781]. "Witegowo" donated property "in pago Wormat. In Albecher marca" to Lorsch by charter dated 784[782]. "Widegowo et soror mea Reginburc" donated property "in pago Gardachgowe in villa Francunbach" to Lorsch by charter dated 806[783]. Emperor Louis I confirmed the donation of "ecclesia...in pago...Lobotengowe in villa...Siggenheim", previously acquired by "Warinus quondam comes ad partem fisci nostri" and granted to “Widegowo comes per beneficium largitioinis nostræ”, to Lorsch by charter dated 22 Jun 823 [784].

This is in the 9th century, so it is Emperor Louis the Pius, Charlemagne's son (r. 1814 - 1840). Louis the Pious (b. 778 – 20 June 840), also called the Fair, and the Debonaire, was the King of Aquitaine from 781. He was also King of the Franks and co-Emperor (as Louis I) with his father, Charlemagne, from 813.

Fibula of the Carolingian period: copper, gold, and turquoise found at Chalandry in the musée de Laon

The second link my amiga provided mentions "Louis" only twice, once in the description of his mother's family and antecedents via the biography of Louis I written by a churchman named Thegan of Trier (or Degan of Treves), and once in the footnote citation. Thegan was a Frankish Roman Catholic prelate, author of Gesta Hludowici imperatoris, a principal source for the life of the Holy Roman Emperor Louis the Pious, the son and successor of Charlemagne. Louis I's mother was thoroughly German as was all her family -- but, this was what mattered in my quest for lwi/Louis --I learned that this son of Charlemagne was born, not in the germanic regions of his empire, but on soil that would be France.

Louis the Pious

So, finally, I search Louis I. At this link, the following was at the top for Louis I:

Alternative Titles: Louis le Débonnaire, Louis le Pieux, Louis the Debonair, Louis the Pious (and in Germany) Ludwig der Fromme

The takeaway for me, in terms of Louis I being not only lwi, but the first lwi, besides actually being born in what we now call France, is this:

" . . . (born April 16, 778, Chasseneuil, near Poitiers, Aquitaine [now in France]—died June 20, 840, Petersau, an island in the Rhine River near Ingelheim [now in Germany]), Carolingian ruler of the Franks who succeeded his father, Charlemagne, as emperor in 814 and whose 26-year reign (the longest of any medieval emperor until Henry IV [1056–1106]) was a central and controversial stage in the Carolingian experiment to fashion a new European society. Commonly called Louis the Pious, he was known to his contemporaries by the Latin names Hludovicus or Chlodovicus, which echo the Latin name of Clovis (c. 466–511), the illustrious founder of the Merovingian dynasty. Louis was appointed king of Aquitaine in 781 and was already a seasoned 35-year-old politician and military commander when he became coemperor with Charlemagne in 813. He was the fourth monarch of the Carolingian dynasty, preceded by his father; his uncle, Carloman; and his grandfather, Pippin III, the Short."

Damn!  I DID NOT KNOW that Clovis, Hludovicus or Chlodovicus were latinized versions of germanic names!  I assumed they were germanic names.  How stupid is THAT? Answer: Very Stupid.

So Louis is king of Aquitaine, the least gothicized of western France. Where then, presumably, they spoke some sort of "french" that would make a lwi / Louis out of Clovis. In the end they didn't speak the same form of French as the rest of France, but the language King Richard I learned as a child, and so did his mother, Queen Eleanor. Even now, in this region:

Many residents also have some knowledge of Basque, of a variety of Occitan (Gascon, Limousin, or Languedocien), or of the Poitevin-Saintongeais dialect of French.

Louis I lived in Aquitaine from age 3. His nurse was, it appears, to have been from a regionally indigenous family -- at least indigenous since the days of the Roman conquest -- though that region was also the least latinized in the days of Roman Empire, if I recall correctly. He was thoroughly Aquitaine-ized not only in his name, persumably.

So, oddly, perhaps, did this liw-ization of Clovis started in a language that didn't become the mainstream form of French? He did bring his Aquitanians with him to Paris after Charlemagne's death, and as they were his cohort from childhood, presumably into the German regions of the empire. Presumably I will learn more when I get my Charlemagne, Capetians and middle ages stack read.

I have to find a good history of the Viking incursions into France. By the time the William invades England these Norsemen are already speaking the French of Paris -- they arrived first in the reign of Louis I's son, Charles II (the Bald -- Charlemagne is the first Charles). (The siege of Paris was 845.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Something else I have grasped this last week btw, which previously I did not know, for reasons I do not know, except, most likely, I wasn't paying attention: the first two European actions that later got called the Crusades, and the history of what was Outremere, were very much French affairs. That the French were the dominant European power in what they came to call Outremere must have had so much to do with the shaping of not only the literature and language of the courtly romance -- but also that of their fairy tales. This is one of the reasons the consciously composed French fairy tale is so different from those that the Grimm Brothers printed.

Yet it still took me until this week to overtly understand that the English had nothing to do with early formation of Crusade politics, manners and literature. (The Spanish didn't contribute either, as they were thoroughly occupied with the Reconquista. That, at least, I always understood.)

Not until relatively recently -- o say the last couple of decades, did I overtly recognize that England didn't go on the First and Second Crusades. The civil war between Matilda and Stephen prevented English participation in the First Crusade. Then Henry II needed to put together and hold together his own empire, so though he contributed funds to the Second Crusade, he and his men stayed in Europe.

But we've so identified King Richard the Lion Heart with the third Crusade, that we / me English speakers have the unexamined presumption that the English were present in the earlier actions. It may also be partly due to Henry II's marriage to Eleanor -- who did go on the Second Crusade with her husband King Louis VII -- and that she was Richard I's mother, who did go as far as Sicily with his wife, Berengaria of Navarre, during the Third Crusade. It's in this era of Eleanor's daughter by Louis VII, Marie of France, the Countess of Champagne, and Richard, Duke in Aquitaine, we see the outpouring of courtly romances* (in the Holy Roman Empire too, because of Conrad and Tancred who were Crusade monarchs too). These are some of the roads to the romances' treatment of the Matter of Grail -- and how it enters into England, where it gets married to Arthur and The Matter of Britain. This, even though Richard spent barely any time there, and Henry didn't either. But Henry did have a continental empire, and the movement of churchmen and his administrators between the continent and England was constant.

Some nights ago all this came to mind while I watched the French live action La belle et la bête  / Beauty and the Beast (2014 France, 2017 US).  Live action, produced in France, it is so different from the Disney versions.  It was adult in attitude, and even more so, it contained in decor and manner a through line that I swear goes back at least to the Crusading era.

So that's my next French quest.  When did that transition happen, from Frankish to French?  It wasn't in the Carolingian era, which is its own distinct period from the Merovingian or the Capetian.

* Several of the most well-known French courtly love romances include events that were inspired by events in Queen Eleanor's and Henry's lives, such as The Knight of the Cart, in which Queen Guenivere is abducted, and rescued by Lancelot. After Eleanor's grant of divorce, as she traveled back to Poitiers, two lords – Theobald V, Count of Blois, and Geoffrey, Count of Nantes (brother of Henry II, Duke of Normandy) – tried to kidnap and marry her to claim her lands.

A Small Stack of Charlemagne

     . . . . I wake, push my toes painted a pretty pink into my sparkly Italian leather flip flops,

I love sparkly!

put on my glasses -- and beam at my escape reading, as I start the tea. I pet the books while ye pooter boots.





- Capetian France 987 - 1328 (1980) by Elizabeth M. Hallam
- Charlemagne (1998) by Roger Collins
- Towns and Trade in the Age of Charlemagne (2000) by Richard Hodges
- Charlemagne (2005) by Derek Wilson
- Charlemagne (2016) by Johannes Fried

By golly, one way or another, I am vowed to learn how and why 'Louis" as a name for the ruling family showed up -- seemingly, to my ignorance, out of nowhere -- as a name in the Carolingian dynasty, first as the name of one of Charlemagne's sons.  Really how we get from all those Pippins to Louis? Pippins are still generally goth.  But Louis, Louis now, that's pure French.  It's a mystery.

Throne of Charlemagne in Aachen Cathedral.

I have vowed as well to discover the how and why the Carolingians then became a dynasty called 'Capetian'.  (I am entirely unclear as to how and when Capetian gave way to Valois as well, though a bit more clear re 'Bourbon' because that's more related to Spanish history, which I know rather a bit better than French.)

I have gotten clear, which was one of my goals, on how the Gothic Long-Haired Kings got to be the Merovingian dynasty, and then dissolved into the Carolingian dynasty, the members of which by the late 600's, were already holding the reins of actual Frankish power in the position of mayor of the palace ( maior palatii or majordomo -- maior domus) for the ineffective by now ineffective Merovingians kings of the northeastern kingdom of Austrasia.

Pope Leo III Crowns Charlemagne Emperor of Rome.
This event sets the stage for centuries of  invasion and conflict among
the Austrias, Germanies, the Italies, France and Spain.

Viking siege of Paris 845.

Another of my goals is to achieve a better, detailed knowledge of of Charlemagne and the Capetians and the Viking invasions of Frankia.  One thing about which I am now clear is that the Saxons, Avars and Danes were of far greater concern to the king, crowned Emperor of the Romans by Pope Leo III on Christmas Day in 800, than ever were any Saracens from anywhere -- contrary to the Legend of Charlemagne.

Been A While - Occupied!

So much distraction!

The first is the constant tilt-whirling of the weather: up, down, hot, cold, freezing, unseasonably warm, snow, rain, sunny, dark tumults of clouds as the Hudson Hawk winds claw through one's muffled layers.

Politika!  Much, much, much of that.

Merovingians!  How splendid, that our reading into these peoples once called the barbarian invasions who made the Dark Ages has finally revealed some answers to some nagging questions, if not even the questions I was asking.  Marriage, for instance.  The Merovingian family's power elite males weren't interested in either monogamy or marriage (the first Merovingian king, Clovis I, didn't become Christian until 496.  His Christian wife, Clotilde, had been baptized into both the Catholic and eastern Church, so she was doubly interested in converting her husband, presumably.  But generally the Merovingian kings didn't marry at all, or married serially.  There was no line of inheritance of the lands they conquered to an heir.  Brothers of a single mother might and often did united again their half brothers from other women their father had sired.  This tended to keep the warlord state-of-mind very much alive among other warriors -- and there was always booty of land and possessions as reward for more war.

So I am dimly beginning to see why the Church might have drum beated for so long the necessity of marriage to one woman and one woman only, and that only her children were legitimate considerations for heirs. Kingship, marriage and heirs created political stability in a very unstable era. This Gallo-Roman world is also the one to which Charlemagne was the heir (though he wasn't at all careful about official, state marriage either).  It is also then the world out of which the feudal French hierarchical political, legal, religious and administrative system based on land emerged.  So we can see why primogeniture emerges too -- one heir only to the whole shebang, no parceling out land, which re-created instability.  And primogeniture is a feature by intention then, of the feudal system.  OK. that's as far as we've gotten with this so far.

Social life, lots of social life, some of it around actions, activities etc., some of it purely social, such as my birthday.

The Grants!  I am reading Julia Dent Grant's Personal Memoirs, dictated by her to various people including her oldest son, and a series of secretaries, over quite some years.  It's at least as fascinating for what she leaves out or glosses over as the occasional, pointed, barbed comments directed to certain figures she feels slighted, lied about, or injured her husband in some way.  But the overall climate of her easy conversational transcribed text is sunny, filled with many observations that anyone interested in women of the middle to late 19th century USA would find useful.

Beginning preparations for the Cuba trip which is now only three weeks away!


And now I rush off for the evening!

A New Dumas! The Red Sphinx

     . . . . I'm soon to begin a new Dumas, The Red Sphinx!  New, at least in English.

Dirda writes about the Red Sphinx in the Washington Post:

Originally called “The Comte de Moret,” “The Red Sphinx” first appeared during 1865 in Les Nouvelles, but it was never quite completed after the magazine folded. For this handsome new edition — the work’s first translator since a wretched 19th-century version — Lawrence Ellsworth appends a related novella titled “The Dove,” which brings the adventures of the Comte de Moret and his beloved Isabelle de Lautrec to a dramatic, nick-of-time close. 

Yet the Red Sphinx himself, as the historian Michelet dubbed Cardinal Richelieu, wholly dominates the book’s 800-plus pages. The action begins in December 1628, shortly after the French victory at La Rochelle chronicled in “The Three Musketeers.” A mysterious cloaked hunchback tries to hire a down-on-his luck swordsman named Latil to murder the Comte de Moret. That young man, the illegitimate son of the late Henri IV, has just arrived in Paris from Italy, bearing secret letters for Marie de Medici, Anne of Austria and Gaston, the duc d’Orleans, respectively the queen mother, the queen and King Louis XIII’s brother (and would-be successor). When Latil refuses to be an assassin, a quarrel develops, the hunchback’s three companions join the fray and the swordsman is left for dead.

 . . . . In the final third of this continually enjoyable novel, the action moves to the battlefield, as the armies of France enter Italy. Here several guerrilla operations behind the lines should thrill even fans of Bernard Cornwell. Here, too, Richelieu encounters a young papal officer named Mazarino Mazarini, who will eventually become a French citizen and ultimately Richelieu’s successor, Cardinal Mazarin. 

     . . . . I so admire Dumas as an historical novelist and his methodology for creating historical fiction. He knew his history and researched constantly. He really knew what he was doing, by which I mean he consciously constructed a set of tools by which he thought the sort of historical fiction he was writing -- which he and the father of historical fiction, Sir Walter Scott -- called Romance -- and matter-of-factly employed them day in and day out.  Despite his love for Romance fiction, he didn't regard writing as an activity of Romance, but one of a job that provided an excellent living.

Louis's Little Get Away -- Solstice at Versailles

     . . . . The 2015 British-American-Franco-Canadian television production, Versailles, is streaming from Netflix now, after having been shown in the UK earlier this year on BBC2.

The Guardian's recaps rated the series entertainment value at zero and its preposterous rating at ten. Indeed that first episode is every bit as dreadful and pathetic as the reviewer's campy French declares it to be.

For reasons only they know the writers decided to draw on this, which is historical. Louis XIV's Spanish Queen Maria Theresa did give birth to a sickly, basically deformed daughter, who died. However, the rumor and conviction that Maria Theresa had  borne a black child, fathered by an African court dwarf, who was killed or put in a convent, never did die, anymore than this contemporary birther nonsense about one of our US presidents will ever die. But in terms of historical accuracy absolutely not did the Queen of France give birth to a child fathered by an African prince.

That first episode was a terrible mess. Evidently the writers had no idea how to quickly set up the theme of the story they were telling: which is why Louis XIV was determined to build Versailles in the first place. A lot of history is involved, and truly, anyone who is as unfamiliar with French history, particularly ignorant of the history prior to the glory days of Louis XIV in his guise of the Sun King, isn't going to have any idea of what is going on.  Nor will anyone ignorant of this history have a clue as to who the characters are, who are acting out all these life-and-death struggles on the stage that Versailles is to become.  These ignorant members of the audience would then include just about all of us, alas.  Which is really too bad, because after that horrible first episode the series improves and continues to improve throughout its 10-episode run.  Having even rudimentary knowledge of who what when where and why makes for some very entertaining television -- particularly if one has read Dumas's Musketeers sequels set in this period.  There is a Dumas-esque flavor to much that happens subsequently.

George Blagden, as the monk Athelstan, in Vikings

George Blagden as King Louis XIV in Versailles.

I had shut off that first episode only few scenes into the opening, it was so ridiculous.  For me part of the ridiculous factor included the actor playing King Louis XIV, George Blagden, who had played the monk Athelstan, viewers' most hated or most favorite character -- in Vikings, another pseudo historical series whose ratings for preposterous and ridiculous are often off the scale; clue as to why -- two clues, actually: History channel and Michael Hirst, he who brought us The Tudors.  So yes, I did continue to watch Versailles, though why I did, I could not say.  But by the end of the second episode Versailles had jelled, in a good way.  Or at least got entertaining, while broadly following at least the outlines of the history, certainly hewing to history more closely than that travesty of French history, Reign, ever did. A lot of that is due, after all, to Blagden's performance of King Louis XIV. He has the essential quality of switching from noblesse oblige largess to divine right of kings, l'état, c'est moi, royal moi, in a nano second.

I have again looked at the UK Guardian's recaps. They are -- not what I saw on the screen. Like so much that passes for reviewing or recapping these days, it's just the writers (there are more than one Guardian Versailles recappers) showing off their campy French, in that jejune asshat tone that shallow types mistake for wit, but which doesn't allow for any information or communication though, only snark.

And honestly, from what I saw, this series did not, does not, earn that snark. Au contraire (alas that I cannot do French, campy or any other way!) -- it is very interesting!  Really, Guardian recappers -- Versailles is not the Poldark remake, which earns every bit of snark it receives.

     . . . . Among the elements that pleased this viewer is the treatment of Monsieur, Philippe I, Duke of Orléans , and his life-long lover-companion, Philippe de Lorraine, known as the Chevalier. Their relationship is nuanced and dimensional. They are gay, but both they are much more than that definition. One sees how this relationship endures over a lifetime, which includes marriages, affairs with women and other men, for both. It's a fine performance by both actors.  Oddly, the series doesn't employ the Monsieur title for Orléans -- or perhaps I missed it. Following some stupid thing the BBC's been doing lately, they mix the dialog way down and mush it up.

Monsieur's wife when the series begins, is England's King Charles II's youngest sister, Henriette, who is le Roi Louis's favorite. Going by the histories I've read it seems highly unlikely that she actually was one of Louis XIV's mistresses, but in the series, she is. Thus Henriette can 't know whether the child she's carrying is the king's or his brother's.

But here's one of the series's writing problems -- viewers don't know Henriette is Charles II's baby sister, who grew up literally in the French court when his mother and children fled there, prior to Charlie One's beheading. Who in the UK watching this casually knows any of this history that is ENGLISH, much less French history? Who knows it here? We're not informed Henriette's the sister of the English king until deep into the series, when Louis sends her off to negotiate an alliance against Holland with Charles.  This actually took place, to the astonishment of Louis's councilors, this sending of a mere woman to conduct state business.  However, I for one am sure, that their negotiations did not take place in a cold drafty state business hall as we're shown, but rather in a cozy, sumptuous set of apartments while she and Charles, who was by all accounts thrilled to be with his little sister again, played cards.

Knowing just a bit of this history changes the way one watches and receives the episodes -- and makes the show so much more entertaining.  Why don't the writers give us this information?  Surely it can't be that difficult to write, right?

The Guardian recapper franglais campers kept making fun of the court women's hairstyles -- why o why are they sporting such 'do's?  So wide at the sides, so flat at the top?

Well, because those were among the styles of the women attending Louis VIX's court:

Niece to Cardinal Mazarin, Hortense Mancini (1646-1699), painted by Jacob Ferdinand Voet.  Mazarin was the first minister of France after Cardinal de Richelieu's death in 1642 (see Dumas!). This Italian cardinal, diplomat, and politician, served as the Chief Minister to the King of France from 1642 until his death in 1661, after which, finally Louis XIV began taking the reins of France's governance into his own royal hands.

In fact the hair dressers and/ wig makers did a splendid job with the women's hair. These styles quite attractive. They also show us why every woman who was anyone needed constant ladies' maid's attendence, a maid who was also a skilled hair stylist. (They hired the best professional stylists for biggest occasions.)

Louis's favorite woman at cournt, 'Madame', Henriette, sister to King Charles II, married to his brother 'Monsieur', duc d'Orleáns

However, nobody, male or female, royal or noble is wearing a wig-wig. We're to believe all those flowing locks are purely naturally grown by the head on which they are seen. Is this too early yet for the wigs that Louis XIV made famous? These episodes are, as far I can determine, located temporally in the late 1660s - early 1670's. By this time Charlie II and his court were wearing wigs. Just ask Samuel Pepys.

Moncourt and Cassel, two villains in the Sun King's story starring himself.

Anyway, considering the wigs that are supposed to be the characters' real hair -- I can't wait for wigs to replace those greasy, lank locks.

Louis XIV's brother, 'Monsieur', Duke d'Orleáns

Chevalier de Lorraine, Duke d'Orleán's lover.

Louis's, Philippe's and Chevalier's imaginary locks' wigs though, are lovely.

 Their hair would do Rayna James in Nashville proud.

Anyway, even as it entertains, television and / or historical novels CANNOT be depended upon for anything! often enough not even to depended upon to entertain.

One thing that kind of bothers me and kind of does not: how few attendants to these noble characters there are.  Part of the reason is that Versailles is in the process of being constructed by Louis. This is part of the story of Versailles, the creation then of baroque elaboration of ceremony, ritual and rank, beginning with the instituting of the King's levée -- Louis's strategy of taking complete control of the aristocrats and France by stunning with the boredom of orchestrating every minute of their days and nights.   However, it particularly jars that an excise man bringing the monies from Paris to Versailles would not be attended by a large number of skilled and armed guards. Or that noble families would be traveling by coach on the King's Road with all the knowledge that vicious, murdering gangs are killing their sort and robbing them of everything, yet they don't have a single damned armed guard. That two court women are commissioned by the king to bring an recalcitrant aristo to heel and neither of them travel with serving women or guards.

It sure does cost money to show all that on screen. There are places when one can really see them trying to save money in terms of locations and so on, and this is one of the places evidently.

Queen Maria Theresa, King Louis XIV, Françoise-Athénaïs, 

marquise de Montespan and 'Madame', Henriette

But they did not stint on horses, hair, wigs and dress. Ooooo la la! those silk gowns.

     . . . . In many scenes the actor's breath is visible as they traverse the halls and walks of Versailles, despite it supposedly being summer. Rather appropriate entertainment on these longest nights of the year.

        . . . .Versailles was renewed for a second season before the first season went up; there is to be a third season as well, They Say.