![]() As Queen Marie-Thérèse, she accommodated two important mistresses, Louise de La Vallière and the Marquise de Montespan, and drew from Louis the final tribute that she gave him no trouble except by dying. Louis abandoned his teenage liaison with the unsuitable Marie Mancini to marry Spanish Infanta Maria Teresa. ![]() ![]() Anne established an unusually close relationship with her son, who never entirely erased from his mind her mixture of beauty and piety as a template of female perfection. Louis’s mother, Queen Anne, gave birth at 36-a then-astoundingly late stage in life for pregnancy-lending an immediate air of the miraculous to the future monarch. He was king for 72 years, time enough to build Versailles, wage numerous, mostly unsuccessful, wars and accumulate a rich history with the opposite sex. ![]() Altogether at ease with the mores of the ancien régime, Fraser ( Marie Antoinette, 2001, etc.) eschews a detailed biography of Louis XIV to focus instead on the women who shaped and were shaped by France’s most glorious ruler. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |