As threatened promised last week, let’s look at some French royalty and their squeezes. Today we’ll look at just one (for reasons that will become apparent): Louis XIV a.k.a. the Sun King. (The numbers in parentheses indicate the number of children he fathered with each.)
Athenaïs de Montespan (7)
Louise de la Valliere (5)
Bonne de Pons d’Heudicourt
Catherine Charlotte de Gramont
Anne de Rohan-Chabot
Claude de Vin (1)
Isabelle de Ludres (1)
Marie Angélique de Scorailles
(she probably would have given him yet another baby, only she died in childbirth)
And those are the ones we know about. Formidable.
Fascinating. Louis, like our Kim, certainly had a “type” … six of these women could be sisters. Of course, it could be that the portraitists of the day painted them all to a certain 17th century standard of beauty.
That last one, Marie Angélique, seems very modern both in her looks and in her portrait’s style. Hers is the only one that looks somehow real, at least to my 20th century eyes.
That’s what I noticed too, the “sameness”.
Maybe Louis just had a fondness for small mouths, straight noses, and plump cheeks.
. .