Loading summary
Transcript76 lines
- [00:01]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Want to walk the halls of Anne Boleyn's childhood home or explore the castles that made up Henry VIII's English stronghold? With a subscription to History Hit, you can dive into our Tudor past alongside the world's leading historians and archaeologists. You'll also unlock hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a brand new release every single week covering everything from the ancient world to to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com subscribe.
- [00:35]
Felix Salmon
This message is a paid partnership with Apple Card. This is Felix Salmon from Slate Money and I'm here to tell you about Apple Card. Even as a seasoned traveler, things can still get stressful, which is why I use AppleCard on my international trips and with 2% daily cash back on every purchase with Apple Pay, I'm actually earning daily cash as I travel. Instead of coming home feeling like I've drained my bank account, I come back with cash back I can put toward my next trip. Apply in the Wallet app on iPhone subject to credit approval Apple Card issued by Goldman Sachs bank usa Salt Lake City Branch Terms and more at Apple Co. Apple Card Benefit
- [01:22]
Abby Zanger
ACAST powers the World's Best Podcasts Here's a show that we recommend if you've ever dreamed of quitting your job to take your side hustle full time, listen up. This is Nikayla Matthews Akomay, host of side Hustle Pro, a podcast that helps you build and grow from passion project to profitable business. Every week you'll hear from guests just like you who wanted to start a business on the side.
- [01:47]
Brooke Devard
If you can't run a side hustle,
- [01:48]
Abby Zanger
you can't run a business. They share real tips and so I started connecting with all these people on LinkedIn and I saw Target supplier diversity was having office hours. Real advice. Procrastination is the easiest form of resistance and the actual strategies they use to turn their side hustle into their main hustle. Getting back in touch with your tangible cash and sitting down and learning to give your money a job like it changes something. Check out side Hustle Pro every week on your favorite podcast app and YouTube. Acast helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com mom, can you tell me a story? Sure.
- [02:29]
Brooke Devard
Once upon a time, a mom needed a new car.
- [02:32]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Was she brave?
- [02:32]
Abby Zanger
She was tired mostly, but she went
- [02:35]
Brooke Devard
to Carvana.com and found a great car at a great price. No secret treasure map required.
- [02:39]
Abby Zanger
Did you have to fight a dragon? Nope, she bought it 100% online from her bed actually. Was it six scary honey? It was as unscary as car buying could be. Did the car have a sunroof?
- [02:49]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
It did, actually.
- [02:50]
Abby Zanger
Okay, good story, car buying. You'll want to tell stories about.
- [02:53]
Brooke Devard
Buy your car today on Carvana.
- [02:56]
Abby Zanger
Delivery fees may apply.
- [03:02]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Hello, I'm Professor Susannah Lipscomb, and welcome to Not Just the Tudors From History Hit the podcast in which we explore everything from Anne Boleyn to to the Aztecs, from Holbein to the Huguenots, from Shakespeare to samurais, relieved by regular doses of murder, espionage and witchcraft. Not, in other words, just the Tudors, but most definitely also the Tudors. From the moment he woke up, the life of Louis XIV was a performance. At 7:30 or 8:00 clock every morning, he was woken by his head valet de chambre for most of his reign, a man called Alexandre Botan. Around the king stood the Princes of the Blood. His chamber pot was removed, and Louis drank a cup of sage tea. Then the curtains of his bed were drawn, and at a quarter past the hour, the Grand Chamberlain brought in those of the aristocracy who had the privilege of the grand entrepreneurs. The king remained in bed in his nightshirt, wearing a short wig. He was presented with holy water, and his clothes were laid out by the Grand Chamberlain. Then the master of the bedchamber and the first servant each took a sleeve of the king's nightshirt and poured it over his head. The Grand Chamberlain presented his day shirt and he put it on. Then the king was given a missal and a moment alone to pray. And then the company returned to the bedchamber along with those who had the less privileged status of the premier entree. And the king's dressing began. Contrary to what you might expect, Louis largely dressed himself. First he was handed a dressing gown and someone held a mirror while he shaved. And as the king dressed, the antechambers filled with more and more courtiers waiting to enter. At each stage of his habibement, more people were admitted to the room. By the time he put on his shoes and stockings, everyone, according to one commentator, was there. A fifth entree admitted ladies, and a sixth included the king's children. Sometimes, by the time the king was fully dressed, there were as many as a hundred people in the room. This was the levee, a daily routine that became a formal ceremonial ritual. But it was not just drama. It had a political purpose, as did every other representation of the king. For the 17th century was the great age of controlling the royal image. Louis xiv, the longest reigning king in French history, the founder of absolutism, was shown in medals, portraits, sculptures, and prints as Apollo as Jupiter, Hercules and Neptune as a Roman emperor as semi divine. For example, One medal from 1672 is now in the British Museum. Shows the long locked head of Louis XIV as the sun with rays emerging from him that warm the earth. The inscription reads, nec pluribus impar. Of many, none is his equal. Today my guest is going to talk me through the many ways in which Louis image was constructed and also dial back with me to a moment before the cult of the Sun King was established, a beat before his personal rule even began, the moment of his marriage to the Spanish Infanta Maria Theresa in 1660. One thing that particularly caught my eye why did official pamphlets detailing the wedding dwell on the new queen sweating? My guest, Abby Zanger has held academic appointments at Harvard and Yale, among other places, and is the author of a fascinating book called Scenes from the Marriage of Louis xiv. Nuptial Fictions and the Making of Absolutist Power. I'm Professor Suzanne Lipscomb, and this is not just the Tudors from history hit. Welcome to the podcast.
- [07:00]
Abby Zanger
Thank you. Pleased to be here.
- [07:02]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
It's an absolute delight to have a chance to talk to you about it because you really know your onions when it comes to Louis xiv. And I can't wait to get into into the weeds, to mix my metaphors horribly. But let's start quite general about as far out as we can get, really, which is let's talk about the 17th century more generally and what it is about this period of time that makes it an age in which the image of the monarch matters. Tell me about what's going on in terms of the rise of the state, the rise of absolutism. What does that all mean and what does it have to do with the image of the king?
- [07:44]
Abby Zanger
So let's remember that in the 17th century in England, your king got beheaded. True, that, but Louis XIV had, sorry to rub that in. Louis XIV had the longest reign of any absolutist monarch. He became king really in when his, well, I think it's they say 1643, when his father died, even though he was still a child and his mother was a regent. And, and he reigned all the way into the 18th century till 1715. That was a long, long reign. And he consolidated power in the hands of the monarchy as probably no other king did anywhere. Like many sovereigns, they used lots of forms of representation of ceremonial, you know, self presentation in public, the way we know that Elizabeth did to secure that and a lot of control. But coming into the Bourbon monarchy, which just like In England, we had a change when we had no. We. I'm not French. The French, they had no heir at the end of the Valois regime. And so they had to find a new monarchy. And they picked a cousin of the former king when he died, and that started the Bourbon monarchy with Henry IV and before that time. So I'm going before the 17th century, but there was wars of religion. There were a lot of powerful nobility that threatened the monarchy. There was a lot of disruption and disorder. And when the Bourbons came in, they started to consolidate power in the hands of one strong monarch, as opposed to. In the end, in England, you had a parliament and so on and so forth. That was very powerful. I'm probably getting all that wrong. But. But in. In France, it really was. All the power was centered in the hands of the monarchy. And that's what we call absolutism, right. That one absolute ruler.
- [09:35]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
So you've given us a sense of his dates and this sense of what absolutism is. For those who are sort of thinking of Louis xiv, perhaps have an image of him in their head, think of Versailles. Can you give us just a sort of really potted history of his achievements, the notable points of his reign, like, give us some cardinal points that we can orient by.
- [09:59]
Abby Zanger
Okay. He takes power in 1661, when the very powerful minister who was running the country with his mother as regent after his father died, that minister died, the Kadina Mazarin. And he does what we call a personal rule. So he takes over everything. He has some ministers, but he has his hands in every pot. He also begins to disempower the nobility, and he does that by bringing them to Paris and then to Versailles, by distracting them, by getting them to spend money on fashion and all kinds of things, by getting them to fight over. I mean, this is very famous. You know, who gets to hand his wife the coat before he gets up in the morning, the leve. And who gets to do whatever in the evening when he goes to bed, the couche. Who is he exiles people on a whim. Everybody wants to be close to him. And this really continues the disempowerment of the nobility that in the previous monarchy they were. The minister was going and bombing out the castles of the provincial nobility and things like that. So I guess the one image that people remember is the Sun King, one of his symbolic programs. He's also the head of state, the head of ship, whatever. They have a lot of representations of him like that. But I think the Sun King at Versailles, the Beautiful festivities where he danced, at least in the beginning part of his reign. I think that's what people remember about Louis XIV and his mistresses. Let's not forget his mistresses. He had a number of them.
- [11:42]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
And his very lovely high heels. Yes, I'm sure Louboutins are based on them, aren't they?
- [11:47]
Abby Zanger
He wore stockings as well. I just would say beautiful stockings, lovely legs.
- [11:51]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Let's not forget the stockings. So in terms of thinking about this image and how it was constructed, we've obviously got it through the physical ritual ceremony of court, like the levee. We've also got it, though, through all sorts of different media. What is the media of the 17th century? What are the ways that the image or representation of the king could be communicated?
- [12:14]
Abby Zanger
Okay, again, we have a very long reign, but throughout the reign, I think there was a combination of high and low representations. We had oil paintings by people like Rigaud that show the king in his gorgeous costume, with his heels and his, you know, his legs. And those were things that stayed in one place that people saw. We had the huge court spectacles which also you had to go there to see, although some parts of them would go back to Paris in different ways to be performed. But we also had a lot of ephemera, a lot of easy material, printed material that people could come in contact with. You did not need to be literate to hear the reading of short pamphlets that were produced. If you went into any kind of a shop, you would see a large almanac hanging on the wall. We even have depictions and engraving of these almanacs on the walls in various tradesmen's places. And they would have images from the year, and they would show images of the king, events, for example, from his marriage, him being shown, pictures of potential mates, new queens. And so these kinds of material, this kind of printed material, which was important throughout the reign, had different names, but we call them some of these, the ceremonies of information. But we also flying sheets, feuillant, because they were literally sheets that flew in and out of people's vision. And again, I think people from the nobility all the way down to commoners had exposure to this in different ways, telling the stories, recounting the royal entries. And this was a different kind of form. It wasn't as controlled in some ways of a form. Certainly under the reign of Louis xiv, there was a period of disruption, and when the nobility rose up against him, where he and his mother had to flee Paris. And one of the big things behind that moment were these kinds of small pamphlets that created a lot that were very negative. But this material could also be used to satirize enemies and could be sent to other countries. And I would think that, I think that for me at least, is one of the central formats for this kind of maybe propaganda social media, let's call it social media. Let's call it what it is, the tick tock of the 17th century.
- [14:38]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Absolutely. And I suppose it's this period in time in which print, which obviously been around for a couple of centuries by now, but is now being used for this political purpose, these large scale productions of stuff that can be cheaply acquired and as you say, you don't need to be able to read to have it read to you. You don't need to be able to read in order to see these pictures hanging up. So this information is being disseminated visually through print as well as anything el else. And you've also alluded there. Let's go back to portraiture again, seen by far fewer people. But I'm interested in just giving people a sense of all of the different ways that Louis was portrayed in terms of iconography, in terms of costume choice. You know that there seems to be a period that's obsessed with antiquity and myth and showing Louis in a whole range of different roles. Can you give me a sense of some of those?
- [15:35]
Abby Zanger
Yes, well, I've already talked about him as the Sun King and also, well, Apollo obviously are some of the ways he's depicted. If you've been to Versailles, on the ceiling of the hall of Mirrors, we have Louis depicted as Louis de Grand taking the Ship of State for the first time. So we have also a tension between a historical figure and a mythological figure in this period and the play between. That is very interesting. What I want to say about the big portraits, although some of them have a bit of, you know, like if they're on a ceiling, it's an interesting and oblique perspective. But in general they're working from this notion of an Italian scenic mechanism where there's like a one particular privileged viewing position which is the position of the king, but it's also the position of the viewer looking at the king. And it's a very fixed position. You don't really have a lot of choice of how to view it. Louis founded the Academy of Painting and Sculpture and he put Charles le Brun in charge and he was very much a painter who painted on this perspectival mechanism. These other kinds of materials that I was talking about that you didn't even have to acquire. You could just a butt you could come into contact with. They were less privileged in this way. They had more mobility. And that was a disadvantage and an advantage for representing the king, because you want to control how you see him. But at the same time, sometimes in order to get attention and to get curiosity and to get interest, you need to be a little looser and more maybe interesting.
- [17:12]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
And I suppose we're talking about very different audiences here as well.
- [17:16]
Abby Zanger
Of course, yes. I mean, I was trying to give you a sense of the whole spectrum. He needed to have the attention on a lot of levels. At Versailles, it was mostly nobility that he brought, but there were people that worked there. There were people who brought food in and out. I mean, you know, who had probably access and some advantage. And there were days when Versailles was open to visit as well. One could go to visit.
- [17:39]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
And there, of course, it's the architecture, even the garden design, that's playing a role in creating the royal image as well as the paintings that people might see within it. Right.
- [17:50]
Abby Zanger
And one really famous story is that there was a minister of finance early in Louis XIV's reign named Fouquet, who was building up his own castle, Vaux le Vicomte. You can go and visit it. It's not a state monument, but it's a private monument. It's a wonderful place to visit. And he used a lot of these same things and a lot of the same artists, in fact. But he was trying to enclose and make everything tight and comp. Even using these perspectival mechanisms. Whereas when Louis. Louis then of course, arrested him and had him tried for treason and imprisoned for the rest of his life, took all the artists, brought them to Versailles to reproduce something similar, but something that opened out to the whole world. When you stand on the terrace at Versailles and look down that long canal, you see Louis reigning the whole world. The perspectival mechanism opens up.
- [18:41]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Yes.
- [18:42]
Abby Zanger
And that's true of the festivities as well, I would say.
- [18:45]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Yes. Tell me a little bit about those. Because one of the things about Louis, I mean, his. His name is practically synonymous with the arts, with drama and music and theater and ballet, you know, the development of the orchestra, the French overture. Tell me about some of these things and how they magnify the king.
- [19:01]
Abby Zanger
But just by repeating his image, right, Just by making him the center of these big, huge, enormous court festivals with ballets where he danced and he was presented again as the Sun King or in some important role. I think, where I want to just move a little bit, though. To take you is that this is the mature king, the one who's arrived. And I think it's really important to look at the beginning of his reign. It destabilizes, I think it sets up this moment, but it's not clear where it's going. And it's a different kind of representational moment for a king that's much more uncertain, much more. It relies. He's less sort of the sole king alone with all these people that are supporting him, and he's more embedded in a system that's emerging.
- [19:55]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Yes, there's an interesting parallel for people who are familiar with the Tudors, perhaps. I don't know how good a parallel this is, but you know, when we think of Elizabeth I in the 1590s, when she has become the Virgin Queen and the cult, the image is estab, but in a similar way, we're going back to the beginnings. So let's have a look then at the beginning of his personal rule, even before the royal iconography of the 1660s, let alone the 1670s and 80s. You've examined what you've called the nuptial fictions surrounding the marriage of Louis XIV to the Spanish infanto in 1660. Can you set the scene? What was the context of this wedding?
- [20:37]
Abby Zanger
Yeah, and actually even a little bit before that. We have another issue that I think is interesting is that his father, Louis xiii, and his mother, Anne of Austria, who was also a Spanish Infanta, it took them a very, very long time to have children. They were married in 1615. And remember, the most important thing in any dynasty is procreation. Right. You have to have an heir. This was. Has been a problem in some cases here, but she had several miscarriages early on in the 1620s and she didn't have a child. 1638, 23 years into her marriage, that was Louis du Donay given by God because he was a miracle. And we don't know where the sperm came from that some historians have some questions about that. And then two years later she had a brother, an heir and a spare, as they say. So there was already a huge iconography around that, offering up a church to the Virgin in thanks. And Anna Foster actually built a huge church in Paris, the highest building in Paris in that time, the Val de Grace. So when we get to the late 1650s, we have a 20 year old God given heir who's still alive, which is important in this period, and his younger brother, two years younger, is still alive and they're starting to look for a marriage match because we need succession. But they're also embroiled in a conflict with Habsburg Spain, Philip iv, Anne of Austria's brother, and. And I like to call this the Vietnam of the period, because they're fighting in the Low Countries, the Spain and France, they're both fighting for hegemony, to be the most powerful, but they're in what we would call today Belgium, the Low Countries, and they're fighting in these little towns, and it's going toward the French. And the French are having a lot of victories, and they're producing a lot of fun caricatures of the Spaniards farting and eating onions and generally beings inferior to the French that are beautiful, beautiful visual images in these kind of flying sheets. But anyway, as it becomes clear that the French have won in 1658, the French start to look toward, okay, so we need a queen. And they send the whole court to Lyon, one of the big cities in France. They pretend that they're making a match with the Princess of Savoy. This is an internal noble family. But of course, these royal marriages are the most productive if they're made with foreigners. It's the best for dynasty building, because you make connections and you can solve enmity. Right. So they've been at war with Spain. They're winning. Anne of Austria has always wanted her niece, the Infanta of Spain, Maria Teresa, to marry her son. So they're in Lyon, and of course, it looks like they're going to make this match. And the Spaniards send their envoy, Pimentel, in the middle of the night, galloping in to propose a treaty marriage with the Queen. With the princess. So the Infanta of Spain will be the match, and she is part of a very complicated treaty, which basically will exchange, clarify some alliances with Catalonia, with the Portuguese, will clarify some territorial issues in the Low country, and the French will receive the Infanta as the queen for Louis xiv, and she will renounce her rights to the throne. Because in Spain, unlike in France, if there's no male heir, but like in England, if there's no male heir, a woman could take over the throne. She will renounce her right to the throne. So they're negotiating this treaty where they clarify some issues of alliances with Catalonia and Portugal, where they verify some territorial issues, and then the French will receive the Infanta as the queen the for their king, their young king, they're both 20 years old. And in exchange, she will also renounce, in exchange for a large sum of money, she will renounce any future claim to the throne of Spain. There is an heir to the throne but it's not clear. He's a little sickly. The French kind of talk about, oh, he doesn't look so good. But it's a lot of money, and there's a schedule on which it has to be paid. And the French pretty much know they won't be able to keep that schedule. And. And as I was also, you know, unlike in France, they have the Salic Law. So all the way back to 500 A.D. there's this law that basically one of the parts of it is that women cannot inherit property, so women can never take the throne. But that's not true in Spain or in England. And anyway, so she's giving up her rights. And interestingly enough, Juan Carlos is a Bourbon. In the end, the French get the throne because they don't pay the money. But that's later. But anyway, so they agree to this treaty marriage, and this is going to be, you know, an exchange of kin. They're going to send over this queen. It's a sort of anthropological moment. And that will subsume the enmity, right? It will make connections between these two countries. And, you know, so many of these royal marriages are with foreigners for political reasons. And this is a great one for them. It occurs on the border between France and Spain. And there's all kinds of wonderful aspects to this, because, for example, you have the Spanish king and the French king, and they're both sovereigns, they're both absolute, right? So you can't have them in the same place because that would would. They would cancel each other out, right? So they can't actually meet. Also, they can't actually send this princess over as a virgin, because who knows what the French would do with her. So they marry her by what they call procuration. And this is typical. It's been done for Gener, you know, generations of marriages. She has a marriage mass with someone standing in a Spaniard standing in for the king in Spain. And then they meet on the border where there's a river, the Bidassoa river, between France and Spain. And in the middle of this river, which today is a trickle, or when I saw it 20 years ago, was a trickle. It's probably less, more of a trickle, but there was an island big enough to bisect in the middle of this river. And it's all choreographed and there's beautiful reproductions of the map, but basically the two courts are on either side of the border. And then they have all these rituals that happen that are so balanced and between these two spots. And of course, they write about it. They produce these pamphlets.
- [26:59]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Yes.
- [26:59]
Abby Zanger
And this is what's going to happen. This is what is happening and this is what happened yesterday. And they're producing them like mad and they're sending them back to Paris.
- [27:17]
Felix Salmon
This message is a paid partnership with Apple Card. This is Felix Salmon from Slate Money and I'm here to tell you about Apple Card. Even as a seasoned traveler, things can still get stressful, which is why I use AppleCard on my international trips. And with 2% daily cash back on every purchase with Apple Pay, I'm actually earning daily cash as I travel. Instead of coming home feeling like I've drained my bank account, I come back with cash back I can put toward my next trip. Apply in the Wallet app on iPhone Subject to credit approval. Apple Card issued by Goldman Sachs bank usa, Salt Lake City Branch terms and more at Apple co. AppleCard benefits
- [28:04]
Abby Zanger
Acast powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend.
- [28:11]
Brooke Devard
Hello? Hello, it's Brooke Devard from Naked Beauty. Join me each week for unfiltered discussion about beauty trends, self care journeys, wellness tips and the products we absolutely love and cannot get enough of. If you are a skincare obsessive and you spend 20 plus minutes on your skincare routine, this podcast is for you. Or if you're a newbie at the beginning of your skincare journey, you'll love this podcast as well. Because we go so much deeper than beauty. I talk to incredible and inspiring people from across industries about their relationship with beauty. You'll also hear from skincare experts. We break down lots of myths in the beauty industry. If this sounds like your thing, search for naked beauty on your podcast app and listen along. I hope hope you'll join us
- [28:54]
Abby Zanger
this summer. Don't squeeze in. Spread out. Find homes big enough for your whole guest list on vrbo. That's vacation rentals done. Right? Book your stay now. I sold my car in Carvana last night. Well, that's cool. No, you don't understand. It went perfectly. Real offer down to the penny. They're picking it up tomorrow. Nothing went wrong.
- [29:18]
Brooke Devard
So what's the problem?
- [29:19]
Abby Zanger
That is the problem. Nothing in my life goes as smoothly. I'm waiting for the catch.
- [29:23]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Maybe there's no catch.
- [29:24]
Abby Zanger
That's exactly what a catch would want me to think.
- [29:27]
Brooke Devard
Wow. You need to relax.
- [29:28]
Abby Zanger
I need to knock on wood. Do we have wood? Is this table wood?
- [29:30]
Brooke Devard
I think it's laminate.
- [29:32]
Abby Zanger
Okay. Yeah, that's good. That's close enough.
- [29:33]
Brooke Devard
Car selling without a catch. Sell your car today on Carvana pick up.
- [29:38]
Abby Zanger
These may apply.
- [29:51]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Yes, so let's talk a bit about that because. So we've got this movement of. Of Maria Theresa from Spain to France, from being translated, transfigured from Spanish infanta to French queen, moving through this liminal space of this island in the river that now is a trickle. And what happens to change her? I mean, people might be familiar with the transformation that takes place from Marie Antoinette a century later, but what is happening to make her into the French queen? And how is that being described in those pamphlets that are being produced for the public to consume?
- [30:31]
Abby Zanger
So all along, there's a lot of interest in what she looks like. Is she pretty? You know, as we would expect, Right. Let's remember poor Diana. Is she pretty? What's she like? You know, how is she dressed? So, of course, it's in Spain, had a very different. The large hoop skirt actually called a guarda infante, a guard of the infante. And remember, an infanta is a princess, but the. The root of that word is infants, which is infant, which is speechless without language. But of course, she has so much language as she's dressed with a Spanish hairstyle and in Spanish clothing. And the first thing that they have to do is get her out of this horrible Spanish clothing, which in Memoirs of Anne of Austria's lady of Waiting, Madame de Motteville, and Louis XIV's cousin, Madame de Montpensier, who's a very important noble woman, the richest woman in all of Europe, really. And she, you know, how horrible this clothing is and how terrible it is. And that gets into the pamphlets because I think the source for the journalist who's writing these pamphlets, who's quite prolific, whose father had been also an important poet, he's using their observations. I'm not even. We don't even know if he was there. But basically they have to take that off and dress her in the French style so that she's more French. And there's also a wonderful description of her at the marriage mass, sweating. This is also not unusual. It's not the first time that we see this, but it gets a lot of attention. The gross gut of the sweat. And, you know, that shows that she's fertile because hot, moist is fertile. And it's important to show that she's gonna produce an heir because, you know, why are we taking this horrible foreign princess from these terrible people that we don't like and we feel superior to, Right? But we can't lord it over too much because she is gonna be our queen, and she has to make Louis look powerful, which he does because he's conquering her. But also she has to be wonderful to make him look powerful. Right. Like, so they'. Yeah, they're trying to make her more French and they represent that, not visually, but that's in the pamphlets and there's lots of versions of that pamphlet and they take a sentence in and out and it's really interesting to read that. And I think it shows how important she is to the moment. Right. If she were not important and she were just invisible, they wouldn't be taking all this care with her transformation and her appropriation. And again, you know, this exchange of kin is subject to subsuming aggressions. That's what the anthropologists tell us. It subsumes aggressions and allows two warring families or two warring clans to come together.
- [33:15]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
It's so interesting. A couple of things standing out to me from what you're saying. First of all, this change of clothes. I mean, again, to refer back to the Tudors, we see this with Henry VIII's fourth wife, Anne of Cleves, who's described as being in the horrible clothes of the German court, that they hide her figure and, you know, they can't possibly see what she looks like. And we have this absolute sense of wanting people to conform to our cultural expectations. That's the first thing that strikes me. And the second is these descriptions of the new queen dripping with sweat. You know, we would read that as being a sort of scurrilous, humiliating description of a new queen, but in actual fact, it signifies something so different. So again, here we have another instance of cultural specificity and. And that makes it sometimes difficult for us, unless we're very well versed, as you are in the period, to know exactly what's being said. And that's fascinating.
- [34:12]
Abby Zanger
And when I saw that material, I was shocked by it, because I had really been trained to look at this other period where everything was resolved. People were working on the representation of Louis xiv and they were working from a period where the idea is a model, where the idea is the king is the sovereign, absolute monarch, and when he dies, he's immediately replaced. The king is dead, long live the king. And it's a kind of serial replacement, where there's an eternal monarchy that has no perturbation, no change, it just rolls along. Whereas this is a moment where the king has to rely, or the monarchy has to rely, on an absorption and a combination, and also sort of multiple images, multiple perspectives, because if you don't have this kind of interest in her, you can't get an interest in the marriage. Right. Like, you've got to have the TikTok effect. Right. You've got to get people interested.
- [35:12]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
What can we learn from those pamphlets and other sources about the spectacle on the occasion of the wedding?
- [35:21]
Abby Zanger
Yeah. So all these spectacles that occur, these ceremonies that occur at the border, they're a little different from the kind of set rituals like the sacr and the lit de justice and the funeral ceremony there, there's lots of precedent for them and there's things that will be repeated. Right. So you're reading about these things that supposedly are spontaneous, but we know they're kind of staged. So one moment is the marriage mass in Spain and then the meeting between Anne and Anne of Austria and her brother two days later. And it's a. You know, they haven't seen each other since 1615, when she was traded and she was traded and then a. The sister of her husband went. So it was a symmetrical trade between France and Spain for queens. And then there's a moment where the two courts meet and the king to see. It's after the marriage mass to see the infanta. But the king doesn't go, but he goes, the young king goes incognito. And this is recounted in the memoirs and then recounted also at the same time in the pamphlet. And he goes onto the island and he looks at the Queen from between the slots of a jalousie, but it's not good enough for him to see and not be seen. This is said explicitly in the pamphlet. So he goes into the door and he stands behind the minister where he is visible. And then the Queen mother sort of says, oh, isn't that a charming young man? Or whatever. But of course, the young princess, who's now the Queen of France because she's been married by procuration, does not recognize him. And then the two courts leave and the young king is depicted as galloping along this riverbank after the boat of the queen and her father, the King of Spain. So she hasn't been handed over yet. That's another moment. And he raises his hat and he salutes them. But she stops her retinue from getting up and recognizing him. And it's not until quite surprising, it says in the pamphlet, the King of Spain gets up and recognizes him, and then she does. And in the previous marriage of Louis XIII and of Austria, they actually see each other two times like that. And it is incognito and all of that, but they look at each other directly. And that's when the two countries are more equivalent now. France is stronger than Spain, so maybe there's something there with that that's symbolic. But it's a wonderful novel. Right? It's a novel, romantic novel. It's right out of the kind of literature that people love at this time, you know, because it's so gallant. It's La Galantry. He's being very gallant, but her gaze is furtive. You know, we don't know what she's thinking.
- [38:10]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Yes, but we're supposed to read that as bashful innocence and a kind of coyness to it, aren't we?
- [38:18]
Abby Zanger
I suppose Diana. Right, Diana had that. Yeah. That she's being modest and coy and. Right. Yeah.
- [38:28]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
But what's so interesting, I keep thinking of these parallels, but the parallel with Henry VIII and Anne of Cleves is that he appears dressed in motley, which didn't probably help, and she does not recognize him. And that is a disaster because she doesn't give him the reaction that he expects. She explicitly shouldn't have said that he was the king, but she should have said, gosh, what a handsome young person, and reacted as if he were gorgeous, which he's not by the time she meets him. And so there is a danger here, there's a vulnerability about this moment that if she messes this up, what's going to happen between her and Louis and
- [39:09]
Abby Zanger
the king, you know, is known to be very handsome and gallant, and she's known to be a little short and dumpy, you know, like they say, oh, she's short. She was short. But the thing is that they had really staged him because he had gotten very sick in 1658, while on campaign, he almost died. There were almanacs showing him almost dying. But then, you know, he was saved, he was cured. And then they right away engage him in a kind of very scandalous relationship with Cardinal Mazarin's niece, Marie Mancini, just to show he's got it right. Like he's still. He's got it. And then this potential engagement with the Princess of Savoy. So they also have to show to the Spaniards that he. He is. Like, he needs to get recognized by the Spaniards. Right. It's not just his domination. It's almost as if the worlds are reversed. Right. That he needs to be seen as handsome enough. But I think it's interesting because I don't think any of these rituals are. I think they're all across the courts, they're fairly established. Right. It's not surprising that you see a similar moment in that marriage, even if it doesn't work the same way.
- [40:25]
Felix Salmon
Activecampaign is the marketing automation platform built for big swings and big dreams. Generate ideas in seconds, import your brand and create full campaigns with simple prompts. Get started for free@activecampaign.com this message is a paid partnership with Apple Card. This is Felix Salmon from Slate Money and I'm here to tell you about Apple Card. Even as a seasoned traveller, things can still get stressful, which is why I use AppleCard on my international trips and with 2% daily cash back on every purchase with Apple Pay, I'm actually earning daily cash as I travel. Instead of coming home feeling like I've drained my bank account, I come back with cash back I can put toward my next trip. Apply in the Wallet app on iPhone subject to credit approval. Apple Card issued by Goldman Sachs bank usa Salt Lake City Branch terms and more at Apple Co AppleCard benefits.
- [41:38]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
So what happens next after this moment?
- [41:42]
Abby Zanger
Right, so then they bring her and she's. Oh, that's when she sweats and she's very tired and they get her clothes off her so they can get more French clothing on her because they haven't completely transformed her. And then they go back to Paris to show her off. Royal entries are very important in this period as a form of propaganda and media. So the history of the royal entry, at least as I know it in France, is it's always was a negotiation between the city and the king. The king goes to the city, maybe, or the royal family, maybe they're trying to assert their power. They're not usually the most powerful because, remember, it's the absolutist monarchy that makes the cities less powerful, that brings the center to Paris and to Versailles. And so it's a negotiation. But this is the last actual big royal entry because the king no longer has to negotiate with the cities. And, you know, he's not, they're not crazy about Paris. At a certain point, they have to choose whether to put the court in Paris. And he chooses Versailles because he remembers that during the uprisings of the nobility that we call the Fronde, between 1648 and 1653, the Parisian nobility and the Parisian population was basically he and his mother was regent and they got chased out of Paris. So he does have a complicated relationship with Paris, but he's bringing his, his bride. You know, it takes, remember, this is. They're not flying back and forth, right? So it's taking them a while to move all those tapestries and all that stuff that they brought down to the border and they have to come back. It's a big deal. And there's a little bit of an entry into Venice and there's pamphlets produced for all of this that kind of, you know, is a precursor. And then they go into Paris, where they built these monuments with, you know, images of the king, like the ones that we were discussing before, and they have fireworks and things like that, but they bring her in. And the book that I wrote about this, the COVID on it is from an image that, like, spreads, I don't know, several feet, showing all the different carriages. And I mean, it was a huge procession. And she is dressed in crest crested, in jewels, and everybody comes to see her from every level of society. And there's pamphlets about it, and there's funny pamphlets about provincials who come, who are so naive, who don't understand, they speak a different French and all this sort of stuff. There's a lot of fun material generated. But in general, she is an object of curiosity. And it takes a very important woman writer, Madame de Scudery, who is a saloniere. She runs a salon, intellectual salon. She's an independent woman, and she writes novels and she writes a novel that she publishes, I think, in maybe 1662 or something afterwards. And the whole preface to it is about curiosity, the curiosity that people had to come and see this event. And she talks about the philosophy of curiosity, because curiosity is a bad thing, right? Remember Eve and the apple. But it's also a good thing. Curious about peace treaties, curious about the kings, curious about going to Versailles. So there's universal accepted curiosity and there's negative curiosity. And her interlocutors debate this around the events of the marriage. And they say, oh, let's talk about the stories of the scaffolds and the loggia and the balconies, you know, the people falling from them because they were leaning forward and all the sort of little crazy things that happen. And is this okay? And they debate, have a philosophical debate about whether it's okay to be curious. And what does the queen ultimately serve in this curiosity, right? So it is a big event and it's an opportunity for the king to show off his booty what he's won in this treaty, which everybody knows favors the French, that they will eventually get the throne of Spain.
- [46:02]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
What's so interesting is it's such an important moment in terms of showing off, in terms of propaganda, in this construction of the royal image. But the queen, Maria Theresa, well, frankly, seems to have operated a bit like a woman does in a Family tree. So often, like, here she is at the marriage, here she is a year later when she produces the dauphin, and then here she is when she dies. What can we make of the fact that we only have these moments where she assumes a public Persona? Why do we not see her in representations of Louis and the French state in the intervening period?
- [46:40]
Abby Zanger
I mean, she never really speaks French that well. So her position at the court is complicated. When she dies in 1683, we don't have recordings, right? We don't have Twitter and all of that, or X. But the king is said to have said, this is the only trouble she's ever caused me, dying. Because she does. She produces a lot of heirs. Within 18 months, there's a baby. So in this curiosity trope, curiosity cabinets, rich people, the king, they collected interesting things. Unicorn horns and shells and fancy curios and antiquities, and she's a piece in his curiosity cabinet. And when people come to look at a nobleman's curiosity cabinet, they're really not looking at the objects, although they are, but they're going, oh, wow, you're so amazing. Look what you collected. Right? And he did. He collected something really good. And. But he doesn't need her once he has an heir. And even though she has several daughters somewhere, I made a list of all the children. She has many children that die at birth or die young. There is a dauphin who lives and gets married and has children. And Louis lives so long that it's his great grandson that becomes Louis xv. That's how many. But she continues the Bourbon dynasty. So if we believe in DNA, I mean, the Bourbon dynasty is really the Habsburg dynasty, although she is the daughter of a Bourbon princess, Right? So this is something that they're thinking about, right? She becomes invisible. And you did a wonderful podcast on the mistresses of Louis xiv. I recommend everybody listening to this, go find that one. And, you know, he. His interests stray and he produces. Oh, my goodness, I wish I could remember the number. He has a lot of children, most of whom are illegitimate, but he legitimizes them, but they're not going to go to the throne because he has children also, not just with his wife and continues to have children as his wife, but also with his mistresses.
- [48:44]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Now, as I said earlier, you refer in your subtitle of your book to nuptial fictions. So can you talk me through that? Can we talk about the inconsistencies in the royal image that this close reading reveals? Right?
- [48:58]
Abby Zanger
So I think if we think about. Again, if we think about death, King is dead. Long live the king. There's an unending straight logic of substitution that allows this king to be unitary, strong, central, sun king, the center of everything. Right? But in fact, we have these. These moments, these images, these flying pamphlets that are peripheral to that, that are not him, but without which he cannot be that strong, unitary self substituting, eternally reconstructing, repeating power, which is the power of dynasty and the power of absolutism. And so for me, the nuptial fictions are the fictions that decenter. They're the liminality, they're the disorder, they're the glimpses that we get or that she has. It's the agency she has, right. She's not just a jewel encrusted machine, as Jean Marie Apostolides, one of the great theorists, along with Louis Marin, of the king's body and the king's representation suggests, you know, if she didn't have babies, if she didn't do this, if she didn't do that, if she looked differently, right. If she didn't recognize his. Him coyly, all those moments could take everything down. And it's also that vagary, that tension that I think makes people interested in that moment of the marriage and that keeps people also keyed in, I think, a little bit to the monarchy. I mean, if we think of the Louvre and the. It's a very intimate moment, right. And it becomes a power moment for people or a disempowerment moment for people, because who knows what you gave up to be that favorite. And it's that sort of intimacy that, yeah, people are curious about that. That makes the machine of representation and of power continue to run. So it's a dialectic. I don't believe it can ever be. I believe this eternally repeating thing is a myth. Right. It's the myth they have to create. But the reality is the monarchy replies depends on. On these other bodies, particularly her biological body, Right?
- [51:21]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Absolutely. So we have talked about this wonderful moment of the marriage in some detail, but we started by talking more generally about the fashioning of the royal image as it arrives as we get to the 1680s, as Versailles is built. So can you link the two? What does this early example teach us about the creation of Louis as a royal image, as a, you know, beginning of propaganda in his personal reign? How should we see it developing?
- [51:56]
Abby Zanger
So I think we know that he had a very powerful personal reign. We know, for example, from that famous portrait you can see in the Louvre of Rigaud, where his face is aging, but the rest of his body looks young, that they keep a lot of that up. But I think as we think about these people who lived so long ago, we need to remember that their images are constructed. I think we need to be suspicious of simplicity in understanding how their power works, just as I think today we need to be suspicious about representation in media and what it's telling us, because the symbolic sphere is processing a lot, a lot of tensions and complications, and it's just not that simple. Art is not that simple. Representation and media are not that simple. And yet a political regime has to attempt to flatten out the complexities in order to be powerful. And this is a great example of it, I think.
- [52:58]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Well, it's been wonderful doing a deep dive into this moment and getting your expert reading of exactly what what's going on. So, Professor Zanger, thank you so much for coming on the podcast and talking us through this. It's been an absolute treat.
- [53:14]
Abby Zanger
Thank you so much for having me. I've actually learned a lot talking to you too. Thank you.
- [53:19]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Thank you for listening to this episode of Not Just the Tudors From History Hit. Thank you also to my researcher Max Wintool, my producer Rob Weinberg, and to Amy Haddo, who edited this episode. We are always eager to hear from you, including receiving your brilliant ideas for subjects we can cover. So do drop us a line at notjusthetudors@historyhit.com and I look forward to joining you again for another episode. Next time on Not Just the Tudors From History Hit.
- [53:58]
Abby Zanger
Acast Powers the World's Best Podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend.
- [54:05]
Brooke Devard
Hello hello, it's Brooke Devard from Naked Beauty. Join me each week for unfiltered discussion about beauty trends, self care, journeys, wellness tips, and the products we absolutely love and cannot get enough of. If you are a skincare obsessive and you spend 20 plus minutes on your skincare routine, this podcast is for you. Or if you're a newbie at the beginning of your skincare journey, love this podcast as well because we go so much deeper than beauty. I talk to incredible and inspiring people from across industries about their relationship with beauty. You'll also hear from skincare experts. We break down lots of myths in the beauty industry. If this sounds like your thing, search for naked Beauty on your podcast app and listen along. I hope you'll join us.