Versailles
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One of the things about being awarded, or inheriting, a peerage or baronetcy in the Early Modern period was the necessity to keep up appearances. Great families would compete to have better servants than their contemporaries. Whilst employing a better butler or housekeeper would be a relatively inconspicuous maintenance issue, a designer or gardener could…
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… when a historical dramatisation stops after a few series? Versailles, with George Blagden as Louis XIV, had three series and the last concluded with the Affair of the Poisons as La Voisin was burned. Victoria, with Jenna Coleman, has also had three series so far but has only really covered Prince Albert’s lifetime so…
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A little later than our period, but sometimes a laugh pops up out of nowhere and I have to share. I was looking through catch-up TV and came upon the following blurb for an episode of the Royal Palaces series: “…Versailles is one of the most enormous and impressive palaces in the world. Louise…
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So, has the case of “The Man in the Iron Mask” been solved at last? The 1998 film suggested that, in accordance with Voltaire’s theory (via Dumas), he was Louis XIV‘s unknown elder twin, imprisoned since birth – in the same way that James II had a twin, Alexander, who died after a few hours.…
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The following is taken from this interview in History Extra “Q: Which three historical figures would you invite to a dinner party and why? “Queen Anne Neville. Frustratingly little is known of her life. I’d love to know if Anne was happily married to Richard III and how she felt about the events of 1483,…
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Versailles
Carlos II, confusion, Eustache Dauger, executions, fictionalisation, George Blagden, Henry Pole the Younger, Henry VIII, Ian Mortimer, Inside Versailles, James IV, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Kate Williams, Kathryn Warner, l’affaire des poisons, la Voisin, Louis XII, Louis XIII, Louis XIV, Man in the Iron Mask, Margaret “Tudor”, Maria Theresa, Marie Louise d’ Orleans, Mary “Tudor”, poison, VersaillesThree series of this Canale Plus production, showing a charismatic Louis XIV (George Blagden) decreeing a new palace outside Paris, have now been shown in the UK and it seems that a fourth will not now be made. It has much in common with “The Tudors ” in that it has been enjoyable from a…
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Yet another case
Audley case, BBC2, Bontems, Canale Plus, denialists, Duc de St. Simon, Edward IV, Elizabeth Wydeville, Fontainebleau, France, Harlay Archbishop of Paris, Jacquetta of Luxembourg, John Ashdown-Hill, Lady Eleanor Talbot, Louis XIV, Marquise de Maintenon, marriage law, morganatic marriage, Pere la Chaise, Richard Earl Rivers, Royal Marriage Secrets, Saudi Arabia, secret marriage, VersaillesThis year’s third series of “Versailles” reminded me of a further instance of secret marriage, even though some people maintain that nobody ever married in secret despite this case, that spawned two whole books, this one and this just decades ago, let alone Edward IV and Elizabeth Wydeville or her parents. In 1683 or 1684,…
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