We’re Going to Paris Day 3: Louis XIV is the OG Kardashian

“A toutes les gloires de la France.”

“A too lay-“

“A toutes les gloires de la France.”

“A toutes les glar-“

“A toutes les gloires…”

“A toutes les glawr-“

“A toutes les gloires….”

“A toutes les glawhr-“

“Look at my mouth. A toutes les gloires de la France.”

“A toutes les gloires de la France.”

“Okay good. But for France, it’s pronounced like Fohnce.”

“Frohnce.”

“Fohnce.”

“Oh, like how a cholo would say it. Like if I was a Mexican teenager in Southern California. Fohnce.”

“Actually. Yes.”

“Hey foo, we in Fohnce bro.”

“That actually totally works.”

Mike and I grabbed pastries for breakfast and sandwiches for lunch from the local boulangerie before getting on the metro to Versailles. I handed Mike his metro carnet – I am responsible for the carnets because Mike is worried he would lose his – and we settle in for a nice, long ride to Versailles.

When we got to the metro stop, I pulled out my phone to look at directions for how to get from the stop to the chateau. After we turned a corner, I kept looking at my phone while walking for a few minutes until I finally looked up.

“I think we found it,” I said. Mike looked up too. And yeah. Versailles is pretty hard to miss. It’s sort of known for being hard to miss.

Hard to read, but it says "A TOUTES LES GLOIRES DE LA FRANCE."

Mike loves his statues, so he took 62 photos (probably) of the statues of Louis XIV on horseback out in front of Versailles. We got in line and so they could check our bags, showed them our tickets, went through more security, and then there was another line to actually enter the chateau, and I told Mike I would hold his backpack so he could run around and take pictures and he was SO EXCITED and also very bummed that the line moved so fast.

The ground floor of Versailles, when you first enter, is mostly dedicated to the history of the place. There is artwork and some models of rooms they had refurbished over the centuries, but they’re not recreating what it was like to actually live in Versailles at any point.

Louis XIV - aka the Sun King (and can we talk about the fact that he named himself the Sun King?) because nobody was his equal except the sun and he used sun imagery in all artwork of and about him for his whole life because the dude had balls - took Versailles, a small hunting lodge built for 15 men and no ladies, and made it into the monstrosity it is today. He did it for a few reasons. He didn’t want to be in the Louvre/Palace of the Tuileries anymore, because being in Paris meant having to deal with all those people who criticized the crown, and the man who called himself The Sun King was weirdly opposed to criticism. He also knew his legacy would be tied to the great works of art during his reign, and Versailles is definitely a work of art. Plus, there was a lot of land (Versailles was still pretty rural in the 1600s) and not a lot of Versailles yet, so he could really go to town on the renovations and do whatever he wanted.

Versailles, then, was constantly under construction during his reign, and many wings were still being reworked when he died. Parts of it were usable and stunning and jaw-dropping while he was alive and held court, but the chateau as a whole was definitely not “finished” when he passed on. Plus, and this might surprise you, building Versailles was stupid expensive. Whatever money France had when Louis XIV became king was pretty well depleted by the time Louis XV ascended to the throne. (Louis XV, of course, spent whatever was left and then some, and then Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette just kept that trend going until it all came to a head BOOM SORRY COULDN’T HELP IT.)

One of my favorite parts of Versailles is all the statues and paintings of various dudes in military outfits. These are all nobility and royalty trying to play like they saw any real amount of combat. All dressed up in fancy suits of armor for the artist before they go back to playing whist and drinking champagne.

Army had half a day today.

Louis XIV only rode to battle when his cherub could come too.

Getting to the “first floor” (which in the US is the second floor) changes things up. Each room here is based on a different Roman god, meant to awe visitors and nobility and showcase the splendor of the French monarchy. There are a million pictures that Mike took because the camera on his phone is much better than mine, so I got to just enjoy the rooms without worrying about cataloguing everything.

The issue with “just enjoying,” though, is that we were here in the middle of the day, and it was crowded. Some of these rooms had a fun funnel effect – one room would be enormous, the next room would be tiny, and everyone would be trying to move forward at the same time. I held on to Mike’s arm to go from the Hercules room to the Mars room.

“I hate crowds,” I told Mike. “Sort of a fun, quirky fact about me.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. It’s something that makes me unique and special. I hate crowds. I know. Pretty wild.”

But really, I do hate crowds, and I latched onto Mike’s arm and looked down at the floor and focused on breathing until we got to a place where I was able to chill a bit.

Everything is covered in gold. At one point, Versailles was famous for all of it’s pure silver furniture. Just furniture entirely made out of silver all over the place. First of all, that’s gonna clash with the gold everywhere. Second of all, how long are you expecting that silver furniture to even last? What is that? Anyway, that furniture got melted down to pay for wars, but the legend lived on.

 

V relaxing bedroom setup.

Even his council room, where he worked on matters of state, is garish. How does anyone get work done in a room like this?

His council study: a room that screams "serious business only plz."

Everything here was performance. Even the bedrooms weren’t private. Louis XIV thought it was his kingly duty to live literally his entire life on display. When he ate dinner, there were courtiers invited to watch, and they would comment on everything, from what he ate to what he wore to the littlest movement of his hand.

“I would hate this,” I told Mike. “I would hate being watched all the time like this.”

“Me too.”

“I also don’t see what any of this has to do with running a country. Like, he did this to himself for no reason.”

“Yeah.”

“He’s the OG Kardashian.”

“Yes.”

Louis XIV was more focused on consolidating power and having everyone tell him how great he was all the time than actually running the country, from what I could tell. He fought wars for his own glory. He did just about jack shit for the average subject, but he did build this gaudy, ostentatious, over-the-top, ridiculous palace so people for centuries in the future could remember the greatness of the Sun King.

And for the most part, his legacy is exactly what he wanted it to be. He probably had a stronger personality than either his predecessor or his successors, but as far as being a good king goes, I can’t imagine he was actually much better. He got lucky. He acceded to power with some money in the coffers (which neither Louis XV or Louis XVI did). And he died before a lot of any revolutionary or democratic ideals took hold in Western Europe.

When Louis XIV died in 1715, Louis XV was only 5 years old, which meant he needed a regent. The Duke of Orleans, Louis XIV’s nephew, stepped up and allowed for a little constitutional – the nobility had a bit of a voice, some political power. When Louis XV became king, that went away. But you can only put that cat back in the bag for so long. So thanks for nothing, Duke of Orleans!

And then we wandered around the Hall of Battles, which was built as a museum by Louis-Philippe, a direct descendent of the Duke of Orleans and King of France from 1830-1848 as a way to hold up his legitimacy to the throne and the splendor of the monarchy in order to strengthen his rule. Mixed success there – eighteen years as king is chill, being overthrown in violent revolution is not.

After that, we wandered around the gardens. Ate our sandwiches for lunch. Admired the grand canal. Went to the Petite Trianon, where Marie Antoinette would sometimes stay to get away from the rigors of Versailles. Went to the little hamlet Marie Antoinette had created so she could feel like a peasant and also because people like Jean-Jacques Rousseau believed land was where the real riches were.

Eating a sandwich.

Casual.

Very casual.

Actually, the hamlet is exquisite. I mean, it’s totally fake. It’s a fairy tale version of peasant life, obviously, but it’s real cute. And because it’s October, there are all these pumpkins! Aw!!!!

"Hold on, I'm being artsy right now."

“When I first heard about this, I thought ‘oh, god that’s so dumb,’” Mike told me. “But now I kinda want to live here.”

“Both things can be true.”

“Yeah. Yeah, maybe you’re right.”

“I could see you living here. Get up in the morning. Walk outside. Stretch. Have a cup of coffee. Do your history research. Go on a walk. Take the dog. You’d have a dog. Like a mutt.”

“A rescue.”

“Yeah, a rescue mutt. Come back. Do more of your history research and writing. Take your shirt off at some point because you hate wearing a shirt.”

“I can’t decide if I would bring video games here or not. Like, maybe I would come here to get away from video games.”

“You’d last a month without video games.”

“That’s pretty impressive actually.”

“Yeah. I mean, it would be because you’d be too lazy to get them in the first place. And then finally your desire for video games would overcome your laziness and you would get them. And everyone would be like ‘wow, you really held out,’ and you’d be like ‘yeah, I did,’ but you wouldn’t say why.”

“Yes. That is all exactly true.”

We took the metro back into Paris and decided to get dinner around the Eiffel Tower. We won’t really have time to explore the Eiffel Tower during the day on this trip, so we decided to go at night.

“So this guy, Rigault, before the Commune in 1871 was kind of a layabout, but then he started reading about Marat and Robespierre and the terror in the 1790’s, and his response to the whole thing was ‘I can do a better job.’ Can you believe that? How is that your response to the Terror?”

“He sounds chill.”

“This one English miss, Lille Mourton, wanted to leave Paris, and had to apply to him for a passport to do so – because he was the police chief of the Commune at this point – and he told her it was a shame she was leaving, because he imagined ‘Paris would be very attractive for a girl like you.’”

“So he was being a dick.”

“He was hitting on her.”

“He was hitting on her by being a dick.”

“Yeah. So when he thought to himself ‘I could do a better job,’ he started researching the police – what we might call a police state now, honestly – and just kept criticizing all the- oh my god, I’ve never seen it in person before.”

I looked up and there was the very top 1/16^th of the Eiffel Tower, not a big deal, but enough to stop Mike’s thought process in his tracks because he was so excited to finally see the Eiffel Tower in person his brain went blank.

He is a big ol’ cutie, my boyfriend!

Eiffel Tower nbd.

We went across the Seine to watch a light show on the Trocadero. And then we ate at a very Americanized version of Italian food, which was fine, and then we had dessert at a place called Carette, which is maybe famous? Anyway, there we finally had our hot chocolate. Maeve recommended another place – DOSE – which we’re planning on going to as well, but I’m stoked Carette finally came through for me on the hot chocolate front.

"Jean-Paul Sartre quote here." 

Anyway, this post has been real long, because there is a whole lot to say about Versailles and the Eiffel Tower and hot chocolate. Tomorrow is the Louvre and some other random shit. Very excited.