#Louis Philippe of Orleans

[weirdlookindog]

Stefan Eggeler (1894-1969) - "Philippe Égalité"

illustration from Hanns Heinz Ewers' 'Die Herzen der Könige', 1922

[starrybeedraws]

So, the quality is now shit thanks to whatever made it this way. But it’s alright! Due to my current hyperfixation on Louis XIV and his court, I decided to listen to my friend’s request and draw them as MLP characters.

[wonder-worker]

"Times of crisis, fledgling sovereignty, and social upheaval produce the ideal conditions for the flourishing of bespoke rumor, innuendo, and propaganda; and the closing stage of the Hundred Years War is a case in point worthy of attentive analysis. Whispers of sorcery and treason against Valentina Visconti; Isabeau of Bavaria’s supposed wantonness and maternal negligence; Philippe the Bold’s mighty endeavors to secure the ascendancy of his House; his son Jean the Fearless’s effective spin as an honest broker and reforming duke despite his very dirty hands, notably his “justifiable” murder of his rival, the “tyrant” Louis of Orleans; the debunking of his defense (and the subsequent in kind retribution meted out to Burgundy by Orleans loyalists) are telling illustrations of pre-modern bespoke rumor, innuendo, and propaganda. Add to these Henry V’s God-sanctioned victory at Agincourt cast as just punishment for a transgressive France (which not only resonated with the French but validated the domestic English politicking of newly minted Lancastrian sovereignty); the initially successful delegitimization and disinheritance of the dauphin Charles with the Treaty of Troyes; the parallel golden myth/black legend of Joan of Arc (and her rehabilitation)—instances all of the ways in which rumor, propaganda, and innuendo were pressed into the service of those seeking traction at the end of the Hundred Years War."

-Zita Eva Rohr, "True Lies and Strange Mirrors: The Uses and Abuses of Rumor, Propaganda, and Innuendo During the Closing Stages of the Hundred Years War," Queenship, Gender, and Reputation in the Medieval and Early Modern West, 1060-1600 (Edited by Zita Eva Rohr and Lisa Benz)

[roehenstart]

Equestrian portrait of Louis-Philippe I (1773-1850). By Horace Vernet.

[royalty-nobility]

Louis Philippe d'Orléans (1725-1785) as Duke of Orléans

Artist: Alexander Roslin (Swedish, 1718–1793)

Title: The Duke of Chartres, later Duke of Orléans

Date: c. 1770

Medium: Oil on Canvas

Collection: Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, Sweden

Louis Philippe I, Duke of Orléans

Louis Philippe I, Duke of Orléans (12 May 1725 – 18 November 1785), known as le Gros (the Fat), was a French royal of a cadet branch of the House of Bourbon. The First Prince of the Blood after 1752, he was the most senior male at the French court after the immediate royal family. He was the father of Philippe Égalité. He greatly augmented the already huge wealth of the House of Orléans.

Louis Philippe d'Orléans was born at the Palace of Versailles. As the only son of Louis, Duke of Orléans, and his wife Johanna of Baden-Baden, he was titled Duke of Chartres at birth. He was one of two children; his younger sister Louise Marie d'Orléans died at Saint-Cloud in 1728 aged a year and eight months. Louis Philippe's father, who had been devoted to his wife, became a recluse and pious as he grew older.

[dreamconsumer]

Louis-Philippe d'Orléans, dit le Gros (1725-1785). Par Nicolas-André Courtois.

[classic-art-favourites]

Louis Philippe, King of the French by Franz Xaver Winterhalter, 1841.

[alexanderpearce]

they hate him for his effeminacy and for his military prowess

[coquette2004]

The seventeenth century was the century of queer pride, in my opinion.

You: “Men were men and women were women in the 17th century”

Me: 

Philippe d’Orleans, brother of Louis XIV, flagrantly gay and dandy, in a long term relationship with the Chevalier de Lorraine, and loved to dress in female clothing too.

Hortense Mancini, royal mistress and female libertine, flagrantly bisexual and enjoyed to dress as a man on the odd occasion. 

Aphra Behn, poet and playwright, general libertine, most probably a lesbian and defied gender roles by managing to make it big in a man’s world some 200 years before feminism was a thing. Also advocated racial equality and denounced slavery.

James I, King of England (and Scotland), VERY VERY GAY. Boyfriends included the 1st Duke of Buckingham and Esme Stewart.

John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, one of the greatest soldiers in history but also “irresistible to either men or women” 

John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, a poet and libertine who was defying ideas about masculinity anyway but who, on the good authroity of @thepurposeofplaying, was probably not cisgender.

Anne, Queen of Great Britain who was most probably gay and had romantic relationships with Sarah Churchill and Abigail Masham.

It was extremely in vogue for women to dress up as gentlemen, mainly for the pleasure of men, but also because they damn well wanted to because THEY LOOKED GOOD. Here is Elisabeth Charlotte of the Palatinate, Duchess of Orleans, in her male attire: 

Mary of Modena, Queen of England, in her attire:

And here is Lady Frances Stewart (who, incidentally, was the model for Britannia, the personfication of Great Britain) in her attire: 

Here’s what contemporaries have to say about the fashion styles of the age: 

“A strange effeminate age when men strive to imitate women in their apparell, viz. long periwigs, patches in their faces, painting, short wide breeches like petticoats, muffs, and their clothes highly scented, bedecked with ribbons of all colours. And this apparell was not only used by gentlemen and others of inferior quality, but by souldiers especially those of the Life Guard to the King, who would have spanners hanging on one side and a muff on the other, and when dirty weather some of them would relieve their gards in pattens.

On the other side, women would strive to be like men, viz., when they rode on horseback or in coaches weare plush caps like monteros, whether full of ribbons or feathers, long perwigs which men use to wear, and riding coat of a red colour all bedaubed with lace which they call vests, and this habit was chiefly used by the ladies and maids of honour belonging to the Queen, brought in fashion about anno 1662″

OH AND LET’S NOT FORGET MEN’’S HIGH HEELS:

Both of these belong to King Louis XIV of France.

Also, men didn’t start powdering their wigs until the 1700s which is the 18th century, you troll.

If you’re going to be homophobic and transphobic, try and be accurate next time. You wouldn’t want to be historically inaccurate.

LASTLY, a word from Philippe d’Orleans:

[histoireettralala]

Victor Hugo on Talleyrand's death

For @empirearchives who was interested, here's a translation of Victor Hugo's text about Talleyrand's death. My thanks to @microcosme11 for her help <33

Choses Vues, Victor Hugo

1838

Talleyrand

19th of May

In the Rue St-Florentin, there is a palace and a sewer.

The palace, with its noble, rich, and dull architecture, was long called "Hôtel de l'Infuntado"; today, we read on its front door: Hôtel Talleyrand. During the fourty years he lived on this street, the last host of this palace might never have set eyes on this sewer.

He was a stranged, feared, and considerable character: his name was Charles-Maurice de Périgord; he was noble as Machiavel, a priest like Gondi, defrocked like Fouché, witty as Voltaire, and lame as the devil. One could say that everything limped with him: the nobility which he had put to the service of the republic, the priesthood he had dragged on the Champ-de-Mars then threw down the drain, the marriage he had broken by twenty scandals and by a voluntary separation, the wit he dishonoured through vileness. This man, nevertheless, had grandeur.

The splendours of both regimes were mixed together inside of him: he was prince of the old kingdom of France, and prince of the French Empire.

For thirty years, from the depth of his palace, from the depth of his mind, he had just about led Europe. He had let the revolution call him "tu", and had smiled at it, ironically of course; but it had not noticed. He had approached, known, observed, pierced, stirred, upturned, delved into, mocked, intellectually fertilized all the men of his era, all the ideas of his century, and there had been a few minutes in his life when, holding in his hand the four or five fearsome threads that moved the civilized universe, he had had for a puppet Napoleon the First, Emperor of the French, King of Italy, Protector of the Confederation of the Rhine, Mediator of the Swiss Confederation. Such was the game this man played.

After the Revolution of July, that old race, whose grand chambellan he was, having fallen, he found himself standing on one foot and told the people of 1830, sitting, bare-armed, on a pile of cobbles: Make me your ambassador.

He had received Mirabeau's last confession and Thiers' first confidence. He had said himself he was a great poet and had made a trilogy in three dynasties: Act I, Buonaparte's Empire; Act 2, The House of Bourbon; Act 3, The House of Orleans.

He had done all of this in his palace, and, in this palace, like a spider in its web, he had attracted into it and taken successively heroes, thinkers, great men, conquerors, kings, princes, emperors, Bonaparte, Sieyès, Mme de Staël, Chateaubriand, Benjamin Constant, Alexander of Russia, Wilhelm of Prussia, Francis of Austria, Louis XVIII, Louis-Philippe, all the golden, shiny flies who buzzed in the history of those last fourty years. The whole sparkling swarm, fascinated by this man's deep eye, had successively passed under the dark door that bore, written on its architrave: Hôtel Talleyrand.

Well, the day before yesterday, 17 March, 1838, that man died. Doctors came and embalmed the corpse. For this, like the Egyptians, they first withdrew the bowels from the belly and the brain from the skull. Once done, after they had transformed the prince de Talleyrand into a mummy, and nailed this mummy in a white satin-lined coffin, they withdrew, leaving upon a table the brain, that brain which thought so many things, inspired so many men, built so many edifices, led two revolutions, fooled twenty kings, contained the world.

Once the doctors were gone, a valet entered, he saw what they had left. Hold on! they forgot this. What to do ? He remembered that there was a sewer in the street, he went there, and threw that brain into this sewer.

Finis rerum.

[palecleverdoll]

Ages of English Princesses at First Marriage

I have only included women whose birth dates and dates of marriage are known within at least 1-2 years, therefore, this is not a comprehensive list. The average age at first marriage among these women was 16.

This list is composed of princesses of England when it was a sovereign state, prior to the Acts of Union in 1707.

Eadgyth (Edith) of England, daughter of Edward the Elder: age 20 when she married Otto the Great, Holy Roman Emperor in 930 CE

Godgifu (Goda) of England, daughter of Æthelred the Unready: age 20 when she married Drogo of Mantes in 1024 CE

Empress Matilda, daughter of Henry I: age 12 when she married Henry, Holy Roman Emperor, in 1114 CE

Marie I, Countess of Boulogne, daughter of Stephen of Blois: age 24 when she was abducted from her abbey by Matthew of Alsace and forced to marry him, in 1136 CE

Matilda of England, daughter of Henry II: age 12 when she married Henry the Lion in 1168 CE

Eleanor of England, daughter of Henry II: age 9 when she married Alfonso VIII of Castile in 1170 CE

Joan of England, daughter of Henry II: age 12 when she married William II of Sicily in 1177 CE

Joan of England, daughter of John Lackland: age 11 when she married Alexander II of Scotland in 1221 CE

Isabella of England, daughter of John Lackland: age 21 when she married Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, in 1235 CE

Eleanor of England, daughter of John Lackland: age 9 when she married William Marshal, Earl of Pembroke in 1224 CE

Margaret of England, daughter of Henry III: age 11 when she married Alexander III of Scotland in 1251 CE

Beatrice of England, daughter of Henry III: age 17 when she married John II, Duke of Brittany in 1260 CE

Eleanor of England, daughter of Edward I: age 24 when she married Henry III, Count of Bar in 1293 CE

Joan of Acre, daughter of Edward I: age 18 when she married Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloucester in 1290 CE

Margaret of England, daughter of Edward I: age 15 when she married John II, Duke of Brabant in 1290 CE

Elizabeth of Rhuddlan, daughter of Edward I: age 15 when she married John I, Count of Holland in 1297 CE

Eleanor of Woodstock, daughter of Edward II: age 14 when she married Reginald II, Duke of Guelders in 1332 CE

Joan of the Tower, daughter of Edward II: age 7 when she married David II of Scotland in 1328 CE

Isabella of England, daughter of Edward III: age 33 when she married Enguerrand VII, Lord of Coucy in 1365 CE

Mary of Waltham, daughter of Edward III: age 16 when she married John IV, Duke of Brittany in 1361 CE

Margaret of Windsor, daughter of Edward III: age 13 when she married John Hastings, Earl of Pembroke in 1361 CE

Blanche of England, daughter of Henry IV: age 10 when she married Louis III, Elector Palatine in 1402 CE

Philippa of England, daughter of Henry IV: age 12 when she married Eric of Pomerania in 1406 CE

Elizabeth of York, daughter of Edward IV: age 20 when she married Henry VII in 1486 CE

Cecily of York, daughter of Edward IV: age 16 when she married Ralph Scrope in 1485 CE

Anne of York, daughter of Edward IV: age 19 when she married Thomas Howard in 1494 CE

Catherine of York, daughter of Edward IV: age 16 when she married William Courtenay, Earl of Devon in 1495 CE

Margaret Tudor, daughter of Henry VII: age 14 when she married James IV of Scotland in 1503 CE

Mary Tudor, daughter of Henry VII: age 18 when she married Louis XII of France in 1514 CE

Mary I, daughter of Henry VIII: age 38 when she married Philip II of Spain in 1554 CE

Elizabeth Stuart, daughter of James VI & I: age 17 when she married Frederick V, Elector Palatine in 1613 CE

Mary Stuart, daughter of Charles I: age 10 when she married William II, Prince of Orange in 1641 CE

Henrietta Stuart, daughter of Charles I: age 17 when she married Philippe II, Duke of Orleans in 1661 CE

Mary II of England, daughter of James II: age 15 when she married William III of Orange in 1677 CE

Anne, Queen of Great Britain, daughter of James II: age 18 when she married George of Denmark in 1683 CE

[pureanonofficial]

LES MIS LETTERS IN ADAPTATION - Louis Philippe, LM 4.1.3 (Les Miserables 1972)

The son of a father to whom history will accord certain attenuating circumstances, but also as worthy of esteem as that father had been of blame; possessing all private virtues and many public virtues; careful of his health, of his fortune, of his person, of his affairs, knowing the value of a minute and not always the value of a year; sober, serene, peaceable, patient; a good man and a good prince; sleeping with his wife, and having in his palace lackeys charged with the duty of showing the conjugal bed to the bourgeois, an ostentation of the regular sleeping-apartment which had become useful after the former illegitimate displays of the elder branch; knowing all the languages of Europe, and, what is more rare, all the languages of all interests, and speaking them; an admirable representative of the “middle class,” but outstripping it, and in every way greater than it; possessing excellent sense, while appreciating the blood from which he had sprung, counting most of all on his intrinsic worth, and, on the question of his race, very particular, declaring himself Orleans and not Bourbon; thoroughly the first Prince of the Blood Royal while he was still only a Serene Highness, but a frank bourgeois from the day he became king; diffuse in public, concise in private; reputed, but not proved to be a miser; at bottom, one of those economists who are readily prodigal at their own fancy or duty; lettered, but not very sensitive to letters; a gentleman, but not a chevalier; simple, calm, and strong; adored by his family and his household; a fascinating talker, an undeceived statesman, inwardly cold, dominated by immediate interest, always governing at the shortest range, incapable of rancor and of gratitude, making use without mercy of superiority on mediocrity, clever in getting parliamentary majorities to put in the wrong those mysterious unanimities which mutter dully under thrones; unreserved, sometimes imprudent in his lack of reserve, but with marvellous address in that imprudence; fertile in expedients, in countenances, in masks; making France fear Europe and Europe France!

Incontestably fond of his country, but preferring his family; assuming more domination than authority and more authority than dignity, a disposition which has this unfortunate property, that as it turns everything to success, it admits of ruse and does not absolutely repudiate baseness, but which has this valuable side, that it preserves politics from violent shocks, the state from fractures, and society from catastrophes; minute, correct, vigilant, attentive, sagacious, indefatigable; contradicting himself at times and giving himself the lie; bold against Austria at Ancona, obstinate against England in Spain, bombarding Antwerp, and paying off Pritchard; singing the Marseillaise with conviction, inaccessible to despondency, to lassitude, to the taste for the beautiful and the ideal, to daring generosity, to Utopia, to chimæras, to wrath, to vanity, to fear; possessing all the forms of personal intrepidity; a general at Valmy; a soldier at Jemappes; attacked eight times by regicides and always smiling. Brave as a grenadier, courageous as a thinker; uneasy only in the face of the chances of a European shaking up, and unfitted for great political adventures; always ready to risk his life, never his work; disguising his will in influence, in order that he might be obeyed as an intelligence rather than as a king; endowed with observation and not with divination; not very attentive to minds, but knowing men, that is to say requiring to see in order to judge; prompt and penetrating good sense, practical wisdom, easy speech, prodigious memory; drawing incessantly on this memory, his only point of resemblance with Cæsar, Alexander, and Napoleon; knowing deeds, facts, details, dates, proper names, ignorant of tendencies, passions, the diverse geniuses of the crowd, the interior aspirations, the hidden and obscure uprisings of souls, in a word, all that can be designated as the invisible currents of consciences; accepted by the surface, but little in accord with France lower down; extricating himself by dint of tact; governing too much and not enough; his own first minister; excellent at creating out of the pettiness of realities an obstacle to the immensity of ideas; mingling a genuine creative faculty of civilization, of order and organization, an indescribable spirit of proceedings and chicanery, the founder and lawyer of a dynasty; having something of Charlemagne and something of an attorney; in short, a lofty and original figure, a prince who understood how to create authority in spite of the uneasiness of France, and power in spite of the jealousy of Europe.

[roehenstart]

Portrait of Louis Philippe I (1725-1785), Duke of Orleans. By Alexander Roslin.

[leducdeorleans]

Me as a Person: Philippe de Orleans was fashion forward, intelligent, knew peoples royal pedigrees back to the age of William the Conqueror, and wore loud floral perfume.

Me as a History teacher to teenagers: So this is Louis XIV's younger brother, he was gay, wore dresses, told his brother he'd stop being gay when Louis stopped sleeping with all the women at court then sashay'd away.

My Students: YAAASS HE WAS GIRL BOSS!

....who let me teach teenagers who now want to make a giant poster of Monsieur with"gatekeep, girl boss" or something or another?

[maggiec70]

If you could punch any king (From Louis XVIII onwards), who would you choose? Also, which one of the last monarchs of France is the worst in your opinion?

L18, aka the Obese, gets some credit for trying--or giving the appearance of trying--to avoid being an absolute monarch and an absolute ass. He was about as effective as two-day-old pasta, but at least he caused no actual harm and managed to keep his brother and his cronies in line most of the time. So no punch from me here. However, I'd cheerfully take out the supercilious, egotistical, idiotic, and narcissistic Charles X, of whom nothing good can be said. He definitely revived absolutism and divine right, with an equally deluded fool, de Polignac, as his chief minister, who frequently said he only spoke to God and the King. Charles and his entire worthless family were run out of town just shy of being tarred and feathered and escaped to live in exile in England for the remainder of their worthless lives. Definitely a veritable fusillade of punches from me here.

The last, of course, of the totally useless and largely brain-dead Bourbon/Orleans scions was Louis-Philippe, or the "pear-shaped monarch," as I've often called him in class. He was the patron saint of the wealthy bourgeoisie and lavished the same sorts of financial and social wealth and perks on them as the collective Louis did for the aristocracy. I wouldn't punch Pear-shaped L-P, but I would certainly flip him off as he waddled off to permanent exile in London in 1848.