Louis XIV is known as God's gift because his father and mother had to wait 23 years to have this child come into the world. Their marriage was not the best one, Anne being very unfulfilled, but one stormy wintry night the two somehow or other overcame former bad feelings between each other to bed down together when caught in a winter storm so that the end result (isn't it amazing what snowy weather will do?) was a child was born nine months later. Earlier, Louis XIII had made a special petition to the Virgin Mary and it seems that some prayers are answered as a young king was born and called God's Gift and obviously that saved the marriage for awhile. Because cohabitation must have been so good that another son is born two years later and he is named Philippe as all second sons were called and came to be known as Monsieur.
Philippe has a very sad history and is probably the most maligned person in the Royal household, but his mother was so fearful that a brother to the king might do what the brother of her husband had done to him that she insured that Louis would never be placed in jeopardy by his younger brother. She overcompensated giving Philippe more property and more worldy goods than she did her son who she trained so well to become the absolute monarch that she turned Philippe into a girl instead of a boy, and so he grew up liking girls clothing and make up better than male wear. He is famous for his homosexual or bisexual relationships, always seeming to be the recessive one in the relationship as his male lovers ruled him, but he was equally at home with women, giving both his wives children to prove that he could satisfy a woman in bed when necessary.
I have a special reason for explaining Philippe away as I had read the book by his second wife Liselotte, who is the funniest and most interesting woman in the court who is half in love with the king as was his first wife Henrietta who also preferred the king to her husband Philippe.
Philippe is a very special man, and is even more rigid when it comes to rules of order and etiquette at the court but at a very young age, twenty to be exact, he came into ownership of his own home, Saint Cloud, even long before Louis XIV had the Chateau du Versailles started.
Philippe is kept and prevented from ever entering into the many problems of government that his older brother had to undertake. He was trained early on how to be a playboy kind of person, having to satisfy whatever desires he may have had by useless and senseless games. He was reduced to a no nothing kind of person yet he was ever available and around to go with the king in many of the king's official duties. So he deserves a special kind of consideration in his relationship with the king who after all steals the show in every aspect and the world does revolve around the King as the planets do the sun, so that poor Philippe is barely even cast as the moon.
But poor Philippe is not to be pitied when one understands the truth about his situation. He does own his own home, is in possession of largesse, has the privileges and rights of a prince, which he knows how to perform better at time than his brother the King, and so he determines his own lifestyle, partying in Paris, becoming beloved by the Parisians, since the King does not enjoy Paris so much, and stays away from the major city rather than going into it. In the end, Philippe enjoyed his lifestyle which which was as extravagant and luxurious as his brothers, since he probably owned more diamonds and gemstones at times than the King had done...Both were well situated.
But at the root of it all, he was deeply jealous of the King, and the night before he died, he challenged and dared the king, finally letting loose of all his ill feelings, which naturally brought a case of apoplexy upon him from which he died. Way to go, Philippe, in a fit of temper tantrum...
At the chateau I took a photo of Philippe's portrait, and I took it twice, as I was afraid my batteries were nearly gone and wanted to make sure that I got that portrait. The second time I took it I was back in time, listening to Philippe again on that night that he had lit into me, and I knew immediately that all my intuitions and beliefs about him had been right all along...he was the one calling me "mechant" and taunting me...he did it again, or rather, I relived it again...I had slipped back once more...
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