Dance at Court: the Use of Dance and Opera at the Cort of Versailles Under the Sun King

Dance at Court: the Use of Dance and Opera at the Cort of Versailles Under the Sun King

Before Louis was even born, France was struggling with disintegration despite the efforts of CardinalRichelieu for cultural unity by regulation of language and literary expression. The king, Louis XIII had been very sickly his whole life, struggling with tuberculosis, and by 1637, his health began its terminal decline. The expected heir to the throne was the king’s younger brother, Gaston d’Orléans whose succession would have meant victory of the political Catholicism in France and subjection to Spain. Gaston was extremely hostile toward his older brother and had the support of their exiled mother who openly disrespected her elder son, the king. “Debauched and frequently disgraced, Gaston had long been the irresponsible rallying point of a disaffected nobility being progressively stripped of its authority. He had been involved in multiple conspiracies to dethrone his elder brother, to take his place and to murder Richelieu, his brother’s mentor as well as his chief minister,” (Levi 11). Had Gaston succeeded in any of his endeavors, history would be drastically different; instead of the strongest monarch in European history and what William Durant calls the French zenith, {draw:a} France would have experience political fragmentation, destruction of cultural identity, and the restoration of the feudal system. The only hope was for a male heir to survive long enough to become king, otherwise, all the work to politically and culturally unify the country would have been in vain. The situation looked bleak given that the king’s wife, Anne of Austria, had suffered four miscarriages during twenty-two years {draw:frame} of marriage to Louis XIII (she was thirty-seven in 1638) in addition to being alienated from her husband for at least twelve years (probably more) due to the king’s reported homosexual tendencies. Therefore, it was with great joy that France received Louis XIV; his father was even reported to have interrupted his dinner and fallen to his knees to thank God...

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