De zonnekoning

The Sun King is a dazzling double portrait of Louis XIV and
Versailles, recreating the daily life of the King, his court,
and his ministers during France’s golden age. Nancy Mitford
introduces us to the architects, artists, and gardeners tasked
with transforming a modest hunting lodge into the most magnificent
palace Europe had ever seen, delves into the complex
and deadly court intrigues afoot in the new capital, and
chronicles Louis’s love affairs with a succession of mistresses
including the brilliant feuding marquises of Montespan and
Maintenon. Along the way we find Jean-Baptiste de Lully and
his fiddlers, floating behind the King’s gondola on summer
nights in Versailles; Racine translating Latin aloud to his
insomniac monarch; the Premier Médecin du Roi, Guy Crescent
Fagon, bleeding one royal after another to death—and at the
center of them all the demanding, mercurial, but remarkably
resilient personality of France’s sovereign for nearly three
quarters of the Grand Siècle.

Brimming with sumptuous detail and delicious bons mots, and
written in a witty, conversational style The Sun King restores a
distant glittering century to vibrant life.