winterhalters:September, 5th 1638 — birth of Louis XIV in the Château de Saint-Germain-en-LayeHistor
winterhalters:September, 5th 1638 — birth of Louis XIV in the Château de Saint-Germain-en-LayeHistorians have the compulsive need to see in Louis XIV the strong-minded monarch who elevated France as one of the most powerful countries in the 17th-century world — an iron fist to rule them all. Generation after generation depicted him as cold and calculating, politically greedy, lust-driven, ruthlessly ambitious, perpetually smothering the kingdom and its nobility for his own satisfaction and benefits. It’s no wonder why the apocryphal ‘L’État, c’est moi’ remains attached to his legacy. What does not fit the part, what does not quite match the ideal of a strong sovereign is often left out. The warm and cheerful character disappears, sacrificed in order to add more substance to the myth of the absolutist and somewhat tyrannical king: the manipulative, uncaring and controlling personality eclipses that of the loving and friendly man who once was — the exact opposite of the forever cherished, and greatly romanticized memory of his grandfather, Henri IV. -- source link
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