some Monsieur and Chev passages from Erlanger's book I particularly liked ^^ obligatory this book is like 73 years old btw
The two young men bind themselves with solemn oaths: the knight declares that he is devoted to the Duke of Orléans “more than to the King” and “that he will always be his”; Monsieur swears never to hide anything from his friend. However, a sense of dread and terror haunts him: isn’t the all-too-charming young man in danger of falling, in turn, into the snares that Madame is sure to set before him? The knight solemnly pledges to avoid the siren’s traps, and Philippe, reassured, sets off for Villers-Cotterets, where he must prepare for his brother’s upcoming visit.
pg 109
At the headquarters in Lille, Monsieur descends into the trench where the Chevalier is stationed and, once again, displays a martial demeanor. It is compared, with somewhat rebellious hyperbole, to that of the King, who is forced, against his will, to exercise a certain degree of caution. Had he studied more carefully, Philippe might have taken pleasure in evoking the Sacred Battalion and the heroic romances of the Theban warriors. A grenade strikes the Chevalier in the foot. Now Monsieur is distraught. Never has he shown such vehement affection for a favorite. He takes the wounded man into his home, spends days at his bedside, and receives visitors who come to inquire after his health as if they were paying a “courtesy” to him personally. Hearing the knight’s courage praised fills him with joy.
Monsieur was lost. At a crossroads, at the very moment when his courage was giving virtue a chance, he had encountered vice wearing the most dangerous of masks—the one that takes on the features of love. For—and this is the tragic aspect of this deplorable adventure… Philippe d’Orléans truly loved Philippe de Lorraine. He loved him for thirty years, thirty years during which the corrupter was his master, and also the only person capable of consoling him for a misery he felt all too keenly; thirty years during which every movement of his heart served to debase him further. The unfortunate man was born under the sign of betrayal. Betrayed by his mother, betrayed by his wife, he was to be betrayed once more by his friend. And always to the benefit of his brother.
A little comic out inspired by Philippe's adoration for his first daughter, Marie-Louise. Of course, it's very silly, but unfortunately rooted in a lot of very complicated things linked to the implication of having a girl back then. I guess I wanted to show some excitment at the idea of having a girl, even if it's for silly reasons, because of how many gender reveal disappointments and disaster videos we see online these days...
A bit more below, ainsi que la version française !
Henriette explicitly didn't want a girl, and she was said to have deplored that Marie-Louise wasn't a boy to the point of not even wanting to see her. In a letter sent to his aunt, Philippe says that he didn't think it was necessary to send a man to deliver the news, since it's "only" a girl, though he finds her really adorable.
As it stood, Henriette could only really secure her position as the duchess of Orleans if she had a boy, as it was her primary "duty". Like many others in her time, she grew up in fear and insecurity; she'd been rejected by the king as a child, and she now had to assert her position in court, as well as her "relevancy". The news of her baby being a girl was simply a source of deep worry and stress, considering that her bad constitution made pregnancies particularly taxing.
Speaking of which, it's often said that Monsieur deliberately made her pregnant over and over out of spite, to keep her out of parties and compromise her health further; it's a bit of a skewed interpretation of the events, naturally. Sure, Monsieur has been odious to her--they both have, as they simply made the worst come out of each other; a shame, given how well they used to get along. Once again, looking not only at the facts but also at the political reality of the times: Henriette was pregnant about once a year; a similar rhythm as Liselotte, the main difference is that it happened nine times for Henriette, and only three for Liselotte. Why that difference? Well, we can't read their minds retrospectively, but once fact is observable: they didn't have a boy yet, and it mattered to Henriette at least as much as it did to Philippe.
I guess I wanted to elaborate on that a little as, while I'm sure most people around here know, I don't want for Henriette to simply seem so dismissive of Marie-Louise out of pure misogyny; it's a lot of sad, complicated factors.
i'm a shipper at heart so every Louis XIV/Monsieur/Chevalier related book or article i always pay extra attention to the arrest scene:
A terrible incident occurred in the prince’s chamber at the New Castle of Saint-Germain when His Highness’s retinue was seized by a violent panic. The King’s guards had stormed the apartment, barricading the doors and windows. For a moment, Monsieur believed they were after him personally. It was far worse: the Count d’Ayen, captain of the guards, had orders to arrest the Chevalier de Lorraine. Monsieur’s cries of despair were in vain. He had no choice but to obey. After receiving a final embrace from his weeping friend, the Chevalier left the room, then handed his sword to M. d’Ayen. As soon as he lost sight of him, Monsieur fainted.
Two days later, the favorite arrived in Lyon, where he was detained in the fortress of Pierre-Encize under the archbishop’s supervision. The event left the Court in a state of shock.
i probably read almost a dozen different versions on how the arrest could've played out (regardless of accuracy) and each one makes my heart ache for Monsieur❤️🩹
May I request a Louis XIV? 🥺 Or his brother Monsieur since he is so cute
🌞 He says hello!!!
Monsieur will get his own post when I have a little bit more time,, I was going to squeeze them in together but he deserves his own illustration 🙂↕️ so do wait for thatt,, thank you so much for the request!!
A true story that I never tire to read, by Liselotte, who reports that Philippe sometimes needed her to decypher what he wrote. Here is the exact quote from one of Liselotte's letters:
His writing was so terrible that he often brought for me to read the letters that he himself wrote, and he'd say, laughing: "You are, Madame, used to my writing; take a look at this, I don't know what I wrote. We often laughed about this.
And we can confirm that it's terrible, indeed, with the examples below the cut:
(FR en dessous)
A few stunning examples from Elisabetta Lurgo's work on his letters)
FR:
Et la citation de Liselotte sur laquelle est basée la BD:
Il écrivait si mal qu'il m'apportait souvent, pour les lires, les lettres qu'il avait faites, et il disait en riant: Vous êtes, Madame, accoutumée à mon écriture; lisez-moi un peu cela, je ne sais ce que j'ai écrit. Nous en avons souvent ri de bon coeur.
Has reading Philippe and the Chevalier's biographies been turning me into an actual shipper?
Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo-----
Okay so it totally did and I really wanted to translate this particular passage from Chev's bio because it's just... everything to me in this particular moment.
Also, yeah, it motivated me to depict their relationship which is definitely not necessarily "equal" but far more reciprocal, in a very literal sense, than what either have typically been credited for historically.
More (a lot more), including the translation, below!
oh, and isolated versions to better see, uwu
Pictures of the OG text can be found below for those who want to read the original french version!
Translation of pages 198 to 202 of Chev’s biography by Joan Pieragnoli
Two years had passed between the chevalier’s arrest and his return to Court. The duke of Orleans hadn’t made use of these lengthy months to learn how to live without his favorite. It is often said, paraphrasing La Rochefoucauld, that absence weakens mediocre passions and strengthens the great ones, like wind puts candles out but fans fires. Upon Philippe de Lorraine’s return, Monsieur hadn’t had enough, quite the opposite.
More than ever, his lover inspired an amorous passion that the brother of the king lived like an addiction, but that contemporaries interpreted in various ways. Francesco Michieli, venetian ambassador, attests of that, when he describes the duke of Orleans inspecting the “approaches” during the siege of Zutphen:
We speak highly of the prince in this enterprise, praising his courage, and saying that, often exposing himself to danger, he reaches the last approaches with a sensible passion for the chevalier of Lorraine, who benefits from a distinguished place in the gracious spirit of His Royal Highness, such that, to distract him from peril, it is said that he [the chevalier] resolutely protested risking his own person like that, exposing himself to enemy outrage. By that, he shows that he understands how much the duke favored him with such a generous and partial sentiment, that with so much evidence of his goodness, he had more than once shown to the court of France and to the world that he wouldn’t walk away from danger before His Royal Highness was at a safe distance from the approaches. With such fervent and reverential marks of affection brought to the conservation of such an esteemed prince, the chevalier of Lorraine has acquired the titles of courageous and loyal.
Despite the seemingly explicit character of these lines, it would be mistaken to interpret them as evoking homosexual love instead of a sublime relationship that couldn’t be seen as scandalous. The tone used denotes admiration, the vocabulary belongs to the register of loyalty.
Michieli doesn’t write anything different from Cosnac, a few years prior. The only difference lays in the kindness of his words. The Venetian describes a relationship of harmonious loyalty between a prince who insured the fortune of his favorite and receives blind devotion in exchange. New proof, most likely, that it would be ludicrous to try and parse, in the relationship uniting Philippe of Lorraine to Monsieur, interest from true feelings. The question, in a society entirely ruled by the dynamics of patronage and marked by the narrow overlap between public and private life, wasn’t asked in those terms.
For Philippe of France, the generosity extended to his favorite was a manifestation of his own status as a protector, and the expression of his magnificence. That is why it had to be spectacular, such as when he acquired, in september 1672, the hotel that the marshal of Bellefonds had erected in Versailles.
This dwelling, of which the gardens extended up to the castle, cost Philippe de Lorraine the trivial sum of ninety-thousand pounds, paid to Bellefond’s creditors. Certainly, this purchase was in response to the favorite’s expressed desire, as his italian adventure had given him a taste for autonomy and that he had been thinking about having his own house for a while. It also revealed a will to reinforce his rank through the constitution of a real estate heritage, necessarily implying a more direct social impact than the accumulation of money. In that, he didn’t behave any differently from the royal mistresses of the time.
In his case, this behavior was rooted in the uncertainty of his younger years, though he’d also been undeniably reminded of the fragility of his position by his recent experience of disgrace. The duke of Orleans, by his contribution to this purchase, reaffirmed the bond of loyalty, and loving by definition, that he held with his favorite; a bond that went beyond an exchange of service typical of clientele.
It is therefore unsurprising that the terms used to describe their relationship borrowed as much from the vocabulary of romance as it did from the military and political, as is shown by this “generous and partial sentiment” which, according to the venetian ambassador, characterized the king’s brother. The word “partial” evoked, literally, and in a positive sense, a partial attachment to someone. But it also had, especially in italian, a more ambiguous sense, which could express attraction for someone. Significantly enough, it is again this notion that the Venetian refers to when reporting about this donation by the king’s brother:
Monsieur the duke of Orleans, by an act of remarkable generosity, has proven his partial inclination for the chevalier of Lorraine, handing him ten thousand [doubles tournois] in order to buy, in Versailles, a very noble palace built by Monsieur the marshal of Bellefonds, who has since retired from Court [...]
This letter, like the previous one, doesn’t illustrate the relative acceptance of homosexuality in the modern era court culture. Despite the misleading interpretation that a shallow reading could provide, this was by no means a praise of homosexuality, which would have had no place in an official report. When more open-minded contemporaries evoked, in these terms, the liaison between Philippe of France and one of his favorites, they attested to a princely misconduct worthy of indulgence.
Nothing of sorts in Michieli’s words, whose tone was that of unbridled approbation. In that, this description of such passionate masculine friendship was nothing extraordinary.
After reading so many of the chevalier’s enemies’ writing, it is easy to forget how common these laudatory testimonies of virile love were in western societies. In that sense, historian C. Stephen Jaeger uses the example of some monks who exchanged tender words, hard to interpret as erotic invitations, especially when their mentions of kisses and embraces were about men who had never even met.
In fact, if those evocations borrowed from the language of illicit affairs, it was to better underline the elitism of the sentiments and behavioral norms superior to that of the commoners. In the aristocratic society of these times, that kind of speech aimed to silence critiques [...]
That being said, though there was restraint in the way contemporaries testified of Monsieur and his favorite’s relationship – and about the way they themselves wanted to represent it, if not live it as such, it is obvious that it doesn’t take anything away from this bond rooted in very strong sexual attraction.
Lorraine and Monsieur were lovers, something obvious that Michieli was too naive to apprehend, or too concerned with propriety to expose it in official correspondence – other ambassadors didn’t have these reservations. And no matter the Venetian’s potential lack of clairvoyance, his observations on the duke of Orleans’ passionate attentions for Lorraine remain eloquent about his state of dependency to his lover.
The fact that the latter hasn’t manifested such an irrational passion for Philippe of France doesn’t necessarily make him a machiavellian manipulator. On the contrary, Lorraine revered in Monsieur the instrument of his elevation, the one who had decided of his fortune. His own sentiments were likely closer to the gratitude of a follower to his protector. If he felt passion for Monsieur, it was in the same way the venetian ambassador wrote it. And if, in the past, he may have acted somewhat duplicitous towards his benefactor, the constant and reiterated protection of the duke of Orleans had allowed for him to evolve. His relationship with him, most likely, remained unbalanced, for their respective feelings weren’t in the same register. Nevertheless, Lorraine was ready to sacrifice his own life to protect the duke of Orleans, as Michieli reported it.
It is of course warranted to note the period-typical emphasis of such declaration of behavior, but it is note-worthy that the chevalier of Lorraine was accustomed to that kind of attachment to his protectors. In Rome, already, he claimed to be willing to give his life for cardinal Altieri. Those weren’t just empty words. This trait is also highlighted by other sources reporting that Lorraine would lose control when Monsieur was spoken of negatively, to the point of becoming violent.
With regards to the conceptions of these times, it is thus normal that Philippe of France would cover him in benefits and that he himself would get richer in his service. His enemies saw there a proof of his cupidity, and the others, like Michieli, the rightful reward to his devotion to Monsieur.
French scans:
I think that what gets me really excited about this analysis and discussion, aside from the important context that it brings (and how it reframes their relationship historically, where Chev expressing the same sort of passionate love that Phil did would have been odd and, given what we know of the guy, uncharacteristic) is that it also steps away from a very common subconscious bias that I think I've been observing in a lot of even very recent approaches to their relationship, rooted in the notion that someone like Philippe, for how unmasculine he was, couldn't be anything else than used and exploited.
Am I trying to go all "let's redeem Chev in fact he was great and was only ever devoted to Philippe with all the loyalty in the world", no, not in the slightest, but a lot of actions still speak a lot louder than words and I think it's worth giving credit where credit is due 🫱🫱🫱
no one probably cares but I haven't been posting much Napoleonic things nowadays (Junot doesn't count because he's his own category for me). I think a realization finally hit and I just want to move on after like 3 (4 in August!) years in this "bubble" lol. Every ending is a new beginning...
I witnessed a lot of fun, crazy and unpleasant moments in these 3 years but that's fandom for you. thank you and bye byeeee!!
btw i don't take blocks or unfollows personally and you shouldn't either so pls feel free to unfollow lol
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