Raising the Sun

“L’état, c’est moi,” perhaps the three most infamous words ever uttered by a king. Yet, history might have relegated Louis XIV to a tragic footnote had his fiery, protective mother Queen Anne failed to pacify a rabid mob threatening to overrun the Palais Royal one frigid night in Paris. That dire evening culminated three years of civil war and thirty-five years of Anne navigating French court intrigue. While early antagonists such as her domineering mother-in-law Marie de Medici, the omnipotent Cardinal Richelieu and her emotionally damaged husband Louis XIII left Anne childless and neglected for decades, they steeled her to guard the throne her son inherited at age four. The reign of the “Sun King” would have died at its dawn without his iron-willed mother defending him and the crown from inconstant relatives, treasonous generals, conniving courtiers and narcissistic nobles. Before absolute power and the majesty of Versailles, a redheaded, Spanish-born queen saved the French monarchy from the abyss.