The King's Playground and the Queen's Hideout

Despite the fact that I have now been to Versailles four times, this is the first time that I saw Les Grandes Eaux (the great waters, aka they turn the foutains on and play baroque music), discovered that there was way more to the gardens than I thought, and saw Marie Antoinette's hamlet.

In the 1660s, King Louis XIV, also known as the "Sun King," who represented the truest form of an absolutist monarch in European history, decided to move the French government from Paris out to Versailles, which at the time was in the middle of nowhere. His decision stemmed from a lifelong fear of Paris, and more specifically, of Parisians after a scarring childhood experience. When he was 5 his father died, leaving his mother regent until his 21st birthday. The nobles decided they didn't like this, riled up the Parisian masses, and staged a violent rebellion. By moving out to Versailles, he could concentrate his power, keep the Parisians at a safe distance, and create a whole little world wrapped around his royal finger, handing out all manner of symbolic favors--even peas!--a master of getting something for nothing. Constructing a extravagent palace and never-ending gardens were a part of his master plan, demonstrating his wealth and power, both symbolically and materially. The fountain pictured at the right is the "Apollo Fountain," which depicts the god driving his chariot towards the sky to bring up the sun. Louis decided to make the sun god, Apollo, his personal symbol, hence his nickname (the Sun King). What better symbol to represent his absolute power than the god responsible for making the very sun rise? This superfluous and extremely expensive show would have grave consequences in 1789.




Louis XIV died in 1715. As he outlived both his sons and grandons, it would be his great-grandson, Louis XV who would take his place. Upon his death in 1774, the ill-fated Louis XVI would become King of France until guillotined by the revolutionaries in 1793. He was the last king to live at Versailles. His wife of course, was the Austrian Marie-Antoinette, who suffered the same fate less than a year later. Before angry Parisians took to the streets and stormed the Bastille, Marie-Antoinette had her own little world built on the vast grounds of the Versailles gardens, known as Le Hameau, or the Hamlet. It was a place where she could take down her hair and forget the strict protocols of court life. This is the Simple Life, circa the 1780s. She had a whole farm here where she milked cows and lived like a peasant--or at least, the Queen of France version of a peasant. It is literally an entire village of buildings, complete with it's own vineyard, dairy, and, most importantly fake ruins for authenticity.

In the face of such an ostentatious show of wealth, while many French people couldn't even afford their pain quotidien (not to mention their Nutella!), it's little wonder that "Long live the king and queen" turned into "off with their heads!"