Les femmes dans la vie de Louis XIV

In the past, Antonia Fraser's bestselling histories and biographies have focused on people and events in her native England, from Mary Queen of Scots to Faith and Treason: The Story of the Gunpowder Plot. Now she crosses the Channel to limn the life of France's unhappiest queen, bringing along her gift for fluent storytelling, vivid characterization, and evocative historical background. Marie Antoinette (1755-93) emerges in Fraser's sympathetic portrait as a goodhearted girl woefully undereducated and poorly prepared for the dynastic political intrigues into which she was thrust at age 14, when her mother, Empress Maria Theresa, married her off to the future Louis XVI to further Austria's interests in France. Far from being the licentious monster later depicted by the radicals who sent her to the guillotine at the height of the French Revolution, young Marie Antoinette was quite prudish, as well as thoroughly humiliated by her husband's widely known failure to have complete intercourse with her for seven long years (the gory details were reported to any number of concerned royal parties, including her mother and brother). She compensated by spending lavishly on clothes and palaces, but Fraser points out that this hardly made her unique among 18th-century royalty, and in any case the causes of the Revolution went far beyond one woman's frivolities. The moving final chapters show Marie Antoinette gaining in dignity and courage as the Revolution stripped her of everything, subjected her to horrific brutalities (a mob paraded the head of her closest female friend on a pike below her window), and eventually took her life. Fraser makes no attempt to hide the queen's shortcomings, in particular her poor political skills, but focuses on her personal warmth and noble bearing during her final ordeal. It's another fine piece of popular historical biography to add to Fraser's already impressive bibliography. --Wendy Smith

Dans cet ouvrage passionnant, l'historienne britannique Antonia Fraser explore avec brio les relations entre le Roi-Soleil et les femmes qui ont le plus compté dans sa vie. Elle évoque sa mère, la reine Anne d'Autriche, qu'il révérait, son premier amour, Marie Mancini, la dévouée Louise de La Vallière, son épouse la princesse espagnole Marie-Thérèse, la splendide Mme de Montespan, la pieuse Mme de Maintenon, et enfin la femme de son petit-fils, Adélaïde, qui illumina trop brièvement sa vieillesse. L'auteur présente Louis XIV sous un jour humain : tour à tour ému, subjugué ou tiraillé entre des sentiments contradictoires devant ces femmes qui parfois le révélaient à lui-même. Antonia Fraser réserve une large place aux problématiques de la religion, de la politique étrangère, et des guerres coûteuses dans lesquelles le roi a été entraîné par le souci de sa gloire. En traitant ces sujets à travers le prisme de ses relations féminines, l'auteur donne à voir toute la vie d'une cour, d'une époque et d'une nation.

Riche en détails sur la vie quotidienne et en analyses psychologiques, cette biographie est plus centrée sur la femme, la personnalité, les goûts et les choix de Marie-Antoinette que sur la reine, les considérations géopolitiques et philosophiques. Adaptée au cinéma par Sofia Coppola fin 2006.