Madame and her brother

[selenak]

One of the many reasons why I'm curious about the tv show Versailles and hope it will show up either in dvd form or on Netflix in my part of the worlds is that the audience favourite is Philippe d'Orleans, aka Monsieur, brother to Louis XIV. This surprised me, to put it mildly, until I realised that a) played by Alexander "Mordred" Vlahos, and b

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[selenak]

He also was very aware that this could blow his very new alliance with Charles wide apart, and he needed it for his war against the Dutch. Which is why the Ambassador and two British doctors were invited to the autopsy. They did report the "natural causes" result, but the Ambassdor remained convinced for the rest of his life that said result was because no one wanted to risk a French/English war (which Charles might have had to declare if his sister had been murdered).

The Duke of Saint Simon in his memoirs claims the Marquis d'Effiat admitted to Louis he had poisoned her on behalf of the Chevalier de Lorraine, but that Monsieur had known nothing about it; however, St. Simon doesn't provide his source (which wasn't Louis) for this. Liselotte, who of course had a vested interest in finding out what exactly had happened to her predecessor, doesn't provide any names as to who actually did it, just Louis reassuring her it wasn't Philippe. (Liselotte in general was interested in stories about Minette - who also was her distant relation - other than about her death, too, and reports a few; and of course she raised Minette's surviving children along with her own. The title of the most recent edition of her letters (Liselotte's letters, that is) is a quote from them that could serve as a description of both their marriages: "Madame zu sein ist ein elendes Handwerk!" ("Being Madame is a lousy job!")