Versailles- The Tribute to Louis XIV's Ego and Paranoia

After watching members of his family be brutally murdered by unhappy aristocrats, Louis XIV developed a deep fear of insurrection. His paranoia extended to the entire city of Paris, long a hotbed of political protest. Therefore, he decided to move himself and all of France's aristocrats to a grandiose estate at Versailles, just less than 20 kilometers outside of Paris proper, and bankrupted France in the process. He tried to appease the Parisians, unhappy that he had used over half the national budget on his grandiose palace, by ordering another building project, that of another bridge over the Seine.

Louis XIV was the epitome of the absolutist monarch, and his palace reflects the tenets of absolutism quite nicely. The royal bedchamber is right in the middle, and outside it is a clock on the shape of a sun, his personal symbol. The sun was just discovered by Copernicus to be the center of the Solar System, just as Louis XIV believed himself to be the center of France, the entity around which everyone and everything else orbited. The ceilings are ornately decorated, and larger than life portraits of the Sun King adorn numerous staircases, mantles, and random wall spaces. Like in the castles of the Loire, the king's initials are carved into the ceilings on the lower level.

The unbelievably large palace was designed to house all of France's aristocrats, so that Louis XIV could monitor them for any signs of subversive activity. Exploring the ornate parlors and bedchambers, I could easily imagine the Sun King calling his lower nobles and servants to attend to his every need, from the political to such personal tasks as dressing him. Walking through the maze-like gardens and the orangerie, I could imagine the thousands of people who inhabited the seemingly never-ending building and who also walked among these trees. Versailles functions as a monument to absolutism and to Louis XIV himself. It displays both his ego and his paranoia, as he had to be the constant center attention and monitor of all. As it says on the facade of the main palace, it is dediciated to "toutes les gloires de la France", which the Sun King truly believed to be the fruits of his reign.