Brother to the Sun King by Nancy Nichols Barker

The plot of Louis, enfant roi begins in January 1649 after the outbreak of the Fronde, as the royal family hurriedly packs and flees from Paris in the middle of the night, heading to join a royalist army under Louis de Bourbon prince de Condé at Saint-Germain, west of the capital. The film presents young Louis as a tender child and constructs a coming-of-age story that includes Louis’s initial romantic and sexual encounters. The dauphin became the center of attention at the Bourbon court, but Louis XIII’s death five years later left Anne d’Autriche to act as regent for her child king with the assistance of the first minister, Jules Mazarin. Louis was celebrated as the dieudonné (God-given) at his birth in 1638, more than two decades after the marriage of his parents, Louis XIII and Anne d’Autriche. The film effectively presents the drama of the Fronde from the child king’s point of view, at the cost of caricature, compression, and simplification. The Fronde (named after the simple slings that boys used to shoot rocks) was an incredibly complicated civil war, with shifting loyalties and oscillating political alignments. The film relies on the traditional narrative of Louisquatorzian absolutism as a necessary response to the centrifugal forces of parlementary and princely self-interest. Louis XIV is remembered today as the quintessential absolutist monarch who was obsessed with his gloire and his military reputation. From the opening scene, which shows a young Louis distracted from an outdoor astronomy lesson by a mesmerizing sun, the film concentrates on the boy’s struggle to acquire enough courage and confidence to become the Sun King. Louis, enfant roi is the story of Louis XIV’s childhood and his ascent to power during the Fronde civil war of 1648-1652. Brian Sandberg Northern Illinois University

Brother to the Sun King by Nancy Nichols Barker