ABSTRACT
When writing about attitudes toward the sexual behaviours of the three King Louis who reigned between the establishment of the royal court at Versailles and the French Revolution, there is a confusing spectrum of reactions. After Louis XIV (r.1643–1715) ended his long career of womanizing and tried to reform court morals under the influence of his last mistress and morganatic wife Madame de Maintenon, there was a comic verse which appeared, titled ‘The Devout King Who Has Renounced Gallantry’ that warmly recalled Louis XIV’s sexual escapades, despairing that ‘It is no longer fashionable to make love, even the King no longer finds it fun.’ 1 Popular verse would be much less forgiving about the amours of Louis XV (r.1715–74), with one song declaring upon his death, ‘This monster, who had a stomach but no guts, / Gave famine to France and the pox to Versailles.’ 2 Yet, despite such vehement reactions to Louis XV’s sexual excesses, Louis XVI (r.1774–92), who took no mistresses or even had any extramarital rendezvous, was pilloried in underground pamphlets as someone who was impotent both as a man and a king, cuckolded by a nymphomaniac queen. 3 While sometimes even in conflict with each other, these different perceptions of and reactions to sexual behaviours in the life of the king were fed by tumultuous shifts in attitudes about gender, marriage and religion that turned the king’s harmless romantic galanteries, emotional and romantic dalliances with women, into scandal that could destroy the reputation of one king and lead the public to hope for a moral reformation from another.
