Fronde

The Fronde is presented as a civil war and an episode in the young Louis XIV’s rise to power: his uncle Gaston rallied a large faction of the French aristocracy against him, but the coup d’état failed. In the novel, this conflict returns not as a battlefield scene but as history represented in a court entertainment, where a dancer embodies the young king’s triumph.

Conflict and outcome

The account gives the Fronde a clear political shape: aristocratic opposition, led by Gaston, challenges the young king, and the attempted coup ends in failure. The performance compresses that conflict into a story of royal triumph, making the failed challenge part of Louis XIV’s public legend.

The Fronde on stage

Marie-Josèphe de la Croix watches a play about ancient history, accompanied by balletic interludes. Her attention drifts from the music, and she imagines hearing the sea monster sing; when she tries again to follow the action, a dancer is representing the young king’s victory over the faction raised against him. Madame, who has been nodding off in her chair, also wakes and sits upright to watch. The scene places a civil war within the decorum of court entertainment, where rebellion is recalled as a defeated prelude to royal authority.

Memory and royal legend

The performance prompts Marie-Josèphe to wish she could have seen Louis XIV dance when he was younger. His appearances as the sun, Apollo, Orpheus, or Mars had helped form his legend, though he had not danced in ballets for decades. The Fronde’s failed coup thus sits alongside the monarch’s carefully cultivated theatrical image: a political crisis transformed, in retrospect, into a story of triumph.