Versailles Carrousel

Versailles Carrousel is a royal equestrian spectacle whose glittering pageantry unfolds beside the immediate prospect of death. Its public display joins Louis XIV’s image-making and diplomatic generosity to a private crisis: Marie-Josèphe tries to master her fear, while Lucien watches the King’s ceremony offer the Sea Woman a possible reprieve that remains another form of captivity. The full moon and the sun, the event’s competing emblems, frame a celebration in which splendour cannot erase what is at stake.

The spectacle begins

Before the teams enter, Marie-Josèphe gulps wine from a silver goblet Louis XIV has given her. The gift would have delighted her beyond measure only a week earlier; now she drains it as soon as the servant refills it. She calculates that a little drunkenness might lend courage, but too much would hinder her, and finally waves the servant away and sets the goblet on the floor. The shifting meaning of a royal present brings the court’s ceremony into immediate contact with her altered state of mind: the King’s favour is still visible, but it no longer feels like uncomplicated pleasure.

Trumpets sound and drums announce the Carrousel. Jugglers and singers run from the parade ground as hundreds of torches flare together, their smoke and pitch filling the air and their harsh light throwing long shadows across the Place d’Armes. A huge orange full moon hangs in the eastern sky, set opposite the sun. The scene’s brilliant illumination is thus also a scene of shadow, and its celestial contrast accompanies the blunt knowledge that Sherzad has only a few hours to live. The Carrousel begins not in an untroubled festive world, but with the deadline of a threatened life already present.

Louis XIV and the mounted display

The Carrousel teams gallop onto the practice field, led by Louis XIV in the role of Augustus Caesar, Emperor of Ancient Rome. His spotted Chinese horse carries a red leather harness encrusted with rubies and diamonds; feathers, ribbons, and gold fittings extend the display across its head, saddle, and tail. Louis XIV’s own costume repeats the same visual language: a diamond-covered tunic, red leather armor nearly covered in rubies, jeweled sandals, gold-dusted blond peruke, and a towering headdress of white ostrich plumes fastened with enormous rubies. He carries a round Roman shield bearing his device, the sun in beaten gold dispersing clouds of burnished silver.

The participants make the parade ground a contest of styles as well as a coordinated performance. Monsieur, Chartres, and Maine strive for speed and precision. Monseigneur’s group, which includes Huron war chiefs dressed in borrowed body armor, lace, and plumed Parisian hats, astonishes and delights the audience with daring stunts: riders stand upright at a gallop and swoop down to seize golden hoops from the ground. In the grandstand, the Prince of Japan appears to wish he were riding, while the Shah of Persia seems relieved not to be; the Queen of Nubia reclines beneath an awning of black silk held by her handmaidens. The spectators’ different reactions sit alongside the carefully orchestrated show, making the gathering both a performance for visitors and a display of the many roles the court assigns them.

Lucien rides Zelis among Louis XIV’s Roman cavalry. He cannot bring himself to sabotage the drill, and Zelis completes the pattern cleanly. Four lines merge into two, then one, as the horses prance toward the aristocratic side of the grandstand. The audience screams and cheers, throwing flowers to the ground before its King. Lucien’s successful participation matters because his inward resistance has not yet become an outward break: even as he judges what is happening around him, he continues to carry out the part assigned to him.

Gifts, the Sea Woman, and the ending

At the foot of the grandstand, Louis XIV’s subjects bow and even visiting monarchs rise in salute. At his signal, ribbon-festooned baggage wagons roll onto the parade ground. He addresses the assembled rulers as cousins and presents tokens of esteem. The gifts make the ceremony an exchange as well as a spectacle: the King’s authority is expressed through the attention he commands and the generosity he publicly dispenses. A single wagon suffices for the Huron war chiefs, whose gift is the costliest: two mannequins styled as wild Americans display matching suits of white velvet covered in diamonds, with hats, gloves, and shoes.

Louis XIV then addresses Pope Innocent as his holy cousin and has two wagons brought forward. Behind panels of patterned silk, an animal shrieks; the King presents the contents as exotic creatures. Lucien hopes the Sea Woman will escape the Pope’s inquisitors. He regards being butchered and cooked by M. Boursin as potentially more merciful than imprisonment by the Church, but imprisonment, however grim, would postpone death and leave open the possibility of reprieve. The offered alternative is therefore not freedom: it is a change in who may hold the Sea Woman and how long her death can be delayed.

Pope Innocent’s disappointment does not match Lucien’s, though Lucien conceals his own. Innocent blesses the princes, rises, and answers Louis XIV with a prayer for the King’s soul. Louis XIV wheels his horse and gallops away from the parade ground; his teams follow, their ribbons streaming, jewels glittering, and golden harness chiming, while the steeds, serpents, and wild man remain behind. The departure closes the event on movement and separation rather than reconciliation. Lucien recognizes that he can endure no longer; the knowledge dismays him, yet frees him. The Carrousel’s last turn is thus inward: its public choreography continues to proclaim royal command, but Lucien’s participation has reached its limit.