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Louis XIII, Richelieu and the Indomitable Troublemaker," reads the red headband that accompanies François-Guillaume Lorrain's historical novel. This indomitable troublemaker is a well-born gentleman whose exalted character, his unreasonable ambition, and his ill-exercised skill will eventually lose. The very young Marquis de Cinq-Mars was a figure placed by the cardinal next to the monarch so that the latter would become infatuated with him. The hope is that this attachment will serve the purposes of the churchman who has become a statesman.
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But the plan worked all too well: Louis XIII enjoyed the presence of the new impetrant so much that he widened the circle of his responsibilities - from the charge of the wardrobe to the title of grand equerry - before introducing him into his very first circle, where the main orientations of the kingdom were decided. The king was then caught up in a frenzy of conquests, marked by the desire to scrap with Spain to the end.
A political fiction
François-Guillaume Lorrain could have yielded to the facilities of a novel...
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