Trudy Gold
Louis XIV and His Women, Part 2
Summary
Louis XIV was a man with many mistresses. From Marie Mancini to the imperious and infamous Madame de Mountespan to her successor, Madame Scarron, governess to some of the king’s illegitimate children, this is a behind-the-scenes look at the Sun King’s intimate life.
Trudy Gold
Trudy Gold was the CEO of the London Jewish Cultural Centre and a founding member of the British delegation to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). Throughout her career she taught modern Jewish history at schools, universities, and to adult groups and ran seminars on Holocaust education in the UK, Eastern Europe, and China. She also led Jewish educational tours all over the world. Trudy was the educational director of the student resources “Understanding the Holocaust” and “Holocaust Explained” and the author of The Timechart History of Jewish Civilization.
Do you really think any letters would ever say he wasn’t? But you know, how many times did he bathe? It couldn’t have been much fun. It couldn’t have been much fun sleeping with the king. Believe me.
Are we talking about legitimate? He had seven legitimate children by the queen, and only one survived. He had loads and loads of illegitimate children. But in those days, very few of them survived to adulthood. This is before good medicine. This is before antibiotics. What is interesting though, he is on the tip of the age of scientific revolution. And that’s going to change everything. And it’s also going to lead to a far more cynical non-religious world. The king ruled because he believed he was appointed by God to rule. That is going to change through the enlightenment. More and more of the enlightenment thinkers are going to turn away from Catholicism ‘cause the Catholic church had such power in Europe, it’s absolutely extraordinary.