Les Colombes du Roi-Soleil - Members of the court / Characters

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Characters/LesColombesDuRoiSoleilMembersOfTheCourt

Louis XIV

Louis-Dieudonné de Bourbon, fourteenth of his name, King of France and Navarre, and the eponymous Sun King.

Deus ex Machina: With his absolute power within his kingdoms and his military and cultural might outside, he can change the lives of random people with a snap. Notably, he is the one to free Louise's mother, gets Gertrude out of prison, and pardons Adélaïde's fiancé. None of that takes more than ten seconds of his day.
Doting Parent: He is fond of most of his bastard children, including Louise, even though she initially does not know why he is singling her out in his kindness.
The Good King: Seen as this by most of the characters, except Charlotte. Justfied, as proof of family loyalty is one of the pre-requisites to enter Saint-Cyr.
Greater-Scope Villain: To Charlotte, as he commanded the severe repression against her fellow Huguenots.
Historical Domain Character: See his page.
Historical Hero Upgrade: A very minor one: the final clue that he is Louise's father is that he sends her his personal doctor when she becomes sick. In real life, King Louis refused to send any court doctor to the children that he did eventually legitimize, because he did not want to let anyone know that they even existed, leaving two of them to die in the crib. That being said, one can argue that he is now older and more confident, and that Louise's mother is not as conspicuous as his then ''maîtresse-en-titre'' Madame de Montespan.
The Magnificent: Often called Louis the Great. He is actually never called the Sun King in-universe.
Reasonable Authority Figure: Played with. He is depicted as a once-in-a-millenium king on a large scale, but also seems to function on whims as far as the girls are concerned. For example, he only agrees to help Louise and Adélaïde because he is moved by their stories, not because helping innocents is the right thing to do.
My Own Private "I Do": To Madame de Maintenon. It's an Open Secret.
Royal "We": Hardly ever uses anything else.

Madame de Maintenon

Françoise d'Aubigné, marchioness of Maintenon

Grande Dame: The kinder version of the trope; she makes it clear that she presents herself as one before the court, but would rather live a simpler life.
Historical Domain Character
Modest Royalty: Truth in Television. Hortense argues that she cannot be the King's wife, because she dresses too modestly for a queen.
A Mother To Her Girls: Cares deeply for the girls in her charge and seems to know all 250 by name. She's also mostly a Reasonable Authority Figure.
Hidden Depths: Charlotte is in complete shock to see her show her kindness; it is because, while she converted to Catholicism to rise in the world, she too was raised Protestant.
Parental Favoritism: Insofar as she is A Mother To Her Girls. She is on much more personal terms with Louise than with the other girls. After all, looking after the King's bastards was her job for years.
My Own Private "I Do": To King Louis. It's an Open Secret.
Old Man Marrying a Child: In her youth, she was married off at 16 to a man over twice her age, and severely disabled with that. Some of the girls believe that she would let the same sort of fate happen to them for that reason. She actually strives to avoid this for her charges, and is so put out by the ambassador of Saxony's views on Eleonore that she manages to delay him for over a year.
Well-Intentioned Extremist: Famously bigoted, she eventually falls for the priests's claim that anything but needlework and Bible study is leading her charges straight to Hell (to be fair, at this point in the timeline, one student has ran away, one has eloped, one traded sexy mail with a man, and one poisonned a teacher). In consequence, for the sake of protecting their souls, she ends up rolling back on all the other classes (history, geography, herbology, physics...), ruining her own point of educating impoverished highborn girls.

Marguerite de Caylus

Marthe-Marguerite Le Valois de Villette de Mursay, countess of Caylus. She is Madame de Maintenon's first cousin once removed, generally called her niece.

Attention Whore: Gets jealous that Charlotte is asked to model for a statue and not her. She guilt trips the artist into making a statue of her as well.
Big Sister Instinct: At 16, she's of an age with the Yellows, but is this by favor of being a married woman who lives at court.
Birds of a Feather: Especially close to Charlotte among the girls of the House, as she too was raised Protestant.
Ensemble Dark Horse: The only non-student of Saint-Cyr who acts in Esther. She declaims the prologue.
Fair-Weather Friend: Played With. She does go out of her way to help Charlotte, but only insofar as it entertains her.
Happily Married: Subverted. She is happy in her marriage because she lives apart from her husband while enjoying his status and his wealth.
Historical Domain Character
Married Too Young: Got married at 13. She and her husband live apart.
Non-Protagonist Resolver: Charlotte goes to insane extents to buy François's freedom. When she eventually returns, she finds that Marguerite has paid his caution on a whim, because she thought it would be a nice thing to do in memory of her most likely dead friend.
Luke, I Am Your Father: She is the one who reveals to Isabeau and Charlotte that Louise's father is the King.
Shipper on Deck: She helps Simon get messages to Hortense after he falls in Love at First Sight with her.
With Friends Like These...: It's implied that she had an affair with François, Charlotte's fiancé, after she bought his freedom. To be fair, they both had reasons to assume that Charlotte was dead at this point.

Philippe d'Orléans

Brother to Louis XIV and father to Marie Adelaide and Marie Louise’s mother

Doting Grandparent: He is immediately charmed by his previously unknown granddaughter Marie Adelaide and takes to doting on her.
Red Baron: Known to all as “Monsieur”, the king’s brother.

Louis-Auguste du Maine

Louis-Auguste de Bourbon, duke of Maine, Louis XIV's eldest legitimated son with Madame de Montespan.

Abled in the Adaptation: The real duke of Maine was hampered by a misshaped leg his entire life, requiring a crutch to walk. In the series, he is not exactly a hunk, but no mention is made of his disability.
The Casanova: Even his friends consider that he is better at flirting with the girls of the court than at following up on his promises to them.
Heroic Bastard: Despite his general carefree attitude, he does stand up for Louise in front of the king and Madame de Maintenon.
Historical Domain Character
Like Parent, Like Child: With his father Louis XIV. Both of them are The Casanova, and both of them like to ignore things that make them uncomfortable.
Momma's Boy: To the governess who raised him, Madame de Maintenon.

Louise-Françoise de Bourbon

Louise-Françoise de Nantes, Duchess of Bourbon and Princess of Condé by marriage. One of King Louis's acknowledged natural children with Madame de Montespan.

Adaptational Heroism: Records tend to agree that the real princess was very much a Rich Bitch. This one is, at worse, Innocently Insensitive.
Alternate Character Interpretation: Isabeau does not know what to think of her playing matchmaker for a marriage she does not want: is she just Innocently Insensitive? Or does she want her ladies to be as miserably married as she is?
Arranged Marriage: Her father made her marry a monster of a man for rank; from merely his bastard, it made her one of the greatest princesses in France and humiliated the Condés under the guise of honoring them.
Artistic License – History: In 1692, she was still Duchess of Bourbon; she became Princess of Condé only after her father-in-law died in 1709.
Awful Wedded Life: The Prince of Condé, her husband, is twice her age, especially ugly, a known rapist and renowned for his cruelty and short temper.
Blue Blood: She is the King's second legitimized natural daughter.
Doting Parent: She dotes on her two children and claims that they console her from her Awful Wedded Life.
Early-Bird Cameo: She is mentionned to be in the audience during the first representation of Esther in Book 1, and appears again early in Book 5 to help Isabeau up before she comes back to hire her.
Flower Motifs: Dresses as a red rose for Carnival. "The queen of Flowers!"
Historical Domain Character
Married Too Young: She was married off at age eight, and was so frightened of her middle-aged husband at the wedding that she dropped her wedding ring with a yelp in the middle of the ceremony. The marriage was consumated when she turned 13.
Non-Protagonist Resolver: In the end, she is the one who sets up Isabeau's school for poor girls as an act of Christian charity; possibly not knowing or caring that in doing this, she also takes her away from the threat of the prince.
The Pollyanna: Extremely cheerful in a hinted Hard-Drinking Party Girl way to cope with her Awful Wedded Life.
Teenage Pregnancy: Expecting her second child at age 19, then her third at 20.
Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: A pretty teenage girl married to a contorted yellow-faced man old enough to be her father
Would Hurt a Child: Not too badly, her and her half-sisters would just be very happy if 12-year-old Marie-Adélaïde would ridicule herself before the King and the court.

Louis III de Bourbon-Condé

Duke of Bourbon and Prince of Condé.

Abhorrent Admirer: To Isabeau, for his age, his ugliness, his character, and the facts that she wants to remain celibate and he is married to her boss. His power over her raises him to The Dreaded.
Artistic License – History: In 1692, he was still Duke of Bourbon; he became Prince of Condé only after his father died in 1709.
The Dreaded: By Isabeau and probably many others among his wife's ladies, due to his violence.
Foil: To Bazan. What happens when the Abhorrent Admirer who won't take no for an answer decides to ignore courtly love?
Four-Star Badass: A brilliant military commander, for all his flaws - perhaps thanks to them.
Historical Domain Character
No, Mr. Bond, I Expect You to Dine: Before going to more forceful ways, he creepily courts Isabeau, notably by gifting her a magnificent, inappropriate pearl necklace and asking her to serve him well.
Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: Assaulted two named characters and countless other girls.
Red Baron: The court nicknames him the Green Monkey.
Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: Contorted and yellow of face, when his wife is a pretty teenage girl.

Marie-Anne de Conti

Louis XIV's eldest legitimated child by the Duchess of La Vallière.

Alpha Bitch: She's her papa's favorite and hates the thought of anyone stealing her spotlight.
Bastard Bastard: The eldest of the King's legitimated natural children, and a rather unpleasant person.
Creator's Pet: Averted. Despite the author having written a five-book series about her childhood^noteMarie-Anne, fille du Roi, her few appearances in Les Colombes only show her as a mean-spirited Rich Bitch, which is how her contemporaries did describe her as she grew up.
Historical Domain Character
Romancing the Widow: Since she was widowed young, the king of Morocco attempts to court her through his ambassador, but the King would not let her marry so far away, and to a non-Catholic.
Would Hurt a Child: Not too badly, her and her half-sisters would just be very happy if 12-year-old Marie-Adélaïde would ridicule herself before the King and the court.

Louis de Bourbon, duke of Burgundy

Duke of Burgundy, Louis XIV’s eldest grandson

Altar Diplomacy: Wed to Marie Adelaide of Savoy at fourteen in order to mark the peace between France and Grand Alliance.
Blue Blood: Second in line to the throne of France after his father the Dauphin.
Gentleman and a Scholar: He is very educated, with a special interest for classics and astronomy.
Kissing Cousins: He and his wife are second cousins.
Make-Out Kids: He can’t keep his eyes off his wife and takes to stealing into her bed before his grandfather approves of it.
The Stoic: Gilles describes him as serious beyond measure.
Warrior Prince: The military movements he takes part in convince his grandfather and his wife alike that he is a fine strategist and a future asset in war.
What Does She See in Him?: Downplayed. Victoire does understand the appeal, but she thinks him much less attractive than Marie-Adélaïde’s descriptions.

Marie-Adélaïde of Savoy

Princess of Savoy and duchess of Burgundy by marriage

Altar Diplomacy: Betrothed to Louis, Duke of Burgundy at eleven and married to him at twelve to mark the peace between France and Savoy.
Blue Blood: Her father is Duke of Savoy and she is the great-granddaughter of Louis XIII.
Book Dumb: She dislikes formal education and prefers physical activities and the great outdoors. When she arrives at Versailles, her handwriting and spelling are considered shameful; it is why she attends Saint-Cyr, so she can at least have classmates to encourage her in learning.
The Deuteragonist: She is the narrator of the first third of Victoire’s book, and the rest very much centers around her.
Genki Girl: Full of life, confidence, ease and determination.
Innocently Insensitive: She doesn’t quite get, or bother to get, how much more privileged than the Saint-Cyr girls she is, constantly talking of the parties she attends, the palaces she lives in, the gowns she wears, the people she rubs elbows with; sometimes belittling what is the Doves' entire lives as a hobby for her.
Loved by All: Thanks to her natural charm, she quickly makes herself beloved by all of her peoples, the court of Versailles, the royal family and the pupils at Saint-Cyr. That said, some of the pupils do find her obnxious, and she has rivals at court with the king's daughters.
King Incognito: She attends Saint-Cyr three days a week under the name Marie de Lastic, although everyone knows who she is, since she visited the House under her own name and rank just before enrolling.
Kissing Cousins: She and her husband are second cousins.
The Matchmaker: She loves her Perfectly Arranged Marriage and wants the same for Victoire, as well as for her sister with Philippe d’Anjou.
Uptown Girl: To Victoire, in a platonic variation.

Philippe V de Bourbon

Duke of Anjou and King of Spain, Louis XIV’s second grandson

Blue Blood: The grandson of Louis XIV and great-grandson of Felipe IV through his grandmother, he later becomes king of Spain himself.
The Dutiful Son: As the second son (and second grandson), he knows he is meant to do what his father and grandfather want him, marry who they want him, rule where they want him. While Gilles thinks he could always run away and start a new life in another country, Philippe considers it impossible for a grandson of France.
Gentleman and a Scholar: He is fluent in Latin and takes a special interest in studying and translating classics.
Historical Domain Character: See his page.
Kissing Cousins: He and his wife are second cousins.
Middle Child Syndrome: He is noted to be the morose one to his charming elder Louis and cheerful younger Charles.
Princely Young Man
Pony Tale: Flamme is his favorite horse among the 2,000 of the royal stables and he only wants to ride him. The pageboys think this is ridiculous but it allows Gilles to get close to him.

Marie Louise of Savoy

Duchess of Anjou and Queen of Spain

Blue Blood: Her father is Duke of Savoy and she is the great-granddaughter of Louis XIII through her mother. She eventually becomes Queen of Spain.
Kissing Cousins: She and her husband are second cousins.

Charles de Bourbon

Duke of Berry, Louis XIV’s third grandson

KidAnova: He is barely a tween but he loves to flirt and does it well enough by Victoire’s standards.

Characters / Les Colombes du Roi-Soleil - Members of the court

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