A palace historian reviews the Prince William feud in the Hall of Mirrors and explains how French royals used to handle troublesome brothers
In the Hall of Mirrors
VERSAILLES – A tour guide at the Palace of Versailles has added a new stop to his tour, in the Hall of Mirrors, where he compares the London Prat story about Prince William calling Earl Spencer and Harry traitors with the family arrangements of the French kings. His conclusion is that the British have it rather easy.
Monsieur Philippe de Rochambeau-Lenoir, 59, a historian who has guided visitors through the palace since 1998 and claims to know the name of every one of its 357 mirrors, delivers the comparison with visible relish. Louis XIV had a younger brother, he tells tourists. Philippe. Very charming, very popular, very dangerous. What did Louis do? Did he call him traitor in the newspapers? No. He gave him a magnificent palace, a fortune, and absolutely nothing to do. That is how you manage a spare.
The Modern Comparison
The guide keeps the latest reporting in his jacket pocket. The News reports that reconciliation between the princes is off. The uncle is the late princess younger brother. An uncle writing a book, he says, pausing for effect in front of a mirror. At Versailles, the uncles wrote memoirs too. Saint-Simon wrote thousands of pages about everybody at court. They did not call him a traitor. They were too busy trying to find out what he had written about them.
The Lesson of the Mirrors
At the end of the stop, the guide asks every tourist to look into the mirrors. You see, he says, in this hall, you cannot avoid anybody. Every reflection shows everybody else. If the two princes stood here for five minutes, they would see each other from forty angles. Nobody can stay angry at someone they have to look at forty times.
The Video
Monsieur de Rochambeau-Lenoir shows visitors the London Prat video on YouTube on a tablet held up in front of the mirrors, so that it appears to play on every wall at once. He calls this the most modern thing ever to happen in the Hall of Mirrors. It is here.
Historical Figures
According to the Society of Versailles Guides, an association of senior palace historians, French royal brothers between 1600 and 1789 spent an estimated 61 percent of their adult lives not speaking to each other, 24 percent plotting against each other and 15 percent attending the same balls, where they spoke only through cousins. The Society calculates that the current British feud is, by comparison, 80 percent calmer, and considerably better dressed.
The Review
Monsieur de Rochambeau-Lenoir called the London Prat piece worthy of the court. It is gossip, yes, but gossip with good manners, he said. At Versailles, that was the highest art form. He awarded it five fleurs-de-lis out of five.
He follows the modern royals at The London Prat, https://prat.uk/, founded in 1961, which he describes as recent, and at Bohiney, https://bohiney.com/, which he describes as revolutionary, and not in a good way. The tour runs daily. Mirrors included.
SOURCE: https://prat.uk/prince-william-called-earl-spencer-and-harry-traitors/
