Court Homosexuality during the Reign of Louis XIV

The generals that Louis used to extend his personal glory were majorly homosexual, their recruits sexual fodder, boys who often loved them in return because they shared the same battlefield hardships, the same ground-level billets and the same rations, or lack of during times of famine.

In the salons and halls of Versailles girls and women were cornered, intruding clothing raised while the men opened the access to their virility, and only the slight but easily identifiable movements of breeches-clad buttocks betrayed the thrusts, while all around nobles conversed among themselves, fleetingly glancing in the coupled couples' direction, brief snickers, envious glimpses, perhaps envious of her, perhaps of him, for the court was fully omnisexual. Men in chivalresque conversation with ladies could be given a fleeting glance from another noble or a passing court page or valet, the nanosecond recognition known to every male, the gentleman excusing himself for a moment, the time for intimacy in a nearby room, or to arrange an assignation in the woods that night among trees and bushes, the favorite playgrounds of Louis XIV's brother Philippe d'Orl?ans. There, Philippe and Philippe's lover the Chevalier de Lorraine shared Louis XIV's son Vermandois in promiscuous debauch, Vermandois age 14 but fully sexually awakened by boys his age at puberty, an outrage that Louis ended by sending the boy off to war, and his death at age 16.

This book is the story of the loves and scandals during the 72-year-long reign of Louis XIV, the longest and most spectacular in world history.