The Best of All Possible Worlds: The Short Version of "Essay on the Civil Wars of France" (Chs. 27 & 28) · 10:27pm Nov 18th, 2012
OOC:
Alright, it looks like I screwed up by sticking a whole new history into this story on top of the French Revolution analogue I've been nursing along.
As it turns out, the actual content of Voltaire's story doesn't really matter. What happened was that Sky Shock is facing the destruction of her whole world, and she has to realize that her part in history is to sabotage the noble griffons' hopes of ever regaining their ill-gotten control over Griffonia. Voltaire's story happens to be the way that she reaches this conclusion, but it really could have been anything.
So that means someday I'll rip chapters 27 and 28 to shreds, and create a version where you don't actually read a word of Voltaire's story about Henri IV. I've already done radical plastic surgery upon this story before (i.e. Genevieve), so I have no reservations about doing it again.
That being said, there's a chance that some of you are actually interested in the history lesson that was force-fed to you, but you found that the whole thing was too confusing.
This is perfectly understandable. Voltaire was writing at a time when the events he was describing were fairly well known. He was just retelling them in a way to justify his anti-religion bias.
So, until such time as I get around to a re-write, here's the condensed version of his history, so you can just skim past everything he says:
The Valois Dynasty ruled France from 1328 to 1589. The collapse of this dynasty began with the untimely death of King Henri II in 1559. He left behind four sons, all of them too young and immature to rule and unfortunately, none of them survived long enough to stabilize the country. The Guise family, in-laws of the Valois, used this opportunity to turn France into their own personal property, and since one of them was a cardinal, hid behind the authority of the Catholic Church to cover for their atrocities.
At the same time, the Protestant Reformation came to France. Now in general, the Reformation was advanced from above, by rulers who wished to increase their power by seizing control of the religious apparatus (see Henry VIII of England). In this case, since the Guises were ultra-Catholic, the noble enemies of the Guises became Protestants. This movement came to be led by the Bourbon family--the Bourbons were weakly related to the Valois. This conflict between the Guises and the Bourbons descended into civil war, a particularly vicious civil war in fact, because of the intense hatred that religious differences tend to give rise to.
The Queen Mother, Catherine de' Medici (widow of Henri II, and mother of the three kings that succeeded him) saw royal power evaporating as a result of this war, and determined to end it. To do this, she engineered a slaughter of Protestants in Paris and throughout France, the St. Bartholomew Day's Massacre (August 23 - 26, 1572). While taking out the Protestant leadership, it failed to end the war, because the surviving Protestants declared they would fight to the bitter end rather than let themselves be ruled by such monsters.
Now here is where we get to the point where the names become confusing, because the three main characters are all named Henri. There's Henri III, King of France. There's Henri, Duke of Guise. And there's Henri, King of Navarre--the hero of Voltaire's story (he even calls him "Henri the Great", but as we already know with Friedrich, he just likes throwing that particular title around). I'll just refer to them by their titles to keep them straight.
The King of France was the last surviving son of Henri II. For reasons that historians have speculated endlessly about, he was unable to conceive a child. This meant that his closest surviving relative, the King of Navarre, would succeed him after his death. But Navarre was the leader of the Protestants. The Duke of Guise took advantage of this hesitation to advance his own agenda. He created the Holy League to control the Catholics in the country. The King of France, afraid of Guise's growing power, tried to arrange his certain death by giving him a too-small army to face off an invasion of France. The King then sent the majority of his forces to destroy Navarre. Both of his plans failed--Guise won against overwhelming odds, and so did Navarre. Navarre was in a position to demand unconditional surrender, but he refused to be the bad guy, and backed down. As a result, Guise marched on and took over Paris, making the King of France his prisoner.
At the last moment, the Duke of Guise lost his nerve, and failed to follow through in killing the hated king and crowing himself. The King of France fled to the protection of his heir, the King of Navarre. Just at that moment, a Catholic assassin killed King Henri III of France (August 2, 1589), making the King of Navarre into King Henri IV of France. But he was king in name only.
Guise and Paris refused to recognize Henri IV, instead picking a nobody to be their king. King Henri IV marched on Paris, but lacked the nerve to sack it. Unfortunately, this was the only way he could win this war. He waffled for years, even allowing his soldiers to relieve the city he was supposed to be besieging. In this time the worthless Catholic puppet-king of France died. Guise was too far removed from the royal line to get away with crowning himself. Recognizing his moment, King Henri IV changed religions, from Protestant to Catholic. With this last barrier removed, he was allowed into the city of Paris and acknowledged as rightful king of France, being crowned on February 27, 1594.
Moving beyond the end of the story, in 1598 he signed into law the Edict of Nantes, which granted religious toleration within France. It was to be his greatest achievement.
As far as the French Revolution is concerned, the civil wars saw the last summonings of the Estates General before the fateful one of 1789.
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Wait, what's this about Genevieve? I can't be bothered to skim and find out what happened, someone tell me!
But I liked that part...
Now THAT is much clearer. TOO MANY HENRIS! You should leave the bulk of the story out of the dialogue, and only bring it back to dialogue when Voltaire gets too intense in his description of violence. It was still very interesting to read McPoodle so don't feel too bad.
515932 The begining of Genevieve's story was modify, and I think her friends and Blue Belle were modified as well. The motivation of not wanting to go back to Equestria was added to her as well.
Aw, for once all that history I learned in school is useful and now you're going to scratch it.
515930
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Voltaire would have had to modify the essay for griffons and ponies, like the modern reader they would have no frame of reference for the characters of the french civil war. The summary clears things up and I do believe a rewrite is in order. Keep up the excellent work.
Please don't mention any of his cruel and stupid acts....
This summary definitly helped. Definitly way too much of a history info dump at once. Double so with the confusing names.
Ah, much better. Ta very much.
Having read the altered version, I don't think you need to "rip chapters 27 and 28 to shreds, and create a version where you don't actually read a word of Voltaire's story". It works fine.
Besides, if you removed the story, I wouldn't get to enjoy the ponies' disgusted reactions. If anything, I wish you had played that up a bit more.