Episode 10 Inside Versailles

Bonjour. Welcome to Inside Versailles, where it's got...

-It's pretty dramatic - I think we can agree on that one.

-Hot stuff.

Literally hot stuff.

So we have seen, in this series, the rise and fall of Athenais and

the introduction of a new... well, mistress.

How would you describe that relationship?

Louis does the classic - he falls for the nanny!

And here we see Louis completely fascinated by

Madame Scarron, Madame de Maintenon.

They love having these conversations about religion and philosophy.

The court is shocked.

They can't believe he's with this old woman,

with this dreary woman, with this quite plain woman.

But it does seem clear that Louis is falling in love with her.

So, across the series, we've seen poisons and murdering,

we've seen strange dark masses. People at home might be thinking

this is all sort of made up and sexed up for telly.

Actually, this is real, this is one of the biggest scandals in French

history from that period, and it's called the Affair of the Poisons.

And what happens is Louis begins to realise that everyone's been

poisoning each other - it's not just natural causes.

And he really launches this very special investigation.

Except, as soon as they launch the commission,

they realise there's a huge number of people involved here,

and some of these people are big, high-profile names.

For Louis, he can't allow this to get out cos it's humiliating,

and the people at his court are implicated in the most horrific crimes.

So the public investigation is redacted and de la Reynie goes

undercover and does a private investigation.

And the real problems come with this lady here, and this is La Voisin.

-She is the basis of Agathe in the drama.

-Yep.

They burn her at the stake. It's a public execution.

We can see here everyone's watching it, then there were all these

-cartoons and pictures of it.

-And pamphlets, yeah.

And Louis thinks that if you get rid of her,

you put the fire out but, unfortunately,

the minute that she is dead, her daughter, Marie Marguerite,

who's been rather oppressed by her mother, she says,

"There's one client that my mother never mentioned,"

and that is Athenais.

And you couldn't imagine a bigger bombshell.

This is also terrifying because we're now talking treason of

the highest order against the King himself from his lover.

-As with all murder, you have to ask, who benefits?

-Yes.

And what benefit did it possibly have to her to kill the King?

Yes, use love potions, yes, use beauty potions,

but what would be the point of killing him when the Dauphin

would become king and, the minute the Dauphin became king,

he would push her out of favour?

There's also this interesting sort of cover-up notion because

Nicolas de la Reynie, the chief of police, has sort of spent six years

piecing this all together, he's interrogated all the suspects,

La Voisin's daughter, several other sort of key names,

and he then burns his papers or maybe the papers are burned,

but some survive, and that's how we know about the Affair of the Poisons

-because Louis did a really good job of just sort of...

-Trying to cover it up.

..covering it up, and this is where it gets technical and tricky

because some of the others, who have not yet been burnt at the stake,

who have certainly done pretty serious crimes, well,

they can't be allowed to go free because they might be guilty,

and you can't burn them at the stake because that means they're guilty

and then everyone goes, "Hang on a minute!

"How many poisoners were there?"

You know, you can't have that scandal,

so the only course of action is you chuck them in prison,

throw away the key and never hear from them again.

So the aftermath of the Affair of the Poisons - it has some pretty big effects.

It wipes out a lot of this magical underworld,

but also Louis says, "You know what?

"The best way to deal with this is through law,

"and this is by saying that these people aren't witches or criminals,

"they're just frauds, and they're actually just making it all up,

"so we're not going to arrest them." So he decriminalised it.

Yeah, he does.

What he does is, rather cunningly, instead of coming down hard

on witchcraft, he goes, "No, it's just bunkum, it's just hokum."

So the Affair of the Poisons - it's a huge scandal,

Versailles becomes a laughing stock,

it's talked about all over Europe, and it has

this huge effect on Louis that he changes,

he moves towards morality, he moves towards virtue,

he moves away from Athenais towards Madame de Maintenon.

And that is really a beginning of a new type of Versailles, isn't it?

But is it going to last?

Well, we'll have to see in the next series because, obviously,

we've run out episodes.

But absolutely, we've seen perhaps the great scandal and maybe

the emergence of a new type of king.

Well, thank you so much for joining us for Inside Versailles,

both this episode and all of the episodes.

It's been wonderful to have your company.

I hope you've enjoyed our explorations into scandal,

murder, mistresses, poisons, love potions - the whole lot.

-Orgies.

-Orgies.

-Yeah.

-Everything. Bonsoir.

-Bonsoir.