François, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marsillac (15 September 1613 – 17 March 1680) was a noted French moralist and author of memoirs and maxims. He has become a byword for eloquent insight; one who sees through to the true nature of something is a "real Rochefoucauld".
He participated fully in the court intrigue that was the hallmark of 17th-century French nobility. While Louis XIII ("the Just") and his son Louis XIV ("the Sun King") reigned with regal detachment, Richelieu and his ilk made sport of trying to stay on His Majesty's good side. La Rochefoucauld was right there in the middle of the scrum, getting his hands as dirty as anyone's while writing about human nature on the side. His hundreds of pages may be aptly summarized as, "Everyone looks after their own self-interest".
Depending on the lens through which it is viewed, his maxims (collected after his death and published as Maxims) can be seen as the ranting of a cynical misanthrope, or the insightful thoughts of one blessed with keen sense and intellect. Dive on in
and decide for yourself.
Notes:
- Roberto Rossellini's La Prise du Pouvoir par Louis XIV ends with the Sun King alone in his office reading one of his maxims: "Neither the sun nor death can be looked at directly."
- Early volumes of Gleams of Aeterna featured quotes from La Rochefoucauld as epigraphs for just about every chapter, likely to emphasize the gritty political realism of this series, as opposed to the author's previous High Fantasy cycle.
