Philippe was the grandson of Louis XIII and nephew to Louis XIV. Although one of the royal family, there were so many other royals, and the king and his mistress (Mme de Maintenon) had taken such a dislike to him, that it seemed that Philippe would never be given any power or responsibility. Eventually he was given a military command and proved himself quite able, but alas, he intrigued to take the Spanish throne (which had been given to his cousin, Philip V of Spain) and was called back to France. There he lived as a useless courtier, plagued by rumors of intrigues, murders by poison (probably false), and incest with his daughters (also probably false). In rapid succession, Louis XIV's direct family members died, leaving behind just his great grandgrandson to inherit the throne.

Upon Louis XIV's death, Philippe took control of the Regency council and became the main power throughout Louis XV's youth. He attempted to reform the banking and tax system of France, but relied upon speculation on the success of the Louisiana colonies to do so, and this led to a terrible market crash. Philippe was more successful in the arena of diplomacy--he managed to avoid war and better diplomatic relations with England and Russia--and created a free library in the hotel de Nevers (a predecessor of the Bibliotheque Nationale?). At no point did he try to seize the throne from his little third cousin, and in fact trained him to handle diplomacy and administration like a king. Shortly after Louis XV took the throne at age thirteen, Philippe abruptly died in his chair. He was little mourned, and mostly remembered through scurrilous ditties and legends of his debauched lifestyle.

The author liked Philippe far better than I did: she saw virtues where I saw none, called him attractive when any portrait proves that a lie, and mourns that he never got a chance to rule (even though he actually had a huge amount of power during his eight year period as Regent). Worse than her partisanship, however, is how poorly she explains his life and milieu. She introduces people, doesn't mention them for a hundred pages, and when they pop again, she uses a completely different title or nickname for them. I read these biographies carefully and I've read other books set in this period, yet I still had to refer to the family tree as a cheatsheet, even as I finished the book. Philippe's mistresses appear only briefly, given barely a sentence each, even if they were by his side for years. I was never clear on why the court and Parisians singled out Philippe as so very morally corrupt when, from Pevitt's summary, it seems that the worst he did was have mistresses and late night dinner parties, which every other courtier was doing. Surely there was some reason Philippe was noted so often as a libertine, why it was so easy for everyone to believe that he seduced his daughters and killed his relatives?

Too, Pevitt spends an oddly large amount of time talking about Watteau. Five of the twenty-three illustrations are by or of Watteau, and there are numerous detailed descriptions of each of his paintings scattered in the text itself, to boot. WHY? Pevitt gives no indication that Philippe even particularly noticed or cared about Watteau, so I've no idea why she expended so much time on him. And it's not that she talks about all Rococo artists--Boucher isn't even mentioned, and Voltaire gets a quarter of the space she lavishes upon some painter whose colors are muddy and whose anatomy is laughable. ( )