Sire (novel)
Sire is a 1991 novel by Jean Raspail . The book was published in German in 2005.
history
Raspail describes how the eighteen-year-old Bourbon Crown Prince and pretender to the throne Philippe Charles François Louis Henri Robert Hughes Pharamond de Bourbon, his twin sister Marie and three other companions of the same age ride along the Loire towards Reims on a cold January night in 1999 . Philippe's companions are Odon de Batz, Josselin and Monclar. They represent the nobility, clergy and third estate. The prince and his sister were born in an unspecified castle in Luxembourg. They grew up in Pully in the canton of Vaud . They went to school at the Sainte-Bénédicte boarding school in Sierre in the canton of Valais . Officially, the descendants of the Bourbons were not allowed to enter the Republic of France.
Before the group turns north with their horses towards Reims, they stop at the Benedictine abbey of Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire . King Philip I has been buried there since 1108 . The tomb has been preserved in its original form as the monastery was not looted during the French Revolution . It is the only grave of a king of France that has not been desecrated. There the main character of the novel decides to take the name Phillippe I Pharamond after his coronation .
Reims has been the traditional coronation site of the French kings since King Clovis I was baptized in 499. The secret anointing in Reims Cathedral with the oil from the sacred ampoule upholds the legitimate claim to the French crown.
The author weaves historical atrocities of the revolutionary era into the plot of the novel : the execution of the king, the destruction of the sacred ampoule, the desecration of the royal tombs, the looting of churches and monasteries as well as orgies of murder of the nobility, clergy and citizens loyal to the monarchy.
Among other things, Raspail describes the execution of Queen Marie Antoinette , who on October 16, 1793 at a quarter past twelve noon - "light-footed and swift, without being supported, although her hands are still tied" - the scaffold on the Place de la Concorde mounts, as witnesses report. Her last words have been handed down. In her hurry to receive death as a brother, she stepped on the hangman's foot and now said to him: “ Monsieur, je vous demande pardon. Je ne l'ai pas fait exprès. “Raspail considers these last words of the Austrian Queen to be among the most beautiful that exist in the French language.
literature
- Georg Alois Oblinger: The conservative utopias of Jean Raspail. In: Vobiscum , June 2006, pp. 46-47.