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WORK TITLE: The Sun King Conspiracy
WORK NOTES: with Yves Jego; trans by Sue Dyson
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 11/29/1968
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NATIONALITY: French
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born November 29, 1968.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Author.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Denis Lepee has made a name for himself in both the political and literary fields. He has made specific contributions as an adviser for environmental issues, as well as through the authorship of fiction novels.
The Sun King Conspiracy is Lepee’s first published novel, and was written in cooperation with Yves Jego. The novel features a historical narrative, set in the 1600s. The Sun King Conspiracy revolves around the rule of King Louis XIV, known throughout history as the “Sun King” referenced in the title. As an assistant to the renowned dramatist, Molière, Gabriel de Pontbriand spends much of his time sorting through his boss’s documents and keeping them in order. His life shifts dramatically, however, when he chances upon a set of seemingly discarded documents. What first catches Gabriel’s eye is the presence of a familiar signature, which in fact belongs to his father. However, the information contained within the documents is even more monumental, possessing the potential to rock the country on a societal and governmental level. The documents reveal the true origins of King Louis XIV who, in real life, is rumored to have been the lovechild of the queen consort and Jules Mazarin, the royal cardinal; in the books, these rumors are made truth, and the consequences of their public release could shake up a conspiracy never seen before in the country of France. Unfortunately for Gabriel, Mazarin is aware of the missing documents and is determined to get them back. The papers were actually pilfered from his home, which was set ablaze by some ne’er-do-wells. Mazarin sends Jean-Baptiste Colbert, his main assistant, to fetch them for him. It turns out there are far more reasons to have the papers in one’s possession, including the matter of deciding who will take over Mazarin’s job after his death, which is coming sooner rather than later. Gabriel takes it upon himself to try and decipher just exactly what these papers mean, while also dodging a multitude of people who are interested in doing away with him for his discoveries.
In an issue of Publishers Weekly, one reviewer commented: “Dumas fans will especially enjoy Jego and Lepee’s thoughtful thriller set in 1661 France.” A contributor to Internet Bookwatch called the book “a consistently compelling and unfailingly entertaining read from cover to cover.” Mirella Sichirollo Patzer, a reviewer on the History and Women blog, remarked: “I liked the fast-paced, intricate plot and how more and more of the story was revealed a little at a time.” She added: “The tale kept me engaged to the end.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Internet Bookwatch, March, 2017, review of The Sun King Conspiracy.
Publishers Weekly, February 6, 2017, review of The Sun King Conspiracy, p. 49.
ONLINE
Belgravia Books Collective, http://belgraviabooks.com/ (November 3, 2017), author profile.
Euro Crime, http://www.eurocrime.co.uk/ (August 1, 2008), review of The Sun King Conspiracy.
History and Women, http://www.historyandwomen.com/ (April 20, 2016), review of The Sun King Conspiracy.
Tonstant Weader Reviews, https://tonstantweaderreviews.wordpress.com/ (April 21, 2016), review of The Sun King Conspiracy.
Novels
The Sun King Rises (2008)
aka The Sun King Conspiracy
Denis Lépée
BIOGRAPHY
Denis Lépée, co-author of The Sun King Conspiracy, is a local politician and environmental adviser. He is the author of books on Ernest Hemingway and Winston Churchill.
The Sun King Conspiracy
264.6 (Feb. 6, 2017): p49.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
* The Sun King Conspiracy
Yves Jego and Denis Lepee, trans. from the
French by Sue Dyson. Gallic, $14.95 trade
paper (448p) ISBN 978-1-910477-35-9
Dumas fans will especially enjoy Jego and Lepee's thoughtful thriller set in 1661 France. Though the country is nominally ruled by young Louis XIV, Cardinal Jules Mazarin has been the country's de facto leader for decades. As the cardinal lies on his deathbed, he's shaken to learn that a fire set in his Paris palace was designed to divert attention from a burglary that netted the thieves some secret documents. Mazarin orders his adviser Jean-Baptiste Colbert to retrieve them by any means necessary. This effort ensnares the book's D'Artagnan-like hero, actor Gabriel de Pontbriand, secretary to the playwright Moliere. Gabriel stumbles upon coded papers concealed in the prompter's well of the theater after one of the burglars fell through the roof. The machinations of a shadowy Rome-based conspiracy, as well as the jockeying for power in anticipation of a vacuum following Mazarin's demise, ratchet up the tension, even for readers familiar with how that struggle played out. (Apr.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"The Sun King Conspiracy." Publishers Weekly, 6 Feb. 2017, p. 49. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA480593840&it=r&asid=eb46d6ac568955288163f40220ef3bd1. Accessed 2 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A480593840
The Sun King Conspiracy
(Mar. 2017):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Midwest Book Review
http://www.midwestbookreview.com
The Sun King Conspiracy
Yves Jego & Denis Leppe
Gallic Books
www.gallicbooks.com
9781910477359, $14.99, PB, 448pp, www.amazon.com
Stolen documents have the power to change the course of history for France and the Sun King himself. The collaborative work of Yves Jego (a politician and the author of several works of fiction and non-fiction) and Denis Lepee (an environmental adviser and historical novelist) "The Sun King Conspiracy" is fast-paced historical mystery that features many real-life seventeenth-century characters including Moliere, La Fontaine, Cardinal Mazarin, and Louis XIV, as well as famous locations, including the Louvre palace, Versailles, and the chateau of Vaux-le-Vicomte. A consistently compelling and unfailingly entertaining read from cover to cover, "The Sun King Conspiracy" is certain to be an enduringly popular addition to community library Historical Fiction collections. It should be noted for personal reading lists that "The Sun King Conspiracy" is also available in a Kindle format ($9.99).
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"The Sun King Conspiracy." Internet Bookwatch, Mar. 2017. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA491086869&it=r&asid=7a3eb80e8d6adb208647cd37d8b13eb3. Accessed 2 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A491086869
Wednesday, April 20, 2016
THE SUN KING CONSPIRACY - Yves Jego and Denis Lepee
A tale of religious brotherhoods, corruption, romantic intrigue and political scheming at the court of Louis XIV. 1661 is a year of destiny for France and its young King, Louis XIV. Cardinal Mazarin, the Chief Minister who has governed throughout the King's early years, lies dying. As a fierce power struggle develops to succeed him, a religious brotherhood, guardian of a centuries-old secret, also sees its chance to influence events. Gabriel de Pontbriand, an aspiring actor employed as secretary to Molière, becomes unwittingly involved when documents stolen from Mazarin's palace fall into his hands. The coded papers will alter Gabriel's life for ever, and their explosive contents have the power to change the course of history for France and the Sun King himself.
REVIEW
In this fast paced historical thriller, we are swept into the court of France's Sun King, King Louis XIV. The authors introduce us many of the characters who lived at the time - the king, queen, mistresses, and Cardinal Mazarin and his nieces. But Cardinal Mazarin is near death and members of the secret society to which he belongs enact some dastardly and powerful maneuvers to take his place. Thus begins an exciting story of political intrigue, espionage, murder, and betrayal. I liked the fast-paced, intricate plot and how more and more of the story was revealed a little at a time. The tale kept me engaged to the end. The characters were well drawn, as were the many historical descriptions of locations, clothing, and occurrences. This was one of the most decadent periods of French History. and the authors present a spectacular yet private glimpse into the wealthy and opulent court of the handsome and virie King Louis XIV and his many lovers.
Thank you to the author and publisher. I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for visiting my blog, http://greathistoricals.blogspot.ca, where the greatest historical fiction is reviewed! For fascinating women of history bios and women's fiction please visit http://www.historyandwomen.com.
The Sun King Conspiracy by Yves Jégo and Denis Lépée
The Sun King Conspiracy by Yves Jégo and Denis Lépée is a complex historical novel with a myriad of intrigue and conspiracy swirling around Louis XIV, the famed Sun King. It’s a novel full of the movers and shakers of the 17th Century, from the Sun King himself, Louis XIV, his mother Anne of Austria, the Cardinal Mazarin, Minister of Finance Colbert, and Superintendent Fouquet with cameos by Moliere and even Charles Perrault, the author of Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and many other fairy tales.
Like a sheep among wolves, there is poor Gabriel Pontbriand, a lowly fictional character who comes to Paris to escape an overbearing uncle and be an actor. He is in love with Louise de La Vallière, though of course he does not know it. He literally trips over the key to secrets that could bring down the state and so much more, secrets that people have killed to get, including a cipher with the key to The Secret, a document guarded for centuries by a secret society.
The novel would be better named The Sun King Conspiracies because there is not one person who is not part of one of several conspiracies. There is the Queen and Mazarin’s conspiracy about the parentage of King Louis. There is Colbert’s conspiracy against Fouquet and every other person who is not Colbert. There are the religious zealots conspiring against Mazarin and Colbert. And of course, there is Fouquet’s grand conspiracy with the members of a secret society to guard The Secret and with its power change the course of history.
The best historical novels are those about people and times of which the readers know very little. Certainly, the less you know, the more you will enjoy The Sun King Conspiracy. It’s not that it is not grounded in history. It is. There are conversations that come right out Madame de Montespan’s memoirs, a sort of Real Housewives of Versailles score-settling memoir of one of Louis XIV’s mistresses. However, their interpretation of history leaves a lot to be desired. This is sort of an opposite-day history.
The novel takes seriously the wild theory that Louis XIV is the son of Cardinal Mazarin and not Louis XIII. It’s a ridiculous theory and ignores that Louis XIII and Anne were reconciled after yet another uprising when Richelieu convinced him that if he did not get an heir the uprisings and problems would continue. This speculation exists because some people insist Louis XIII was gay and would not sleep with his wife. He was bisexual, he had affairs with men and women. He understood the need for an heir and did his duty for an heir and a spare.
For me, the greatest problem was the authors’ decision to make Jean-Baptiste Colbert into such a cardboard villain, he only lacked a long mustache to twist with his fingers. No one who achieved his level of power was an innocent, the road to power is full of compromises and moral ambiguity. But, Colbert was one of the truly great bureaucrats of all time.
Colbert was not the flamboyant and charismatic sort of character that gets to be heroic. He was too busy working. Less famous than Richelieu and Mazarin, he mattered because of his competence in restoring the balance of trade, building new industries, investing in the infrastructure of France, and hauling France off the cliff of bankruptcy. He also codified the laws, and expanded and supported the colonization of Canada and Louisiana, even promoting the “Daughters of the King” whose transport to Canada was paid by the King to encourage colonization and expansion rather than just trade.
And while Colbert was a typical 17th century European and did not work to ban slavery or promote abolition, he did write the Black Code that guaranteed certain human rights to slaves, including one day off a week, adequate food and clothing, and the right to marry. It prohibited slave owners from raping women slaves. It prohibited separating families, defined a way to earn freedom and mandated other conditions utterly unlike American chattel slavery. Freed slaves also had the same rights as other subjects. It is why New Orleans had so many free people of color, people who earned their freedom under Colbert’s Black Code. And yes, from the eyes of today, it is all horrible and inexcusable, but for its time, it was a remarkably humane document.
So Colbert is the villain.
In contrast, Nicolas Fouquet is heroic, a patron of the arts, generous and pious and wonderful. However, in reality while he was Superintendent of Finance, he mingled his personal finances with the royal finances so thoroughly they could not be untangled. This was common. Richelieu and Mazarin enriched themselves as well. Surely Colbert did, too. But Fouquet’s conspicuous consumption in building Vaux-le-Vicomte, the inspiration for Versailles, was his downfall. You don’t show up the King. In the novel, he is presented as purely innocent of any inurement, though certainly the leader of the central conspiracy.
While the novel portrays Fouquet as a patron of the arts, he was more a personal collector of the arts for his benefit while Colbert founded many Royal Academies that continue to this day. He gave many writers a settlement enough to support them in their work, independent of the need to seek further patronage. For someone who has done so much good in his life, whose ideas about national economic development, banking and finance informed Alexander Hamilton and was a basis of our own system in the United States, it is sad to see him cast as the villain, but I suppose if you’re going to make Fouquet a good guy, there is no other option.
The Sun King Conspiracy was disappointing, not just in its historical revisionism, but also in the central plot. There was a conflict in France between the clergy and the aristocracy, it was not a conflict between oppression and liberty. The actual Secret was silly and disappointing. I expected more and kept reading in hopes that there would be a great Dan Brown sort of payoff, but there was not. Sure, I see the Dan Brown inspiration, but if you’re going to hide a secret until the next to last chapter, it better be a good one.
This book is going to be much more enjoyable for people who have studied not history, who won’t have an inner “So Wrong!” sounding in their head while they read. If it were just a story about something I knew nothing about I would probably like it better. It’s a translation from French and who knows, perhaps the French view Colbert differently than those who studied him because of his profound influence on Canada and the United States.
I received a digital edition of this book from the publisher via NetGalley.
Jego, Yves and Lepee, Denis - 'The Sun King Rises' (translated by Sue Dyson)
Paperback: 474 pages (Feb. 2008) Publisher: Gallic ISBN: 1906040028
THE SUN KING RISES is a historical novel written by Yves Jego, a member of the French Parliament, and Dennis Lepee, a local politician and environmental adviser, who has also written books on Ernest Hemingway and Winston Churchill. The book was translated from the French by Sue Dyson, who is more widely known as best selling novelist Zoe Barnes. The novel follows the events of 1661 and gives a new twist to the political machinations at the court of Louis XIV blending a fictional hero into the real events of that year.
Cardinal Mazarin, who has governed France during the early years of the King's reign, carrying on the system devised by his mentor Cardinal Richelieu, is dying. His apartments are burgled by religious zealots who steal a package containing secret encoded papers from his desk, but in escaping one of them falls through a skylight to his death on the stage, where Moliere's company are rehearsing, and drops the package of papers.
Gabriel de Pontbriand, a young actor and the fictional hero of the story, finds the package and when he examines the papers notices his father's signature on one of them. Coincidentally Gabriel's childhood friend the beautiful Louise de la Valliere had recently arrived at court to act as companion to Henrietta of England who is to marry the King's brother. The complex court relationships, intrigues and power battles between Colbert, Mazarin's secretary, and Nicholas Fouquet who is building the magnificent Chateau de Vaux-le-Vicomte dominate much of the rest of the book. The rivals Colbert and Fouquet both wish to assume the mantle and power of Mazarin but Louis XIV has other plans as he wants to rule as an absolute monarch.
Some of the encoded papers refer to the close relationship between Mazarin and Anne of Austria, the King's mother, and others are ancient documents that may change the course of history. Gabriel has to struggle to find the secret contained in the papers, survive the various conspiracies at court, and possibly win the love of Louise.
The book appeared in France under the title 1661 and from the information on the website it is clear the book has aroused a lot of interest. The authors state that they were trying to create a historical novel in the style of Alexandre Dumas or Robert Louis Stevenson (I apologise if with my French O level circa 1959 I have got this wrong). I read many years ago a number of the Dumas novels, including the D'Artagnan books that started with THE THREE MUSKETEERS and went on to TWENTY YEARS AFTER, a marvellous sequel, and VICOMTE DE BRAGELONNE. Perhaps this is why I was very disappointed and found this novel rather predictable and boring, with the briefest periods of action separated by long sections of dull material. Neither the word portraits of the characters nor the plot were anywhere near the standard of Alexandre Dumas. They also bizarrely decided to latch on to the "Da Vinci-Dan Brown" band wagon with a plot line about an ancient biblical gospel and an exclusive group holding the key to the encoded secret.
This could have been such a good book but I am afraid that although interesting to anyone who wants to learn a little bit about this fascinating time in French history it lacked the sparkle, momentum and inventiveness of a Dumas novel. I don't think this story works because it is very difficult to blend fictional characters and events with real life characters and events in a novel in a seamless fashion. I prefer the real life component to be used only as a foundation for the fictional story, as Dumas does so brilliantly in TWENTY YEARS AFTER, a tale of intrigue based on the period of the Fronde rebellion in France and Civil War and regicide in England. Unfortunately in the case of THE SUN KING RISES it feels as if the fictional characters and storyline have just been tacked on as an afterthought.
Norman Price, England
August 2008
Norman blogs at Crime Scraps.