The brother of the Sun King
"Monsieur" lived openly as a homosexual at the court of Versailles; as the Sun King's brother he was all but untouchable.
On 9 June 1701, Philippe I de Bourbon, Duke of Orléans, died of a stroke at the Château de Saint-Cloud. The younger brother of Louis XIV was 60. At the court of Versailles he had led a double life for decades that was extraordinary in its openness for the time: Philippe, known at court simply as "Monsieur", barely concealed his affection for men.
His closest and most lasting love affair was with Philippe de Lorraine, the so-called Chevalier de Lorraine. From the late 1650s he was regarded as Monsieur's official favourite and remained so until Monsieur's death. Louis XIV tolerated his brother's relationship for years, even if he occasionally banished the Chevalier when the court talked about it too loudly.
Philippe wore dresses, jewellery and wigs, wore make-up and surrounded himself with a circle of young men. Saint-Simon, the court's sharp-tongued memoirist, described him as a small, pot-bellied man on high heels, "toujours paré comme une femme", always adorned like a woman. Homosexual acts were in theory punishable by death in France at the time. That Philippe nevertheless lived so freely he owed solely to his status as brother of the most powerful monarch in Europe.
His second wife, Liselotte of the Palatinate, bluntly recorded in her letters to Electress Sophia of Hanover what was on her mind: Monsieur had nothing in the world in his head but his young fellows, spent enormous sums on them, while his children and she herself barely had what they needed. She tolerated his inclinations as long as his favourites left her in peace.
Philippe I is the founder of the House of Orléans, which later produced King Louis-Philippe I. His life remains a rare testimony of lived homosexuality in absolutist Europe, visible because power protected him.