Realpolitik at the Altar

Philip V loved two things above all others: lovemaking and gamehunting (big and small). A latter-day Attila the Hunter, he laid waste to hares and partridges and was an insatiable Lothario even though his religious persuasions kept his unflagging ardor focused on his wives alone. As the first Bourbon king on the Spanish throne, to which he ascended at the age of seventeen, he first married Maria Luisa of Savoy (she was thirteen and only lived to be twice that age), then, rather hastily, the Parma-born Elisabeth Farnese. While he was out shooting at animals, his wives could finally think. They immediately turned to affairs of state and foreign relations, with the help of trusted advisors. Late in his reign, the king went quite mad: convinced he was dead, or a frog, or demanding that he be allowed to mount the fiery steeds in the palace’s tapestries. Nevertheless, his reputation as a courageous monarch and a patron of the arts remained intact: this was hardly the first time that strong women had served to conceal the shortcomings and follies of the male on the throne.