Wednesday, June 6, 2018

Rediscovering famous characters VI : the guitar player !

by Jean-Jacques COURTEY, Doctor in Economic Geography, Ph. D
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Our character of the day isn't easy to discover, in spite of the fact he is extremely famous worlwide since more than three centuries.
He was a guitar player, and it's him who made this music instrument so fashionable from the XVIIth century. This fretted stringed instrument is dating back to ancient Egypt, but our character made it extremely popular till nowadays.
He was equally known in his time as a great dancer, among other skills !

He invented too the "three eights" : eight hours for work, eight for fun, and eight for sleep.
You don't guess who we are talking about ?
He also dedicated his life to get rid of feudalism in any part of France - by imposing heavy obligations on it, which ultimately lead to its downfall seventy-four yours after his death. Above that, he created the first five special regimes (Public Works, Merchant Navy, Army, Royal civil servants, and French Comedy) - which are on the way to be suppressed very soon among others. You know now he was French.

His dedication to music and other arts was exceptional. "La Comédie Française" was given its very advantageous regime, to promote theater at a very high level. Do you start to have an idea about him now ? Well, let's go on !
He was born in Saint-Germain-en-Laye in 1638, as a miraculous child for his parents, after the dedication of the Kingdom of France to "Sainte Marguerite-Marie".

He was also very sentimental at the beginning, as he was madly in love with a young and pretty woman from Italy, called "Marie" in French. He could never marry her because of the opposition of her uncle and tutor Jules, as well as his mother. But he always protected her.
May be you already discovered his name, but you are still hesitating, as you never knew he was a guitar player ?





Well, let's give the final clues : Marie was the beautiful Marie Mancini and her uncle was famous also, as he was Mazarin ("Mazarini" in Italian), Prime Minister of France from 1643 till his death in 1661 !
That's it, you finally understood that our character of the day is Louis XIV (1638 - 1715), Sunking and Great Monarch of France !
At his time, France became for more than one century the First Economic Power in the world !