The Accursed Kings Series Quotes

“There is a singular strand running through history, always renewing itself, that of fanatics for the general good and for the written law. Logical to the point of inhumanity, pitiless towards others as towards themselves, these servants of abstract gods and of absolute law accept the role of executioners, because they wish to be the last executioner. They deceive themselves because, once dead, the world no longer obeys them.”
― Maurice Druon, The Accursed Kings Series: The Iron King / The Strangled Queen / The Poisoned Crown

“Order! As happens with all political blunderers, the word was ceaselessly upon his lips, and nothing could have persuaded him to admit that the world had changed even a little in the last century.”
― Maurice Druon, The Accursed Kings Series: The Iron King / The Strangled Queen / The Poisoned Crown

“Il y a dans l'Histoire une singulière lignée, toujours renouvelée, de fanatiques de l'ordre. Voués à une idole abstraite et absolue, pour eux les vies humaines ne sont d'aucune valeur si elles attentent au dogme des institutions ; et l'on dirait qu'ils ont oublié que la collectivité qu'ils servent est composée d'hommes.”
― Maurice Druon, The Accursed Kings Series: The Iron King / The Strangled Queen / The Poisoned Crown

“In every period, and in every country, there have always been two parties: the reactionary and the progressive.”
― Maurice Druon, The Accursed Kings Series: The Iron King / The Strangled Queen / The Poisoned Crown

“The Creator was immensely wise and charitable when He forbade us knowledge of the future, while He has vouchsafed us the delights of memory and the enchantments of hope.”
― Maurice Druon, The Accursed Kings Series: The Iron King / The Strangled Queen / The Poisoned Crown

“Extreme fatigue causes insomnia, and insomnia is the cause of unhappiness”
― Maurice Druon, The Accursed Kings Series: The Iron King / The Strangled Queen / The Poisoned Crown

“Philippe d’Aunay, equerry to Monseigneur the Count of Valois, the King’s brother, had been for three years the lover of Marguerite, the eldest of Philip the Fair’s daughters-in-law. And he dared to speak thus to Blanche of Burgundy, the wife of Charles, Philip the Fair’s third son, because Blanche was the mistress of his brother, Gautier d’Aunay, equerry to the Count of Poitiers. And if he dared to speak thus to Jeanne, Countess of Poitiers, it was because Jeanne, no one’s mistress as yet, nevertheless was a party, partly from weakness, partly because it amused her, to the intrigues of the other two royal daughters-in-law.”
― Maurice Druon, The Accursed Kings Series: The Iron King / The Strangled Queen / The Poisoned Crown

“It is to be remarked that, during this period, nearly all the women at the Court of France were called either Jeanne or Marguerite and the men Philippe, Charles or Louis, which does not make the historian’s task any the easier and has frequently given rise to confusion.”
― Maurice Druon, The Accursed Kings Series: The Iron King / The Strangled Queen / The Poisoned Crown