Orléans's note wasn't a warning; it was a death sentence with a fancy wax seal. I hadn't just lit the fuse of the revolution—I had handed the matches to the whole damn country.
The triumphant adrenaline of the previous day had curdled into the sour taste of dread. I stared at the single sheet of paper lying on my desk, the words burned into my mind. Estates-General. Constitution. Limit the power of the monarchy forever.
The morning sun slanted through the tall windows of the study, illuminating the note. It looked so small, so innocent. But it was a key, and it was about to unlock a Pandora's box of historical horrors.
Marie stood beside me, her hand resting on my shoulder. She had read the note. She didn't fully understand the historical weight of the words, but she understood the tone. She felt the danger.
"What is this... Estates-General?" she asked, her voice a quiet thread in the heavy silence.
"It's a meeting," I said, my voice grim. I walked over to the large map of France that hung on the wall, a prop I was starting to see as a battlefield blueprint. "Of the three estates. The First Estate is the Clergy. The Second is the Nobility." I tapped a finger on Paris, then swept it outwards across the whole country. "And the Third... is everyone else."
"To advise you?" she asked, a hopeful note in her voice.
I turned to face her, my expression bleak. "No. To write a constitution. To take my power away and give it to themselves." I let out a harsh, bitter laugh. "In the history I know, it's the beginning of the end. The first step on a very short road to a guillotine."
She flinched at the word, her hand tightening on my shoulder. The abstract threat that had haunted me since I arrived here was suddenly becoming a concrete political reality. The mechanism of my own death was being assembled, piece by piece, and I was the one who had given them the instructions.
I ran a hand through my hair, a gesture of pure 21st-century stress that felt completely alien in this powdered wig. I wasn't just a king in a tight spot anymore. I was a man watching his own execution being scheduled on a national calendar.
The Royal Council convened in a state of barely controlled panic. The news from Paris was dire. The call for an Estates-General was no longer the rallying cry of a few radical clubs; it was on the lips of everyone. My victory over the Parlement had been interpreted exactly as Orléans predicted: not as a king enforcing his will, but as a king admitting that a higher authority—the people—existed.
The council chamber was a gallery of fear. The old, conservative ministers who had advised me so poorly before were now practically hysterical.
"We must send the Swiss Guard into Paris!" one minister, a florid-faced duke, bellowed, slamming his fist on the table. "Arrest the printers! The ringleaders! A show of force will remind them who is king!"
My brother, Provence, sat opposite me, his face a perfect mask of solemn concern that didn't fool me for a second. I could see the glint of satisfaction in his eyes. The "I told you so" was unspoken, but deafening.
"A risky move," Provence said, his voice a smooth, calming counterpoint to the Duke's shouting. "It could provoke a backlash from the Parisians."
"It wouldn't be a backlash," I said, my voice cutting through the noise. They all turned to look at me. I hadn't said a word since the meeting began. I had been sitting there, a quill in my hand, sketching a diagram on a blank sheet of paper, ignoring their panicked chatter. "It would be a civil war," I continued, not looking up. "And we would lose."
You can't shoot an idea. You can't arrest a popular movement. Every history book I'd ever read screamed that single, undeniable truth. Sending troops into Paris would be like throwing gasoline on a bonfire. It would be the spark that ignited the whole damn country.
The Duke sputtered, outraged. "Your Majesty, this is cowardice! We must crush this rebellion!"
"It's not a rebellion," I said, finally looking up, my eyes meeting his. "Not yet. Right now, it's a demand. And if we refuse, then it will become a rebellion."
The genie was out of the bottle. Fighting it was suicide.
So... what if I didn't fight it?
The thought was insane. It was terrifying. It went against every instinct of self-preservation that a king in this era should have.
What if I led it?
I dismissed the council, leaving them to sputter in their impotent fury. I returned to my study, Marie following close behind, her expression a mixture of worry and intense curiosity. She had seen the look in my eyes. She knew I had a plan.
"You can't be considering it," she said as I closed the doors behind us.
"Considering what?"
"This... Estates-General. You said yourself it was the end."
"The end of the old way," I said, a wild, desperate energy starting to build inside me. "Maybe. But what if we create a new way?"
I walked over to my desk and smoothed out the piece of paper I had been sketching on. It was a simple diagram. Three boxes, labeled "First Estate," "Second Estate," and "Third Estate."
"The old way, the way it has been done for centuries," I explained, my finger tracing the boxes, "is that each estate gets one vote. The Clergy and the Nobility, the privileged few, always vote together. Two against one. The Third Estate—ninety-seven percent of the entire population of France—is always, always silenced."
"So they will vote against you, no matter what," Marie said, her eyes widening as she began to understand the trap.
"Exactly." I picked up the quill. "So... we change the rules of the game."
With a decisive stroke, I drew a line through the number of representatives for the Third Estate. "First, we double their numbers. The Third Estate will have as many representatives as the other two combined."
Marie gasped. "The nobles will never agree."
"They don't have to," I said, a grim smile on my face. "And second, the most important part." I drew a heavy line through the "one vote per estate" rule. "We change the vote. Not by estate. By head. One man, one vote."
It was basic democracy. Proportional representation. An idea that was centuries away from being born in this world. Here, in this room, it was the most revolutionary concept since gunpowder.
If I did this, I was fundamentally altering the balance of power in France forever. I was voluntarily handing a loaded weapon to the masses.
But I was also aiming that weapon directly at the heart of the corrupt aristocracy that was trying to destroy me. I wasn't their king anymore. In this new game, I was the Third Estate's most powerful ally. Their champion.
"Louis," Marie whispered, her voice filled with awe and terror. "This is... this is madness."
"Yes," I said, the sheer, breathtaking audacity of the plan making my heart pound. "It is. But I think it might be the kind of madness that saves our lives."
I didn't consult my council again. I didn't ask my brothers for their opinions. I didn't wait for another petition from Paris.
I acted.
I summoned Calonne. The poor man looked like he had aged ten years in the last week. I dictated my Royal Proclamation to him. As he wrote, his hand shook so badly the words were a spidery scrawl.
I, Louis, by the Grace of God, King of France, did hereby summon the Estates-General of the realm to assemble at Versailles.
I laid out the new rules. The doubling of the Third. The vote by head.
When I finished, Calonne just stared at the document, his face ashen. "Your Majesty," he whispered, his voice trembling. "This... this is the end of absolute monarchy in France."
"No, Monsieur Calonne," I said, walking to the window and looking out at the sprawling palace, the perfect symbol of the old world I was about to shatter. "This is its only chance of survival."
I took the first official copy of the proclamation. I rolled it up, and I pressed my royal signet ring into the hot, red wax. The seal was a mark of finality. A point of no return.
The die was cast. The proclamation was copied and sent out by royal couriers to every town, city, and parish in France. An irreversible act that I knew would trigger a political and social upheaval unlike anything this country had ever seen.
A few hours later, the Duc d'Orléans burst into my study. He didn't wait to be announced. He wasn't angry. He was utterly, shockingly, gloriously dumbfounded. He held up a copy of my proclamation, which was already being distributed in Paris.
"What in God's name have you done?" he demanded, his voice a ragged mixture of awe and terror. "I sent you a note to warn you that there was a revolution coming!"
I met his astonished gaze, a grim, tired smile on my face. "I know," I said. "And I've decided to be the one to lead it."
Orléans stared at me. His mouth opened, then closed. Then he started to laugh. It wasn't a smirk. It was a wild, incredulous, genuine belly laugh.
"You magnificent madman," he gasped, shaking his head in disbelief. "You lunatic. You absolute genius." He finally caught his breath, but the smile remained. "Do you have any idea what you've just done? You've just declared war on the entire French aristocracy. On your own class. On your own family."
His expression turned serious. "They will never, ever forgive you for this. They will see it as the ultimate betrayal."