I Pledge Allegiance, To An Autistic French Royal

• Lori Palminteri
• Uncategorized
• March 21, 2023

Back in school days, I never did like standing for the pledge of allegiance. It wasn’t a statement thing. I wasn’t Colin Kaepernick’ing or anything. If there was anything I was protesting it wasn’t the country, it was more being forced to stand up at 7am and listen to announcements I didn’t care about. Mostly I was just tired. And shy. And short. Standing next to other kids was always a reminder how small I was. It was also a reminder how small I was when other kids pointed at me and said, “are you even supposed to be in this grade?”

One of the highlights of 2022 was my solo trip to Paris. A real introverted nerds dream. The art! The culture! The history! The food! I had long been drawn to Paris if for no other reason than all my alcoholic literary heroes loved it so. Cities, I know, can be muses as much as people. But cities age far different than people.

The only time I left Paris was to go to Versailles. This is where I learned that American fascination with the French may be stitched in fate. For you see, Louis XIV (who called himself the ‘Sun King’ as the universe revolved around him, of course) really defined decadence and white privilege in his lavish Palace of Versailles. It’s hard to really grasp the beautiful yet grotesque display of fortune unless your eyes have seen it for yourself. That was his goal too. Just to simply make everyone jealous that France was the best and the sexiest.

Anyway, he wasn’t such a great king because he was a selfish narcissist… turns out, in latin “sun king” translates to “what an asshole.” (It doesn’t.) But he did live into his 70s which is pretty crazy because people seldom made it to 40 at this time. Back then, we treated everyone over 35 the way Hollywood treats women over 35. Like it’s over.

So, the Sun King had actually outlived his children. For most parents, their worst nightmare is outliving their kids. But we’re unsure he was capable of any emotion whatsoever. His grandson would succeed him. The next King Louis would be handed his mess, a country falling apart, and be most famous for marrying Marie Antoinette (who gets a bad rap and never said “let them eat cake”) and getting his head chopped off during the French Revolution.

Louis XVI, however, is a person all Americans should be thankful for. While most of us know from school days that the French aided us in the revolutionary war for independence, you may not know how much that aid was a really, really bad idea for Louis. So much so, he basically died for us.

What you need to understand about Louis XVI is that is was autistic. Like pretty severely. But we didn’t have a diagnosis for autism yet. You were just simple. And royals have always hidden their weakness or weirdness. In retrospect, it seems fairly obvious. Louis XVI was not interested in sex. His wife, Marie Antoinette (Hungarian Princess) was said to have been a real beauty. For years he wouldn’t even touch her. This resulted in… well, no results. No babies. This caused a lot of drama in the royal palace, specifically hatred towards Marie, which was unfair because it really wasn’t her fault her husband didn’t want to have sex with her. Everyone else wanted to have sex with her.

What was he interested in? Locks. Yes. Locks and keys. He had a grand collection of locks and keys he would play with for hours. Granted, there’s some irony here that the key he could use was his penis and the lock being his wife’s vagina, but that’s besides the point. A grown man with no interest in sex, socially inept, unable to make eye contact and just wants to play with locks and keys— yup, feels pretty autistic to me.

The other thing he was obsessed with was us. America! I guess the Brits and the French always had a little spat about who was cooler and it was usually the Brits. So the French were rooting for us, because fuck the Monarchy. King Louis XVI was heavily invested in helping us win the war.

Which is dandy. Except for the fact that the people in Paris were literally starving to death in the streets. It was a bad scene. And no one was singing catchy tunes like in “Les Miserable.” When asked to send more money and more ships to help the states, he did so fervently, though ill advised. And when the Parisians got wind of it… well, they were pissed. They were all like, “wait, all I ate today was a stale piece of bread, I look like I’m 52 and I’m 28 and my kids are hungry, and I am missing teeth and we live with mice. Why the fuck are we sending resources to the Americans? That’s their problem, let them deal with it.”

As a libertarian, I have to agree with the Parisians with missing teeth and living among mice and disease. Our revolution was not their problem, and Louis should have helped his own people instead of us. However, if he did that, we probably would have lost the war and history would be completely rewritten. I wouldn’t be living in this free(ish) country. And I do like living here, despite all our faults. We’re still one of the best options country wise.

Cheers to you, Louis XVI, you rich royal idiot! You are most famous for getting your head lobbed off, but my country should actually have your face on our money. You paid a high price for our freedom, you idiot. But I thank you for it, I guess.