April 1784
The spring of 1784 painted Versailles in the pale greens and golds of awakening trees, a season of renewal that seemed, in its own way, to mirror the changes within the Dauphin's body. Louis-Joseph was barely three years old by the reckoning of others, but inside, he knew himself to be older, sharper, weathered by a life of iron discipline and battlefield fire. The vessel of a child was beginning to give way to the imprints of his will.
He noticed it first in the mornings. The stiffness that had plagued his first months in this small body—weak bones, frail lungs, the uncertain gait of an infant—had begun to yield. His limbs were straighter, firmer beneath the silks. His chest, once narrow and prone to wheezing, drew air more fully, his breathing steady as if trained by drills long forgotten. He could run the length of his chambers without collapsing into coughs.
The physicians, summoned weekly to monitor the precious heir, muttered of miracles. "The Dauphin grows stronger than expected," they remarked, quills scratching hurriedly over ledgers. "His constitution is no longer that of the delicate boy we feared." His mother, Marie-Antoinette, kissed his hair and praised heaven. His father, Louis XVI, smiled with paternal relief, though his eyes betrayed a quiet, practical hope—an heir of sound health was not just a blessing, but a shield for the dynasty.
Louis-Joseph hid his private amusement at their astonishment. He understood the reasons: he had begun to fashion for himself a regimen, subtle enough not to draw suspicion, but exact in its discipline. Each morning before the servants stirred, he stretched beneath the canopy of his bed, moving arms and legs in slow patterns reminiscent of calisthenics. He clenched and unclenched his small fists until the muscles trembled, teaching his body memory it had not yet earned.
At meals, he avoided the sugared indulgences pressed upon him. He asked instead for meat in small but consistent portions, fruits, and warm milk. A child's appetite, carefully guided by the instincts of a soldier. And though his tutors considered his fidgeting a sign of youthful impatience, in truth he was training balance and coordination—climbing the low furniture, standing on tiptoe until his calves ached, jumping in place until his breath came in gasps.
The results revealed themselves day by day. His shoulders squared. His gait lost its wobble.
He caught his reflection often in the gilded mirrors of Versailles. The boy staring back still had the round cheeks of infancy, the fair curls of Bourbon blood, but his eyes were no longer those of a child. They carried focus, calculation, the quiet watchfulness of one who measures every movement around him. He tilted his chin slightly higher, testing authority in the angle of his neck, in the firmness of his step. A king was not born—it was carved into being. And he had already walked that path once.
The transformation did not escape the notice of his new guard. They were not yet a formal corps, not yet named, but they were chosen—discreetly, carefully—from among the loyal and the capable. Veterans of the Swiss regiments, seasoned sergeants, men with enough skill to obey without hesitation and enough silence to serve a child who whispered like a conspirator.
Louis-Joseph tested them as much as they tested him. He asked questions too sharp for a three-year-old. "How long does it take you to cross from the outer court to the Queen's staircase? How many men could slip through the Petit Trianon gardens unnoticed at dusk?" The guards exchanged glances, half-smiling at the Dauphin's precocious curiosity, but they answered. They found his intensity strange, but in him they sensed something rare: purpose.
It was in these exchanges that the bond of command began to take shape. He did not shout orders—his voice was still that of a child—but he spoke with a quiet certainty that compelled obedience. "Do this," he would say to his head guard, "but do it without being seen. Tell no one. If you must speak, speak only to me." And he did. Slowly, a nucleus of loyalty formed around him, invisible to the courtiers who dismissed him as merely precocious.
April's air carried the fragrance of lilacs through the palace gardens. Louis-Joseph walked there one afternoon, a guard at his side, pretending the careless curiosity of a child while inside his thoughts moved with precision. The Revolution was still distant thunder, but he felt it already in the air—the discontent of the people, the wasteful decadence of Versailles, the blindness of ministers. He could not change all at once, not yet. But seeds planted early grew roots strong enough to split stone.
And one such seed was a woman.
The Comtesse de la Motte. Jeanne. A name whispered with equal parts scandal and allure. To most in history, she was a schemer, an adventuress of questionable birth and questionable loyalty. But to Louis-Joseph, she represented opportunity. She was ambitious, clever, unafraid of weaving lies if they suited her purpose. Dangerous, yes, but danger was a tool, if handled with the right gloves.
In his first life, he remembered the Affair of the Diamond Necklace, the ruin it brought to his mother's reputation, the humiliation that would feed the fires of Revolution. But foreknowledge was not a curse—it was a map. And this time, Jeanne would not be the hand of his family's undoing. She would be his piece on the board.
That night, in his chambers lit by a single candle, Louis-Joseph beckoned his head guard always closer. The man bent low, surprised at the secrecy.
"You will find the Comtesse de la Motte," Louis-Joseph said softly. His French lilted with the high pitch of youth, but the words were too deliberate, too cold to be those of a child's whim. "Invite her here. Not openly. Discreetly. She must think it is her own victory, not a command."
The guard hesitated only for a breath before nodding. The Dauphin's orders had a strange weight to them—light in sound, heavy in consequence.
Louis-Joseph leaned back against his pillows, the flickering light catching the sharp gleam of his eyes. His body was still small, his hands delicate as porcelain, but within him stirred the will of a soldier reborn, a strategist cloaked in innocence. The Comtesse would come. The game would begin.
And the boy who would be king smiled faintly, as April's winds rattled the windows of Versailles.