With the Droughtlander back again, many fans are revisiting the show and have many questions about the series and its historical accuracy.
Season two featured a scene where Claire Fraser (played by Caitríona Balfe) slept with King Louis XV (Lionel Lingelser) in order to gain a pardon for her husband Jamie Fraser’s (Sam Heughan) illegal duel with Captain ‘Black Jack’ Randall (Tobias Menzies). However, this would never have happened in real life, according to historians.
In an exclusive interview with , Jeffrey Merrick, Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, explained why this scene was creative licence on the part of Outlander’s writers.
Professor Merrick said: “It seems unlikely that an untitled Englishwoman like Claire could simply waltz her way into Louis XV’s bed, especially, while the two countries were at war. The king had an official mistress, Mme de Châteauroux.
King Louis XV and Claire in Outlander (Image: STARZ)
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“When he fell ill at Metz, on the military frontier, in August 1744, he had to renounce her in order to receive absolution in anticipation of his death.
“He survived and recalled her and then took Madame de Pompadour as his official mistress in 1745.”
The historian, who has written extensively about the era, continued: “Louis XV had a wife and a series of mistresses. He also had sexual relationships or simply relations with other women, as documented in contemporary sources, but of course critics exaggerated their numbers.
Claire Fraser submitted herself to King Louis XV in Outlander (Image: STARZ)
“To my mind, it would have been more responsible as well as realistic for Claire to have submitted sexually to the minister of the Royal Household, who dispensed lettres de cachet – royal orders for imprisonment.
“We’re talking about the comte de Saint-Florentin, who also had a reputation for debauchery and despotism.”
Professor Merrick concluded: “Claire did not need to see the king, who would not have bothered himself about some Englishman in the Bastille. Saint-Florentin could have liberated Jamie.”
However, the professor did say sex and politics were intrinsically linked in early modern France, and it wasn’t just a “French story” but more universal.
King Louis XV slept with Claire Fraser in Outlander (Image: STARZ)
Additionally, Professor Merrick said although the scene is implausible, King Louis XV’s reign exhibited its share of sexual politics, with critics accusing the monarch of “debauchery and despotism” against the backdrop of financial, religious, political, and constitutional conflicts.
The King’s detractors “intertwined the themes of corruption and tyranny and applied the same critique to his ministers as well as the clergy and nobility as a whole,” according to Professor Merrick.
This damning indictment of the nation’s monarchy lasted right up until Marie Antoinette and the subsequent French Revolution.
Although Outlander didn’t get this scene right, it does highlight questions about sex and politics that contemporaries took and historians take seriously.
Outlander is streaming on MGM+ via Prime Video in the UK