Mei and the Sun King

Versailles

Mei hadn't expected to be this amazed by the beautiful palace outside of Paris. Mei's mother had chosen a perfect day to visit Versailles, as there wasn't many tourists and the two could explore it in the best way possible.

Mei walked through the Mirror of Halls and was mesmerized by the lightning. She also couldn't help, but giggle when watching herself in the many mirrors. Whilst walking around the palace's hallway, she imagined how it would've been like to reside here as French royalty. She also couldn't help but imagine the person, who came with the idea to build this palace and how much work there must've been put into it, especially without modern technology. 

Mei pulls out her newly brought smartphone and takes a lot of photos and one would eventually be chosen to her Instagram account, where she also had uploaded other photos from France with her old phone. This was a signal to her friends and family in Japan, that she was doing well and that they shouldn't worry about her, despite the fact of how much she missed them. Mei sighed in melancholy, whilst thinking about them, but quickly shook her head, once her mother called her.

Together with her mother, they would watch the Battle Gallery and Mei felt fascinated by the huge paintings. A thing Mei really liked, was art - music was after all an art. Mei had visited Setagaya Arts Museum several times, as well as other great arts museums in Tokyo. She even watched a geisha show in Kyoto with Hamada Mio a couple years ago. Seeing the work of other artists, always made her wonder what the artists behind it thought about when they made it, how they blended the colors or how much work and effort they would put into learning a dance or play their instrument and why they choose to learn it.

The mother and the daughter decided to visit one last room in the palace, before visiting the beautiful garden and then head home.

The final room they visited was Salon d'Apollon - a stunning chamber with red walls, ceiling paintings and a portrait of two different kings on the left and right wall. Mei got curious about them, so she looked them up on her phone. On of them was Louis XVI, the last King of France before the fall of the monarchy during the French Revolution.
The other one was Louis XIV, often referred to as "The Sun King" or "Louis the Great" - forever associated with the image of an absolute monarch and a strong, centralized state and it was him, who build the extravagant palace, that Mei was standing in at that exact moment.

Reading about the king left Mei gaping and in awe

"He had truly been a powerful king....."

After that, she left with her mother to see the beautiful garden.