Louis de Funès' film characters/La Folie des Grandeurs (Delusions of Grandeur)
Don Salluste
[edit | edit source]Don Salluste de Bazan is a wealthy, corrupted aristocrat at the court of king Charles II of Spain. A minister and tax collector, he is a deceitful, hypocritical and greedy man, who delights in the oppression of the king's poorest subjects. Universally hated by the people of Spain, he finds himself accused by the queen, a Bavarian princess by birth, of having seduced one of her ladies of honour, and is consequently stripped of all his functions and distinctions and sentenced to a life in poverty and seclusion in a monastery, which he so deeply detests. He orchestrates a scheme to take revenge on the queen by finding someone who will seduce her, thus leading to the public humiliation of the king so that Salluste himself can eventually be reinstated in all his former glory and privilege. Having failed to recruit his rogue nephew, he instead uses his charming, wise-cracking valet Blaze, who is secretly in love with the queen.