Politics & Power Quote by Lytton Strachey

Strachey lands a neat, quietly vicious paradox: the nobles lose power, yet aristocracy wins anyway. The sentence turns on "ascendancy of Louis" - shorthand for the Sun King’s centralization of authority, the long administrative squeeze that tamed feudal grandees and relocated them into a court culture where they could be watched, flattered, and domesticated. Political clout ebbs; social gravity holds.

The intent isn’t to mourn the nobility or cheer their defeat. It’s to puncture the comforting story that modern state-building automatically modernizes society. Strachey, a critic with a feel for historical theater, is interested in how revolutions can be bureaucratic while manners stay hereditary. "Whole complexion" is doing a lot of work: he’s talking about taste, patronage, marriage markets, who gets heard in a room, who becomes legible as important. The nobles may no longer steer policy, but the aristocratic style of ranking people - by pedigree, polish, proximity to prestige - keeps organizing daily life.

There’s subtext in the word "completely". It’s overemphatic on purpose, a jab at readers tempted to treat politics as the master switch for culture. Strachey implies that Louis didn’t abolish aristocracy; he rebranded it, converting independent nobles into ornaments of the crown while letting their codes of distinction saturate France. The state becomes centralized, even "modern", but the social imagination stays courtly. Power changes hands; hierarchy changes costumes.