Adieu, ma maison à Versailles
Communty News & Events
Nearly two years ago, I had been looking around Second Life for palaces and such, and I came upon this replica of the Chateau de Versailles, and for the next year and several more months, the role-play that it fostered became my home-away-from home and a good bit of my personal entertainment during that time.
Not that I didn't have anything better to do, but it seemed the next best thing to watching a period miniseries on PBS, reading a novel from the time period ... and in this instance, I would actually get to participate.
Of course, it was more than just that ... I met a great many of really dear people, many of whom I am still fond of - though I rarely get to visit with anymore.
But ... Versailles! How enchanting it was when I started ... to sit and listen as more seasoned players tried to outmaneuver each other with tongue and wit, and to finally get to participate myself as a young nobleman, Paul-Philipe de Tancarville, the comte de Montreiul.
As I became more experienced in roleplay, I tried to think of ways I could advance at court - but, as my time came to be, I also started to notice some things that I feared would lead to its eventual fall ... tightly cloistered cliques, some of which only awarded favor if you had been a participant in this incarnation of VSL or the next. Even if you played by the rules and played your part - one might not ever really fit in if you weren't invited to this thing or the other.
Of course - the fictitious part of that was meant to mimic court as it was during less commercial times, but it often seemed with some this extended to OOC alliances as well. My only natural recourse was to create a clique of my own, one which endured past my own time at VSL, and one in which some of the last tier-payors belonged to. It would seem as though we succeeded in many respects, but in others - it also seemed as though we were never quite good enough.
Court began to thin, but those of us who played throughout the last year were determined to make VSL what we could - although that often meant playing against the strong wills of some very powerful (though often not present) personalities. At the end of the day, no one will ever be able to say it was this person's fault or the other - the reason VSL failed - but, anytime I used an objective eye ... I knew it was because VSL was ran like an exercise in art rather than one of business ... often times like a grand theater full of extremely talented actors - but without the benefit of a producer, a director, or a script. Oh, that a steady hand might have minded the business ... what a playground VSL might have been!
But ... enough of that ... while it lasted, there was a great deal of "magic" in VSL. At times, it lived up to its dream of being a living museum - and it is those moments, and the friendships that rose from that - however fleeting - that will be what I choose to remember.
Vive la mmoire du chteau de Versailles dans Second Life!
Phantom Republic
aka, Paul-Philippe de Tancarville,
Louis Stanislas Xavier de France (Jan '12- summer '12)
Louis Auguste, dauphin de France (Fall '12 - late winter '13)
updated by @phan-republic: 06 Oct 2016 06:23:09AM
