FOLLOW CHARLES-JOSEPH

 

Having just passed into his thirties, Charles-Joseph is a sportsman, a dilettante and a gambler who assiduously frequents casinos.  He hides his erudition and profound knowledge of diplomacy and the great families (owing to a short but intense career in a foreign embassy after his studies in Political Sciences) beneath a natural nonchalance, and a constant strategy of seduction, which lands him numerous female conquests.  He accompanied his parents, themselves diplomats, around numerous countries in Europe and the Middle East.

 

He uses the chances to time travel which the PUBLISHER gives him to escape the casino police who suspect him of having cheated at the roulette table. At the Sources of Europe, he benefits from this by deepening his knowledge of the histories of the thermal towns, staying secretly in their archives, libraries and museums. He writes, under a pseudonym, learned novels and short stories inspired by the libertine spirit of the 18th century, an era in which he would have liked to have lived, and he has a real passion for historic parks and gardens, about which he writes a blog.

 

Like VALERY, he keeps a daily correspondence with his friends, male and female, using the means available nowadays through the internet and social media. As a result, he revives the travelling and epistolary habits of a significant historic figure who seemingly belonged to the same family: Prince-Marshall CHARLES-JOSEPH DE LIGNE (1735-1814), who is not well enough-known today, and who was considered in his day the ‘Prince of Gardens’ and the ‘Greatest Walloon’. A friend of Casanova and Catherine of Russia, and an admirer of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Voltaire, he was one of the greatest memoir writers of his time, inspired by the philosophers of the Enlightenment.