While Queen Marie bakes cakes in Versailles, Louis XVI is out trying to win support for military action in the former British colony now called the United States. With recent polls showing the king’s popularity at an all-time low for any recent king, even some Royalists are distancing themselves from the foreign conflict.

After an initial success propping up the then failing rebellion, King Louis has seen setback after setback in the nascent confederation. First, after years of chaos, the colonists finally dropped the Louis-sponsored articles of confederation in favor of a more authoritarian system of centralized power under a single President.

Insurgents protesting unfair taxes nearly caused an irreparable rift between authoritarians and slave-owners. Firebrands such as Thomas Jefferson refused to recommend a hard-line against the anti-tax whiskey insurgents, instead calling for “watering the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants.”

In perhaps the biggest scandal of the colonial campaign, that major opponent of a pro-slavery constitution turns out to “own” several Blacks himself. The King’s argument that the war in America is about freedom took a major blow when close personal friend Thomas Jefferson acknowledged that there are several Black slaves on his ranch’s books. In a serious embarrassment to the king, it has recently come to light that Jefferson’s companion in Paris is one of those slaves.

Even victories become failures. After the divisive General Washington was ousted from the new centralized presidency, new President Adams’s government passed the repressive anti-sedition acts, yet again undermining Louis’s supposed reason for supporting the colonial rebellion. It seems unlikely that the struggling nation will be able to overcome their sectional violence without great loss of life on both sides.

Widows and families of deceased soldiers, once a power base for the King, have joined the voices of protest. This has prompted some inflammatory remarks from the King, such as his response to protestors outside his Fontainebleau vacation home that “I have to go on with my life. Its nothing to lose my head over.”