ABSTRACT
54Descartes’s death was faked. On 11 February 1650 the Frenchman, who had been invited by Queen Christina to Stockholm to tutor her on his ideas of love, didn’t die of pneumonia. Instead, he was given some groundbreaking oral tonic by the Queen herself, and told to flee, to take the spare horse and get the fuck out. A peasant’s body was arranged as a stand-in for the corpse. He left in the depths of night, heading south, with his signature gown billowing in the Scandinavian breeze.
