ABSTRACT
Pasquier’s case for the heroism of Fredegonde uses a strategy of reversal. Fredegonde’s history is as full of “meschancete & sceleratesse” as Borgia’s, but her worth was greater as her means were less. But Pasquier’s confrontation of Machiavelli is not simply a matter of ironic, if patriotic, subversion. Claiming that an analysis of Pasquier’s exempla should reveal an intriguing retromotivation, the author shall turn to the first of the three major concerns specified by David for the formal analysis of exempla, the conceptual structure premised by the exemplary narration. The chess game also indicates that Pasquier’s primary strategy in confecting unity is one of distinction-making: Pasquier defined France by asserting disjunction between Roy and Royaume in order later to assert specific and important conjunctions between the two.
