6 ideas
At court, a noble's rank existed only insofar as it was visibly displayed through houses, retinues, dress and hospitality appropriate to his station. Spending less than one's rank demanded meant losing that rank in others' eyes, so aristocrats rationally spent themselves into debt. What looks like irrational extravagance was a social obligation enforced by the competition for standing.
A figuration is a network of interdependent people whose positions constrain one another, so that behavior is explained by the structure of the web rather than by individual intentions. At Versailles every courtier's moves were shaped by the anticipated moves of rivals and superiors, producing outcomes no single person designed or could opt out of.
Louis XIV used ceremony to rank, reward and control nobles, but he was bound by the same system: he had to perform the lever, the coucher and every public ritual daily to sustain the order that underpinned his power. The ruler at the top of an interdependence chain is constrained by it, not exempt from it.
The absolute king kept power by maintaining tension among competing groups, chiefly the old sword nobility and the rising robe nobility and bourgeoisie, so that none could dominate and all needed him as arbiter. Distributing tiny privileges and favors kept factions dependent and watching each other rather than uniting against the center.
Seemingly trivial ceremonial details, such as who hands the king his shirt, who may sit on a stool, who enters first, functioned as a public, constantly updated register of prestige. Read this way, fights over protocol are not vanity but struggles over real position, because in a court society the symbol of rank and the rank itself are the same thing.
Survival at court required observing others minutely, reading motives from gestures, and controlling one's own emotions and expressions to maneuver for favor. This produced a distinctive calculating rationality oriented to prestige rather than profit, and it trained habits of affect control and psychological observation that later spread into wider manners.