What was the life of a French aristocrat like after Louis the 18th came to power?

by Aelic

Did they still live in Versailles and attempt to desperately win the king's favor as before? Or was life less about the king after the revolution?

plusroyaliste

So much had changed, you can't turn back the clock, though there were many aristocrats who tried desperately. Neither Louis XVIII or Charles X lived at Versailles. In 1830 Charles X is overthrown over modestly small efforts at reactionary reform.

Some of the greatest French literature that pioneers realist style is written and set during these years. Stendhal and Balzac are heavily descriptive authors, their usual subject is class relations in a changed society. Their novels are a rich depiction of the attitudes and circumstances of the panoply of aristocrats, wealthy or impoverished, Napoleonic and restored, as well as bourgeois people. I'd recommend Le rouge et le noir and Le Père Goriot to begin, Norton Critical editions are the best translations but Oxford and Penguin are both good too.