Analytical index of persons

The figures of the Mémoires, as the analytical index of the Chéruel edition (Hachette, 1858, vol. XX, pp. 109-422, as digitised on Wikisource) records them: 2,352 people and 12,737 cross-references to the twenty volumes, each located down to the chapter and dated by the year of the chronicle. Every person carries their dignities, triplets of category / quality / title established entry by entry from the references themselves: Philip V is at once king of Spain and duke of Anjou, Dubois both cardinal and prime minister. The Presence column draws each figure's profile across the twenty volumes: at a glance, the permanent fixtures of the court stand apart from the meteors of a single volume.

The Dignity menu unfolds the three levels of the vocabulary — category, then quality, then the exact dignity: tick "noblesse" for the whole nobility, "duc" for dukes alone, or one singular title; the box at the head of the menu finds an entry at any level, and the buttons expand, collapse, select or deselect whatever it leaves in view. The Volume and Year sliders cut out an interval — volumes V to VIII, the years 1711-1712 of the dynastic massacre: the "References" column then counts the selection only, and the ranking follows. The search itself now looks at the entry name alone. Click a row to unfold its record: the dignities in full, the chapters in which the figure appears, volume by volume and clickable, and the complete text of the article. The league tables drawn from this material are gathered in the statistics.

The entries are the very paragraphs of the printed index (successive homonyms, once merged, are restored to their own standing): the index holds 2,622 of them — 2,620 once a duplicate (“Tolose”, a misprint in the index for the comte de Toulouse) and an earlier title (the first “Chartres (le duc de)”, who is the future Regent, folded into “Orléans (le duc d’)”) are merged — of which only the 2,352 people are kept here; the 268 places, institutions and subjects are set aside. References are extracted from the prose by a dedicated grammar — the "sticky" volume number, repeated only when it changes, bare page numbers, "et suiv.", ranges, volume XX of the last chapters of 1723 — and some forty blemishes of the facsimile (including one genuine printer's erratum) were adjudicated one by one against the full text of the volumes; each reference is tied to its chapter by the edition's actual pagination, and from there to the years of the chronicle (references into the volumes' appendices take the period of the volume). Dignities follow a controlled vocabulary — 10 categories, about 170 canonical qualities — assigned from a reading of each entry, with external checks for the major figures; offices with no exact equivalent (camarera mayor, viceroy…) are mapped to the nearest quality, and the full title governs. Field values are kept in the French of the source. The search queries the full text of the references.