Du devoir divertissant à la déconstruction du mythe du seigneur
From entertaining duty to deconstruction of the myth

Summary/Abstract: This paper explores Mahi Binebine’s Le Fou du roi, focusing on the father figure, court jester to King Hassan II. The novel dramatises the inner conflict between allegiance to royal power and family loyalty. The text presents a tragic rupture following the Skhirat coup, revealing the devastating emotional and ethical costs of loyalty to authoritarian regimes. Our approach combines narrative analysis with a political and psychoanalytical reading. The character construction, symbolic motifs, and familial dynamics, with attention to silence, betrayal, and shame, are examined. Consideration is also given to how the father’s function as a jester becomes a metaphor for intellectual submission, while the son embodies a call for justice, memory, and truth-telling. The study shows that the novel exposes the psychological damage inflicted by systemic power. The father’s renunciation of his son represents a symbolic sacrifice for survival. However, the return of the son and the act of writing re-open a space for dialogue, memory, and healing, turning literature into a therapeutic and political act of reparation. Le Fou du roi stands as both personal and collective testimony. Beyond denouncing power, it foregrounds reconciliation. The novel reclaims the voice of the excluded and restores broken bonds. Through fiction, Binebine transforms private pain into a public gesture of remembrance and resistance, offering literature as a space for truth, forgiveness, and the rehumanisation of memory.

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