Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Maria Theresa of Austria-Este

The Comtesse de Chambord, wife of  the French pretender, Henri V. Some say she was chosen by Henri's aunt Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte of France, daughter of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, for her plainness as  well as her religious devotion. The Comte and Comtesse were childless.  For more about the daughter of Marie-Antoinette and her family read the novel Madame Royale.

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3 comments:

May said...

I was just reading a rather amusing negative Amazon review of MADAME ROYALE:

"It has one good feature, it is consistently bad. It is loaded with cliches, so much so it seems to be written for dumb blondes who normally don't read."

Please. Just picking Marie-Thérèse as a heroine is not a cliché. How many other novels are even written about her? She is quite a difficult, thorny character, not at all the standard heroine of a mushy romance for "dumb blondes". Really.

elena maria vidal said...

Most of the bad reviews I get on Amazon are from people who clearly did not read the books, which means they are written out of sheer spite.

julygirl said...

First of all, to the misguided person who made that statement, I resent the dumb blonde comment....talk about cliches! Secondly a 'dumb' person would not even select that novel to read, and if by chance she did, the political issues that are referenced would be way over her head. As far as I can tell, the book is scrupulously researched and is beautifully written by a skilled and gifted writer. It brought that period of French history, unfamiliar to the average American, to life in a captivating way. It was written out of love for the subject matter, and the vicious person who keeps placing the negative reviews, (and I do believe it is a particular faction), are showing their vile ignorance.