Tea at Trianon: An Unlikely Royal Romance

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, July 28, 2020

An Unlikely Royal Romance

From Royal Central:

On a summer’s day in 1818, a young German princess walked into one of the most famous hotels in London to meet a man twice her age. Just a year earlier, Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen and her suitor, William, Duke of Clarence, would never have considered chatting let alone taking the step that would inevitably follow this brief exchange. But after a short time together, with chaperones, of course, they both agreed to meet again in around a week’s time when the setting would be far more formal. For this brief interview, at Grillon’s Hotel, was the final step in their hasty plans to become husband and wife.

It was a marriage of necessity, at least for the Duke of Clarence. The British Royal Family had hit a succession crisis that needed to be resolved as soon as possible. Just nine months earlier, the crown had been destined for Princess Charlotte of Wales – William’s niece and only child of his eldest brother, the Prince Regent. But she had died in November 1817 giving birth to a stillborn son. Her death caused widespread mourning but also plunged the House of Hanover into panic mode. For while the aged and ill king, George III, had had fifteen children, there were now no legitimate grandchildren to inherit the throne in the future. (Read more.)