A Most Controversial Queen

A review of Daughter of the Caesars from History from a Woman's Perspective:

Marie Antoinette is one of history’s most controversial queens. In this Catholic biography of Marie Antoinette, Mrs. Vidal states that by killing both Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, the revolutionaries were killing the Catholic kingdom that they represented. This is because the goal of the French Revolution was to get rid of the Catholic church. The reason for this is because many Catholics were killed, especially those who were unwilling to convert. She also argues the popular misconceptions of Marie Antoinette that have been passed down for centuries and have been reinforced in Hollywood primarily the Marie Antoinette film starring Kirsten Dunst. 

     While many biographers highlight Marie Antoinette’s flaws, Mrs. Vidal emphasizes Marie Antoinette’s good traits. She grew up as a devout Catholic under Maria Theresa. She was a young girl who loved her family and when she was forced to move to France, it traumatized her so greatly that it took the French Revolution for her to mature. Marie Antoinette esteemed to be a moral woman and the reason for her conflict with Madame duBarry stemmed from her morals.  

    When Marie Antoinette became queen, she had many charities and adopted many peasants, including an African boy. She promoted women artists and women writers. She also sought to reform her corrupt court, making rules to uphold her morality. Mrs. Vidal also concludes that Marie Antoinette did not have an affair with Count Fersen and that she was faithful to Louis XVI. This is because Marie Antoinette wanted to be a moral queen. Also, if she did have an affair with Count Fersen, it would be considered an act of treason. It would also be impossible for her to conduct an affair because she was a public figure and everyone was watching her. 

    Not only did Ms. Vidal give a good portrait of Marie Antoinette, but she also gave a good insight into her husband Louis XVI. Louis XVI was also a devout Catholic. Unlike the myth of Louis XVI being a simpering fool, he was one of the most intellectual kings during his time. He knew many languages and had an acute understanding of politics. He agreed to help America because he was thinking of a long-term alliance. He thought that when France needed help, America would in turn help France in dire need. Contrary to popular opinion, Louis XVI was not opposed to change. He would have welcomed reform, just not the French Revolution. 

    Mrs. Vidal also overturned the popular misconceptions about Marie Antoinette’s friends, especially Princesse de Lamballe and the Duchesse de Polignac. The Princesse de Lamballe was one of the most intelligent people at Marie Antoinette’s court. She read a lot and was deeply involved in the politics of her time, which sometimes bored Marie Antoinette. She also had liberal leanings. Louis XVI feared Lamballe’s political influence on his wife so he steered her toward the Duchesse de Polignac, who had no inclination towards politics. The Duchesse de Polignac preferred simplicity and was a devoted mother to her children. She did not want to leave Marie Antoinette’s side during the French Revolution, but only did so when Marie Antoinette told her to think of her children. Throughout the Duchesse de Polignac’s days, she remained faithful to Marie Antoinette. When she learned of Marie Antoinette’s death, she died shortly thereafter because she was so heartbroken over her queen’s death. (Read more.)

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What Do Progressives Really Want?

 From The New Criterion:

It goes without saying that the socialists want everything free: free housing, free healthcare, free childcare, free pre-K; at the least, below-cost groceries. All this freeness will be paid for by “the rich.” Alas, there seems to be no plan for what happens when the money spigot runs dry because you’ve just confiscated all the assets of the people who made your society tick over. Repeated back-of-the-envelope demonstrations that “the rich” don’t have the wherewithal to pay for everything even if you suck up their last sou never faze these people. No, if only the “oligarchs” stopped picking everyone’s pockets, we’d all live on easy street. “Medicare for all” is also appealingly catchy. Yet Medicare reimbursement rates for hospitals average 10 percent below the break-even point; without overpayment by private insurers, the entire U.S. health system would collapse. Progressives aren’t big on math. Conservatives care about what works; leftists care about what should work.

This stuff is socialist same old, same old. More intriguing for me is the dsa’s proposition to eliminate the U.S. Senate, the presidency, and the Electoral College; axing ice is a mere kicker. Such a drastic revision of the Constitution would require an incalculable number of amendments, all approved by two-thirds of the House of Representatives and two-thirds of a Senate that would be voting for its own demise, as well as three-quarters of state legislatures to ratify them all. Really? In truth, the proposal is to rip up the Constitution, a prospect that would presently require nothing less than an armed popular uprising, perhaps a war between the New Mamdani Army and the federal government. Not that these folks are taking responsibility for promoting such a thing. After all, nearly every revolution other than the rather civilized American one has ended in catastrophe.

Yet these are also people who, despite rabble-rousing rhetoric, don’t really enjoy conflict. Ask any conservative podcaster how difficult, even impossible, it is to entice progressives to participate in a conversation with someone who actually disagrees with them. Trans activists reliably back out of media opportunities that would involve confronting their terfy critics face-to-face. Progressive views—on climate change, Palestine, dei, reparations, no-bail laws, men in women’s sports, abortion, welfare, and immigration—are a set menu. Individual leftists almost never deviate from this ideological rubber chicken. So progressives don’t only avoid conflict with their antagonists; they also avoid conflict with each other. (Read more.)

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An Exhibition of the Pink Diamond

 From Château de Chantilly:

From October 17, 2026, to January 3, 2027, the Condé Museum at the Château de Chantilly, in partnership with L’École des Arts Joailliers, is presenting an exhibition tracing the history of a legendary historical diamond: The Pink Diamond.

Known as the “Grand Condé,” the Pink Diamond is a historic stone weighing over 9 carats, documented in the collections of the Princes of Condé since the 18th century. This jewel, renowned for its exceptional color and provenance, was stolen in October 1926 but recovered shortly thereafter, hidden inside an apple.

A century later, the Pink Diamond is once again on public display as part of this special exhibition. To mark the occasion, the Musée Condé and L’École des Arts Joailliers have undertaken an extensive interdisciplinary research project—the first of its kind for a diamond of this caliber. Thanks to wide-ranging gemmological and historical analyses, all of its secrets are now being revealed. (Read more.)

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The Conservatism of Beatrix Potter

 

From The Bridgehead:

Paul Kingsnorth has been grappling with the question of how to live in this revolutionary age on his Substack “The Abbey of Misrule,” noting at the outset that: “The storm is here and an age is ending, but new and old hearts stay steadfast on the margins. God is not mocked, and reality bats last. In an age of Big Everything, small remains beautiful and shall, in the end, inherit the Earth.” In his concluding essays, he suggests that becoming rooted in “people, place, and prayer” are key parts of the answer.

Kingsnorth’s proposal reminded me of Potter, who was the sort of conservative who knew precisely what she wanted to conserve—and how. Potter was born in 1866 in Kensington, London, to Rupert and Helen Potter, joined six years later by a little brother, Walter Bertram. She spent her childhood cultivating a deep love of art and nature. She and Walter populated their home with a menagerie of pets, including rabbits, mice, frogs, lizards, snakes, salamanders, and a rotund hedgehog. Walter even had a pair of long-eared bats that he left with Beatrix when he went to boarding school. She painstakingly painted and sketched them all with astonishing skill.

 Potter’s pets and artwork turned into tales for children and in 1901 at the age of 36 she self-published the first edition of The Tale of Peter Rabbit after publishers turned her down due to her insistence that the price must be kept low to keep the story affordable for children. The following year, Warne & Co. published an abridged version to an enthusiastic public reception, and several sold out editions. They asked Potter for more, and a series of stories were published in swift succession. There would eventually be 33 in all, and Potter became one of the most famous children’s authors of all time. (Read more.)

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How Tens of Thousands of Somalis Were Resettled in Minnesota

 From The New York Post:

Two church non-profits have taken in at least $62 million to build the Somali community in Minnesota — leading to the rise of Ilhan Omar and the fraud scandals that have gripped that state, The Post can reveal.

Catholic Charities and Lutheran Social Services were at the forefront of reshaping the frigid Land of 10,000 Lakes thanks to generous government contracts stemming back generations.

“This is a very big pile of government money and a whole bunch of different groups have come to get their own slice of it,” Parker Thayer, an immigration expert at the Washington, DC-based Capital Research Center, told The Post. (Read more.)

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The Return of a Lost Tradition

 From Alan Liang:

For centuries, the Dominican Rite has stood as one of the most venerable and distinctive liturgical traditions in the Western Church. In the mid-13th century, as the story goes, and as highlighted by Fr. William R. Bonniwell, O.P. (A History of the Dominican Breviary, New York 1945), the young Dominican Order, scattered across Europe, wished to possess a uniform liturgy across their houses. After various attempts, the fifth Master-General of the order, Humbert of Romans, commissioned a new standard and imposed it on the order, and at the request of his successor, Bl. John of Vercelli, was confirmed by Pope Clement IV in 1267.

The Prototype manuscript Humbert commissioned miraculously survives to this day, originally kept at the convent of St. James in Paris, smuggled out during the tumultuous revolution, before being again acquired by the Dominicans in 1841, and now kept in the mother church of Santa Sabina in Rome. (Read more.)

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Duchess of Angoulême’s Diamond Tiara

 

From Royal Watcher:

While the exact origin of this magnificent Diamond Tiara is not exactly known, it was either created by Bapst or Nitot around the time of the restoration of the Bourbon Monarchy, using Diamonds from the French Crown Jewels, possibly created by resetting earlier jewels created for Empress Josephine or Empress Marie Louise. In 1816, Madame Royale, the Duchess of Angoulême was portrayed wearing a sumptuous diamond parure comprising the large Diamond Tiara, two rivière necklaces, a pair of chandelier earrings, a belt buckle, a ring, and her mother’s pair of Diamond Bracelets by painter Antoine-Jean Gros. The Duchess of Angoulême asked her uncle, King Louis XVIII, to allow the Tiara to become her personal property, so the Tiara was reset with diamonds from the Royal Family’s collection, and the older diamonds were returned to the Crown Jewels around 1820. (Read more.)

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The Ugly Truth

 From Culturcidal:

You’ll notice that in three years’ time, the battlefront has stayed roughly the same, although Russia has now taken another 1 to 2% of Ukraine. That tells you that this whole conflict has turned into what Donald Rumsfeld might have called a “long, hard slog.”

Furthermore, if you’re wondering who’s more likely to win this war of attrition, keep in mind that Russia has roughly 3.5 times as many people as Ukraine. That may explain why some Ukrainian front-line units are already reportedly operating at half strength, and why there’s no real possibility of Ukraine pushing Russia out of its territory and taking the fight in the other direction. (Read more.)

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Bonnie Prince Charlie's Disastrous Cumbrian Friend

 From Hidden Cumbrian Histories:

By the side of one of Scotland’s most beautiful sea lochs lies a pile of stones. It marks the place where the Young Pretender, Bonnie Prince Charlie, landed in July 1745 with a tiny and already somewhat battered and disunited group of seven supporters. The inscription on the memorial records that one of the prince’s party was: “Francis Strickland an English gentleman from Westmorland”.

Together, these seven launched the Jacobite Rebellion, the most formidable and daring attempt by the exiled Stuart dynasty to regain the British throne.

Although he came ashore with only this absurdly small band of followers, Charles Edward Stewart’s timing was good because the bulk of the British army was away fighting in mainland Europe. He gained slightly equivocal support from thousands of Highland warriors and within weeks was the master of Scotland and victor of the battle of Prestonpans near Edinburgh. In that fight he annihilated the only semblance of an army the English had at a time when the London government could hardly muster enough troops on hand to guard the royal palaces, let alone fight an invasion.

He was disappointed when his English supporters failed to rise and even more downcast when the French delayed launching their promised invasion until it was too late. Even so, the speed and tactical nous of Charles’s forces wrong-footed the defenders of a succession of English cities. The Jacobites captured Carlisle and penetrated as far south as Derby. This unprecedented success by an invading army threatened to destabilise the British state. Yet the intense squabbling and internal distrust that had grown among his commanders led to the conviction they would not win and they retreated against Charles’s wishes. This allowed the English to regroup and led to the Jacobite army being crushed at the Battle of Culloden with 1,250 rebel deaths. (Read more.)

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