Tea at Trianon: Tsar Harry?

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

Monday, November 14, 2011

Tsar Harry?

Some Russians want Prince Harry to become the new Tsar of Russia. Unbelievable but intriguing. (Can you imagine Harry having to deal with the likes of Putin and company? But in Russia, anything is possible.) To quote:

Russia's absolute monarchy was abolished in 1917 following the abdication of Nicholas II, who was subsequently shot alongside his family, ushering in seven decades of Communist rule. While there is currently no undisputed claimant to the defunct Romanov throne, Mr Baunov points out that Harry has plenty of royal Russian blood coursing through his veins.

He continued: 'His great great grandmother was the great duchess Olga Konstantinovna Romanov. 'Moreover, King George V [who ruled from 1910-36] was a cousin of our Tsar Nicholas II, so the British princes are his distant nephews.' Olga, granddaughter of Tsar Nicholas I and cousin of Tsar Alexander III, was Queen of Greece, and is the paternal grandmother of Prince Philip. Mr Baunov suggested that it would be easy to find an attractive Russian bride and to make Harry the symbolic Tsar with his throne in the Kremlin palace. He said restoring the monarchy would bring back quality to Russian high society. The former Foreign Ministry official evidently suggested creating Tsar Harry to start a debate in Russia, where there is traditionally little support for restoring the monarchy, and to mock the current rulers.

One backer, physicist Nikita Govorun said: 'They've got Prince Henry spare still. Shall we marry him to some Russian Cinderella, swear allegiance to him, and we will live happily every after like they do in England?

'Let him be not Henry or Harry, but Igor the First.' And one online poll this week found 39 per cent support for a constitutional monarchy, compared with 24 per cent for the current democratic republic, and 12 per cent for a communist state. (Read entire article.)