Tea at Trianon: Six Wives

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, March 5, 2012

Six Wives

A synopsis.

Anyway, being married six times is and was extraordinary and in the years since, people have argued quite a lot about why one of the most powerful men in British history had such a messy private life. Debates in books and on the Internet between "fans" of the various wives often get quite vicious and part of the reason is that Henry VIII's romantic adventures helped radically change the face of history. As Dr. David Starkey wrote in his 2003 book on Henry's marriages, "The Six Wives of Henry VIII is one of the world's great stories ... It is more far-fetched than any soap opera; as sexy and violent as any tabloid; and darker and more disturbing than the legend of Bluebeard. It is both a great love story and a supreme political thriller .... What is strangest of all, it is true. And being true, it is supremely important."

There are few stories in History I love more than those of Henry VIII and his six very unlucky wives. As Starkey says, you can't make this stuff up!
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