Tea at Trianon: The Exchange of Princesses

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

Thursday, August 6, 2015

The Exchange of Princesses

French historian Chantal Thomas returns to fiction in The Exchange of Princesses, a sensitive and tragic novel about two child marriages. The author’s lavish prose and penetrating insights into the characters remind the reader that fiction can be a high art. Through the conniving of the Regent, the Duc d’Orléans, eleven-year-old Louis XV of France is betrothed to the four-year-old Spanish Infanta. The Infanta’s older brother, the teenaged Prince of the Asturias, is betrothed to Orléans’ twelve-year-old daughter, Mademoiselle de Montpensier. The two princesses are exchanged at the border, and each goes on to complete their childhoods in a foreign land.

We see how too often at royal courts the innocence of children was not spared, all depending on the vigilance of whoever was in charge. The little Infanta-Queen is cared for by the prudent Madame de Ventadour, the royal governess who saved the life of Louis XV when he was an infant. The three other children, Louis XV and the Prince and Princess of the Asturias, are older and not attended to so diligently. They encounter problems that they do not have the emotional maturity to handle. We are shown the enormous capacity for emotional and physical damage involved in such child “marriages,” which in the end benefit neither the countries nor the individuals.

This review originally appeared in the August 2015 edition of The Historical Novels Review.

(*NOTE: The book was sent to me by the Historical Novel Society in exchange for my honest opinion.)

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