Tea at Trianon: The Twists And Turns In The Genealogy Of The British Royal Family

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

Friday, September 2, 2016

The Twists And Turns In The Genealogy Of The British Royal Family

From Queen Anne Boleyn Historical Writers:

Parliament decided to act in order to bar a Catholic ever sitting on the throne again. That is where the Act came in to place, and Sophia leaped up in the succession to become the heiress presumptive. However The fact remains, that even though she was far down in the line of succession, she was still in fact a descendant. Sophia died, however shortly before Queen Anne in 1714, so it was her son who became King George I on Anne’s death.

Sophia was the youngest daughter of Elizabeth of Scotland, who was the daughter of King James VI of Scotland, and later went on to become King James I of England in 1603 . James’s claim to the crown of England, was due to his great-grandmother Margaret Tudor (eldest daughter of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York and older sister of Henry VIII) who, one hundred years before he ascended the English throne, married his great-grandfather King James IV of Scotland.

Through King James I (who is the current Queen’s 10th great-grandfather), Queen Elizabeth II is also descended from Robert the Bruce- the Scottish national hero, who defeated the English at Loudon Hill and Bannockburn, through his daughter Majorie Bruce who married King Robert II of Scotland, the first king of the house of Stewart- thus making Robert the Bruce her 20th great-grandfather. Through Robert the Bruce she also descended from Kenneth MacAlpin, the legendary first King of Scotland. This line can also trace back to Cedric of Wessex, the earliest Saxon ancestor who died in 534. (Read more.)