Tea at Trianon: Queen Mary's White Rose

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

Wednesday, August 8, 2018

Queen Mary's White Rose

The White Rose of York

From People:

According to the Royal Collection Trust, the brooch originally formed the focal point of a bracelet given to each of the bridesmaids at the 1893 wedding of the Duke and Duchess of York (the future King George V and Queen Mary). The White Rose became a symbol of Yorkshire in 1385, when the fourth surviving son of Edward III, Edmund Langley, became the first Duke of York. The Duke, whose descendants would go on to take part in the Wars of the Roses, features heavily in Shakespeare’s play Richard II....The Duke of York has historically been the second son of the monarch — a tradition that continues today with Queen Elizabeth‘s second son and third child, Prince Andrew. He acts as Colonel-in-Chief of the Yorkshire Regiment, is a patron of Yorkshire Air Ambulance and York Minster Fund and is chancellor of the University of Huddersfield. (Read more.)