Tea at Trianon: The May Queen

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, April 4, 2019

The May Queen

From History of Royal Women:

In 1930, her marriage was arranged to the Italian Crown Prince, Umberto. It was a political marriage that produced four children and had apparently good chances of success. The luminously beautiful young woman and the handsome Prince Umberto were fairy tale material, but it was not to be. However, Marie José was born to do her royal duty, and soon after the wedding, she served for a while with the Red Cross in Libya, showing an outstanding devotion to her work. With the arrival of the second world war, she was the first – and only – member of the Italian royal family who realised Mussolini was leading the country to disaster.

Her free-thinking and artistic personality was suffocated by the royal court in Rome, so she started to create her own entourage made up by some anti-fascist intellectuals. This poisoned the relationship with her difficult father-in-law, King Victor Emmanuel III. “You know, I don’t have much to do with the House of Savoy,” she confided to a journalist in 1940. “It’s not a family; it’s a fridge.”.

Marie José had a contradictory relationship with Mussolini. She hated the fascist ideology but felt attracted to the charismatic Italian leader. Some sources even mentioned that they had a brief affair in the 1940s, although there is no clear confirmation of such a relation. When she gave an interview years later, in 1993, and she was asked about this rumour, she replied: “He was a lion. I, too, am a lion. And we both feared one another.” (Read more.)