Tea at Trianon: A Granddaughter of Grace Kelly

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

Saturday, March 21, 2020

A Granddaughter of Grace Kelly

Princess Alexandra of Hanover is one of the loveliest of Princess Grace's grandgirls. From Tatler:

Born on the cusp of the millennium, Alexandra is the only child of Prince Ernst August of Hanover and Princess Caroline of Monaco, who were married in 1999. She has 2 half siblings on her father's side, Hereditary Prince Ernst August and Prince Christian of Hanover, and 3 on her mother's side Andrea, Pierre and Charlotte Casiraghi. She grew up in Austria and is 12th in line to the Monagesque throne, although she gave up her distant claim to the British throne when she converted to Catholicism in October 2018.

From the age of ten, the young royal has been a keen figure skater, competing in many national competitions and even representing Monaco at the European Youth Olympics but over time she has made another interest of hers very apparent; fashion. (Read more.)