Tea at Trianon: Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Hearts

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

Monday, January 10, 2022

Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Hearts

Henrietta Maria's sister-in-law. An interview with biographer Nadine Akkerman from Aspects of History:

Those who know about Elizabeth will know of the famous quote attributed to her: “I would rather be the Palsgrave’s wife than the greatest papist Queen in Christendom”. Do you think, historically, her reputation has been romanticised as the “royal wife” rather than a woman of agency? If so, why?

This is an excellent example of how Elizabeth’s reputation has been managed over the centuries. It is part of an alleged conversation with her mother, who wanted Elizabeth to marry King Philip III of Spain rather than become the ‘Goodwife Palsgrave’ by marrying Frederick. It has several weaknesses. The first is that this response was noted by an author in 1697, eighty five years after it allegedly occurred! Furthermore, it shows how the English, both then and perhaps still, fundamentally misunderstand the make up of the Holy Roman Empire. Frederick was, in fact, the most powerful of the Empire’s seven Electors. Anna, with many dynastic links to the Habsburgs (the family that ruled the Empire in the shape of the Emperor himself), would not have made such an error. The exchange is almost certainly apocryphal. As for Elizabeth being cast as a mere ‘royal wife’, and thus a tragic figure tossed hither and thither on the high seas of fortune, this merely demonstrates the many misconceptions over the agency of queen consorts in the early modern period. Yes, they operated within certain restrictions due to their sex, but their ability to circumvent them is underestimated. This is largely down to the lack of access to the correspondence of any of the Stuart queens. Without clearly annotated editions of their letters, how can we hope to appreciate their true political efforts? (Read more.)

More HERE.