Tea at Trianon: The Marriage of William II, Prince of Orange to Mary, Princess Royal

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, July 25, 2022

The Marriage of William II, Prince of Orange to Mary, Princess Royal

Mary of Great Britain and Ireland with William of Orange

Mary, Princess Royal and William of Orange were the parents of the more notorious William of Orange, who also married a Mary Stuart. From Everything I Ever Loved:

On Sunday, May 2, 1641…William and Mary were married at Whitehall. Standing side by side, the two children made a handsome couple: William, with pink-flushed cheeks and long, curly brown hair, was every inch the elegant cavalier with a gold sword at his side; Mary, half a head shorter, was all in white, with ringlets and pearls in her hair; the huge diamond brooch William had given her was clasped on her bodice. There had been no time to prepare the usual grand festivities. Instead, around 2 p.m., the royal family sat down to dinner in the king’s withdrawing chamber, “with the greatest privacy that might be.” That evening, the Dutch ambassadors joined them to “see the married couple bedded together.” For the newlywed children, it was a mere formality, designed to ensure that the marriage could not be annulled; in the half hour they spent in bed together, nothing more was exchanged than a few kisses. Then William spent “the rest of the night in the bedchamber of the king of Great Britain, who looks on him most fondly.” ~A Royal Passion: The Turbulent Marriage of King Charles I of England and Henrietta Maria of France, by Katie Whitaker (Read more.)

From Melanie Clegg:

Back to the royal wedding of 1641, which seems to have had plenty of the drama that all weddings manage to engender. In this case, the bride’s mother, Henrietta Maria was a bit narked that her eldest daughter was being married off to a relatively obscure Dutch princeling, while her father would have preferred her to be married to her cousin, the son of the King of Spain. To add further complications, their nephew, the Prince Palatine, who sounds like a most unpleasant chap and who had none of the famous charm of his mother, Elizabeth of Bohemia or other siblings (which included the heavenly but rather grumpy Prince Rupert), rolled up in the country in a right old sulk because he thought the Princess Mary had been promised to him.
Oh dear. Vivacious Mary herself was nine at the time and appears to have seen nothing wrong with her fifteen year old suitor, who was pretty good looking for a prince if a bit quiet. She was escorted down the aisle of the Chapel Royal by her brothers Charles and James and followed by her watchful governess and an ostentatious troupe of sixteen aristocratic bridesmaids. Her father waited by the altar to give her away, while her mother, sister Princess Elizabeth and grandmother, Marie de Medici watched from behind a curtain at the side. (Read more.)