Tea at Trianon: Dangerous Liaisons: the Prequel

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, September 29, 2022

Dangerous Liaisons: the Prequel

As if the original novel is not enough. It was banned by Louis XVI for being immoral. I can't stand any of the characters. But some people can never get enough of the sordid side of the old regime. From Le Boudoir de Marie-Antoinette:

The network behind the project, Starz, describes the show as “a bold prelude of Laclos’s novel focusing on the origin story of how his iconic characters, the Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont, met as passionate young lovers in Paris on the eve of the revolution”. Billed as a “modern take on a classic”, it will centre on their will-they-won’t-they romance, but also feature Camille blazing a trail in male-dominated 18th-century society by wielding secrets to gain power. Valmont, too, has other things on his mind: the reckless libertine’s title has recently been taken from him, and he’ll stop at nothing to get it back. Cue snarky asides, double crossing and plenty of elaborate, seductive scheming. (Read more.)