Tea at Trianon: Old Accusations

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, December 19, 2022

Old Accusations

I actually think this is very a sweet picture. The young man who plays Louis XVI is well-cast.

It seems the BBC is taking some fire for portraying Marie-Antoinette as dabbling in same-sex sexual interaction. And with Madame du Barry, of all people. It is actually a very old slander. According to The Telegraph:

Marie Antoinette is shown kissing another woman in a new BBC period drama despite no evidence the French queen was gay, according to historians. The series set to air on BBC Two was written by Deborah Davis, the screenwriter behind The Favourite, whose Oscar-nominated script focused on Queen Anne’s same-sex relationships, and her latest work follows another famous royal. In a trailer for the new drama, titled Marie Antoinette, the eponymous queen of France is shown kissing one of her female courtiers despite experts saying there is no historical evidence that she was gay. Historians have said that “gossip” about the queen’s sexuality was used to malign her prior to her execution in 1793 during the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror, and they raised concerns that by including a same-sex relationship producers are repeating this centuries-old slander.

A new trailer for the series shows a teenage Marie, played by German actress Emilia Schüle, arriving at the Palace of Versailles, and struggling to adjust to the French court and her new husband, the future Louis XVI. Marie is shown in the clip kissing a female courtier, who is understood to be Madame Du Barry, a real historical figure who was the official mistress of Louis’ father. However, Marie Antoinette was not know to have any such sexual relationship and its inclusion is “titillation” according to Catriona Seth, a professor of literature at the University of Oxford and biographer of the French queen.

She said: “Mud sticks, and it seems to have stuck to this day. I think it’s quite hard to find the true Marie Antoinette behind the gossip.” Marie was Austrian and treated as an outsider when she arrived at the French court aged just 14, and medical issues appear to have initially prevented her fulfilling her duty by consummating her marriage to Louis, making her more unpopular. She was attacked in scurrilous pamphlets known as “libelles” that contained pornographic pictures and claims about the royal family’s sex life which added to revolutionary opposition to the monarchy by portraying the queen as a depraved woman.

Prof Seth said that this “tragically” false image continues to this day, saying: “Clearly the vision people had of Marie Antoinette has been coloured by it, by this circulation of libellous texts and so on.”

She added: “There are whole pamphlets of a sexual nature filled with accusations against Marie Antoinette, which start essentially because her marriage takes a long time to be consummated.

“She can’t be sleeping with the king so she must be sleeping with other courtiers and so on. She must be sleeping with men, or women, or, according to one of the pamphlets, she must be sleeping with a dog.

“It’s all tied in with this idea that she was cuckolding the king and therefore cuckolding France. She is seen as an Austrian, an outsider, a traitor.”

Prof Seth has said that such “scurrilous caricatures” have stuck because there is a “fascination with Marie Antoinette” and her image as a “man-eating, power-crazy and yet stunning and seductive individual”. BBC Two will feed this fascination with a new series created outside the corporation by production company Banijay Studios, and the eight-part drama stars James Purefoy among a cast of relative newcomers playing courtiers at Versailles. The series follows Marie Antoinette’s arrival at the palace following her engagement to the young Louis, not yet king, and her struggles to adjust to the strict rules of courtly life. (Read more.)