Tea at Trianon: A Montecito Yankee in King Charles’ Court

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, December 16, 2023

A Montecito Yankee in King Charles’ Court

From The Hill:

It is as if Harry and Meghan are producing their own Hollywood version of Survivor: Buckingham Palace. It might make for amusing scuttlebutt and binge-watching, were it not for the existential national security threats confronting both the U.S. and its closest strategic ally.

In terms that Mark Twain could best understand, the last thing the British monarchy needs now is a Montecito Yankee in King Charles’ Court. Harry and Meghan, alongside Scobie, are failing to read both the room and the world right now.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping are conducting an ideological global war against the West. That dystopian World War III is already kinetic in Ukraine and the Middle East, and its expansion toward Taiwan and the Indo-Pacific looms. (Read more.)