Tea at Trianon: The True Story Behind 'Mary and George'

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, April 6, 2024

The True Story Behind 'Mary and George'

George, Duke of Buckingham and wife Katherine with children

There are any number of fiction and non-fiction books that give a more accurate portrait of the rise of the Villiers family at the courts of James I and Charles I, including my novel My Queen, My Love. But Smithsonian gives a pretty fair summation, as follows:

In 1620, George married Lady Katherine Manners, one of the wealthiest heiresses in Britain. Mary’s detractors later claimed that she’d forced Katherine to spend a night in the same house as George, thereby casting doubt on the young woman’s honor and pressuring her father to agree to the marriage. The couple had four children, three of whom went on to have distinguished careers at English court.
James wasn’t the only Stuart monarch to bestow favor on George. The courtier also cultivated a close relationship with James’ oldest surviving son and heir, the future Charles I. In 1623, the pair, who were closer in age than James and George, secretly traveled to Madrid in hopes of securing Charles’ marriage to the Infanta Maria Anna. The proposed union was doomed from the start, as the Spanish princess was a devout Catholic, while Charles was a Protestant who had no intention of converting to secure her hand in marriage. Unsurprisingly, negotiations failed, leaving both Charles and George with a vendetta against Spain. The duo tried to convince James to declare war on the rival empire, but the king was determined to maintain peace.
In 16th- and 17th-century England, intimate (but not necessarily sexual) relationships between men were a natural byproduct of “growing up in the all-male environments of school, university and Inns of Court,” writes historian Fiona McCall for the Conversation. Both Francis Bacon and Michel de Montaigne, two leading philosophers of the day, wrote about such bonds, emphasizing the value of lessons passed down by older men to their younger friends, as well as the opportunities afforded by connections with seasoned statesmen. (Read more.)