Tea at Trianon: Hermione, the Overlooked Daughter of the Trojan War

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, September 6, 2025

Hermione, the Overlooked Daughter of the Trojan War

From The Greek Reporter:

The name Hermione first appears in Greek mythology in Homer’s epic The Odyssey. Homer identifies Hermione as the only daughter of Menelaus, the king of Sparta, and Helen of Troy. Helen, known as the most beautiful woman in the world, is often considered the reason for the Trojan War, as the Trojan prince Paris seduced her and persuaded her to leave her husband and daughter to sail away with him to Troy.
Nevertheless, in The Odyssey, Hermione is in fact mentioned only briefly, though her character gains greater significance in later works. Homer writes:

“…for the gods had never after granted Helen
a child to bring into the sunlit world
after the first, rose-lipped Hermione,
a girl like the pale-gold goddess Aphrodite.”
(Read more.)