Tea at Trianon: When the Gods War for the Soul

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

Friday, January 16, 2026

When the Gods War for the Soul

Review of the series Rise of the Merlin. From Bree A. Dail:

I appreciate ambitious book-to-screen adaptations—The Lord of the Rings, The Wheel of Time, The Witcher, Game of Thrones—even while criticizing their excesses and missteps. When they work, they remind us that epic storytelling can still be done with seriousness, scale, and intention.
Setting aside the issue of gratuitous sex—which always unnecessarily lowers the artistic value of these epics—most original series today (along with many book-to-film or television adaptations) operate at an astonishingly low bar. They suffer from a lack of creative writing talent, a disregard for beauty and mystery, and an indifference to language itself.
From The Rings of Power, to Bridgerton, to the seemingly endless Star Wars spinoffs, and the glut of witch and vampire series, the pattern is the same: dreadful dialogue, thin character development, hollow spectacle, and stories that mistake volume for meaning. Enormous budgets cannot compensate for the absence of imagination, reverence, or craft.
Which is why it is worth noting—explicitly—the astonishing impact Spencer Klavan had in developing, and then teaching, the Atlantean language for this series. That kind of philological seriousness is vanishingly rare in modern television. J. R. R. Tolkien would have been impressed. It is also worth noting Jeremy Boreing not only produced, but directed and wrote these episodes. This has been a major undertaking, which must be lauded. (Read more.)