Tea at Trianon: An Unlikely Romance: King Pippin and Queen Bertrada

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, February 14, 2026

An Unlikely Romance: King Pippin and Queen Bertrada

From Kim Rendfeld:

The marriage was also a reward for the loyalty of Bertrada’s father, Haribert, the count of Laon. In October 741, Mayor of the Palace Charles Martel died, setting off a war for succession between Pippin and Karlomann, his sons by his first wife, and Grifo, his son by his second wife. Grifo and his mother fled to Laon, which was in his territory, but Haribert helped Pippin and Karloman defeat and imprison their half-brother and stepmother in December of that year.

At some point, Pippin did seek to end his marriage to Bertrada, but when and why is unclear. It probably had something to do with their not conceiving right away. This was an age when such a failure was a sign of God’s displeasure.

Two years after the nuptials, Pippin sent an emissary to Pope Zachary asking about illicit marriages. Perhaps he was wondering about consanguinity. He and Bertrada were relatives to the fourth degree (they shared a set of great-grandparents), rather than the preferred seventh. (Read more.)