Tea at Trianon: Hellelil and Hildebrand: the Meeting on the Turret Stairs

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

Hellelil and Hildebrand: the Meeting on the Turret Stairs

From ArtNet:

Burton’s awareness and interest in the specific story of Hellelil and Heldebrand can likely be traced to his friend Whitley Stokes, a Celtic scholar who translated and published the medieval Danish ballad in the mid-1850s.

In the story, the noblewoman Helleil fell in love with one of her personal guards, Heldebrand, Prince of Engelland. When her father finds out about the affair, he, along with his seven sons, set out to kill Heldebrand. In an act of honor, Heldebrand fights her kin, killing the father and six of the seven brothers. Hellelil, watching from afar, calls out to her beloved before he slays the youngest brother, asking him to stay his hand. Though Heldebrand spared him, the brother took it as a moment of opportunity and dealt Heldebrand a mortal blow in return. Ultimately, after relating the series of events to her mother, Helleil died of a broken heart.

Like many medieval love stories, it is a tragic one, and Burton takes focus on the poignant last meeting of the ill-fated lovers. Hellelil is turned away in sorrow, stepping up the turret stairs to safety, and a trampled white rose, a symbol of innocence and purity, lies trampled near her feet. Heldebrand moves down the stairs to go meet her father, brothers, and, unbeknownst to him, his demise, holding her arm in a farewell embrace. It is a tender, prescient moment that bears the weight of what is to come. (Read more.)