Tea at Trianon: Writing Seventeenth-century Fiction

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

Monday, June 8, 2026

Writing Seventeenth-century Fiction

From The Seventeenth Century Lady:

Not a Chronos title, but reviewing Gerard Fitzgibbon’s Kingdom Overthrown: Ireland and the Battle for Europe 1688–1691 for the Irish Examiner also profoundly broadened my understanding of the 1600s, revealing it as an era of international conflict, sectarian violence, and colonial ambition. Through accounts of the Williamite-Jacobite wars in Ireland, one witnesses how Catholic and Protestant divisions were not theological disagreements at all, but a means to determine land ownership, political rights, loyalty, and often life itself. To a budding novelist, the story created a rich framework for writing about conflict. Accounts of the battles of the Boyne, Aughrim, and Limerick reveal not heroic romantic warfare but exhaustion, famine, mud, terror, and brutality. Fitzgibbon’s descriptions of soldiers dying slowly from musket wounds, starvation spreading after scorched-earth campaigns, and divided leadership among the Jacobites all help strip away modern romanticism about war which I strive to bring to the novel.

Recurring truths about the 17^th century kept popping up. Reputation could destroy lives. Religion shaped identity and loyalty. War was brutal and constant. Empire displaced entire populations. Survival depended on adaptability. People feared God, plague, famine, and political betrayal. Honour mattered. Bloodlines mattered. Religious identity mattered. Death was common and often sudden.

Having been provided with the building blocks of a believable historical world, dynastic ambition, war, exile, colonial expansion, and survival inside brutally unstable political systems, slowly my novel started taking shape. The sensory details contained within works I’d read were equally valuable to help me write about the texture of daily life… velvet gowns, sweat beneath brocade, banquets, candle wax. (Read more.)