Portraits of the Duc and Duchesse de Berry

Charles-Ferdinand d'Artois, Duc de Berry, was the nephew of Louis XVI and the youngest son of the Comte d'Artois, who became Charles X. This portrait was given by Caroline of Naples, the Duchesse de Berry, to her step-daughter Charlotte Comtesse d'Issoudun, after the murder of the Duc on February 13, 1820. Charlotte was Berry's daughter by Amy Brown, as is told in the novel Madame Royale.

Caroline of Naples, the Duchesse de Berry, was a remarkable  woman who is one of the heroines in  my novel, Madame Royale. Here is an account of her remarkable life. To quote:

Princess Maria Carolina Ferdinanda Luisa of Naples and Sicily was born on November 5, 1798 at the Palace of Caserta in Naples. She was the eldest child of Francis, Hereditary Prince of Naples and Archduchess Maria Clementina of Austria. The young princess was named after her paternal grandparents, King Ferdinand IV and III of Naples and Sicily and Archduchess Maria Carolina of Austria. Her father, Francis, was the eldest surviving son of the King of Naples and Sicily while her mother was the tenth child of Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor and Infanta Maria Luisa of Spain. Francis and Maria Clementina were double first cousins and although the couple was engaged in 1790, they weren’t married until June 26, 1797 due to the chaotic Napoleonic wars plaguing the Italian peninsula. The cousins were both twenty years old when they wed in a rather modest ceremony at Foggia. Despite the fact that Maria Clementina’s features were scarred by smallpox, she was a dignified and proud woman with a kind heart and a substantial education. The couple’s relationship was rather uncommon for the time, as Maria Clementina was the dominant partner in the relationship. She controlled her less intelligent and easy-going husband but Francis didn’t seem to care about his wife’s influence over him; according to his mother, Archduchess Maria Carolina of Austria, “[Francis] adores her in every sense of the word. He says she loves him, and assuredly shows and demands many proofs of love.” Maria Carolina was so shocked by just how much her son loved Maria Clementina that she “asked heaven to calm their over-excited sense by sending them children.” (Read more.)

 

 

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Nancy Mace's Speech

 Thanks to Congresswoman Mace for taking a stand against the abuse of women and girls. From the  New York Post:

Rep. Nancy Mace accused her ex-fiancé and three business partners of committing “depraved” sexual crimes against herself and a dozen other women — including underage girls — in explosive remarks in the House of Representatives on Monday.

The South Carolina Republican pol said she came forward with the shocking allegations of rape, voyeurism and other sexual abuse after uncovering a trove of more than 10,000 videos and other photographic evidence contained on the phone of her former husband-to-be Patrick Bryant.

“I accidentally uncovered some of the most heinous crimes against women imaginable — we are talking about rape, nonconsensual photos, nonconsensual videos of women and underage girls, and the premeditated, calculated exploitation of women and girls in my district,” Mace said in her House floor speech.

“Today you will hear about the depraved men behind these gutless, evil acts,” she added. “These men didn’t just harm their victims; they recorded their depravity as if it were a badge of honor." (Read more.)

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Scientists Discover 500-year-old Shark

 From The Brighter Side:

The Greenland shark holds the title as the longest-lived vertebrate on Earth, with some individuals potentially reaching 500 years of age. This elusive deep-sea predator, found in the frigid waters of the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans, has fascinated scientists due to its remarkable lifespan. Its slow growth rate and mysterious biology have made it a subject of ongoing research, shedding light on how some species defy the limits of aging.

A major breakthrough in understanding the longevity of Greenland sharks came from a research team led by Julius Nielsen, a marine biologist at the University of Copenhagen. Nielsen and his colleagues conducted a study that revealed a Greenland shark estimated to be at least 272 years old, with some models suggesting an upper age limit of nearly 500 years. This finding shattered previous records, surpassing the known lifespan of the 211-year-old bowhead whale, which had long been considered the longest-lived vertebrate. (Read more.)

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Berry and Caroline

Here is a portrait of the Duc de Berry on a plaque given by the Duchesse de Berry (Caroline of Naples) to the Bishop of Chartres. The plaque commemorates the death of Berry in February 1820 and contains locks of hair from himself and his wife. Below is a miniature of Caroline, Duchesse de Berry, in mourning.

Account of the assassination of Berry, HERE. Read about them in Madame Royale. Share

Sacrificing Your Children on the Altar of Diversity

 From Mark Steyn:

~The Spectator, whose headlines are lazy and terrible and an embarrassment to a once great publication, had a particularly bad example the other day:

How many more knife attacks can France take?

Well, as noted in the very first sentence of the article, there are currently 120 "knife attacks" every day in France. A generation ago it would have been inconceivable that the French would accept with a collective Gallic shrug 850 "knife attacks" per week.

Yet they do. So would they be able to "take" a thousand per week? Check back with me later this year. Fifteen hundred? Two thousand? That's the way to bet.

The French state, like other Continental countries, has certain advantages when it comes to holding the lid on things. For example, just a few days ago, Elias, 14, was leaving footie practice when he was impeded and told to cough up his cellphone. He refused. So they stabbed him. Elias was taken to hospital, but died the following day.

This didn't happen in some distant provincial town the French elites don't care about, but in the fourteenth arrondissement of Paris, as Elias was leaving the Jules Noël stadium, which has hosted prestigious international sporting events. So, unlike the other 119 "knife attacks" that day, it made the national news, and put officialdom on the backfoot. Thus, last Saturday, the Fédération française de football ordered a minute's silence in Elias's memory at all matches in Paris and across the country.

And, even as the nation rose in dignified hommage to fourteen-year-old Elias, just ten miles south the gendarmes were securing a crime scene in the woods at Épinay-sur-Orge, where the body of eleven-year-old Louise had just been discovered. She had been intercepted while leaving school the previous day, and found with more than a dozen stab wounds.

By now you may be wondering: Elias who? Louise who? Well, under the prevailing rules in France, as in Germany, the full names of the deceased cannot be published in the media. Unlike, say, the three little girls slaughtered by the Welsh choir boy in Southport. Which rule, very conveniently for the authorities, renders the victims all but anonymous even in death. All the things that were once standard in journalism - interviewing the old lady at the house next door, etc - cannot be done in French newspapers, so the dead never quite swim into focus. We know Louise's last name - Lasalle - only because, when she didn't come home on the Friday, her sister posted an alert on her social media. But that surname does not appear in the French papers. The same veil descends on the suspects, too. The particular character of a "knife attack" has to be discerned through generalities: Jean-Pierre A has died of his wounds; Mohammed Z has been taken into custody.

Look at that sweetly innocent little girl above. That's the picture her sister posted when she was missing and her fate was not yet known. In some French media outlets poor Louise is only shown with her face blurred, as if she has entered the witness protection programme. Alas, in France, there is no witness protection programme. For an old-school newspaperman such as the late David English, the poignancy of that photograph alone would have commanded the full-court Daily Mail treatment. But fourteen-year-old Elias and eleven-year-old Louise are already fading into the vast general blur: to modify Stalin, one stabbed kid is a tragedy, a million are a statistic. So the answer to The Spectator's lousy headline is my own from last month:

I Have Seen the Future and It's Stabbed

News is not news because it affects the thirty-seven people who knew the nine-year-old boy or six-year-old girl or whoever's next. It's news because it's relevant to tens of millions of people who had never heard of the poor child until she was killed. Western Europe is a stabber's paradise as a consequence of public policy that has turned once peaceable polities such as France and Sweden into low-trust fractious hellholes. And the leadership class, whether preening metrosexuals like Macron or cold unfeeling bastards like Starmer, are insistent that nothing can be changed. (Read more.)

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A Stupid Comparison

I just wrote to the Star Democrat  in response to the Feb 1, 2025 op-ed of Jim Bruce in which Trump is compared to Hitler in what has become the most boring cliché ever. We know you do not like Trump, Mr. Bruce, but is Hitler the only tyrant in history that you can conjure up? And Hitler at the Reichstag, yet. What about Napoleon on the 18 Brumaire at Saint-Cloud in 1799? Oh, wait, Trump never conquered Europe nor invaded Russia like Napoleon, leading to the deaths of 6.5 million people. What about Stalin at the 12th Congress of the Russian Communist Party in April 1923 in Moscow? Oh, that won’t work either, since Stalin has been blamed for the deaths of 10 million people, maybe more, they don’t know for sure. What about Mao at Tian'anmen on October 1, 1949? Oh no, because they now think that Mao and his policies may be responsible for 80 million fatalities; no one knows the exact amount. The only similar number of deaths that we have had in America since Trump first won the 2016 election is the number of babies aborted, which is in the millions. But they don’t count, do they? Plus abortion is not Trump’s fault, although if Democrats did not love abortion they would find a way to blame him for it, as they do other things. So please stop comparing Trump to a mass murderer like Hitler. It does not insult Trump because it is so absurd, but it does diminish the real victims of the real Nazis, whose bodies are still being recovered in mass graves throughout Eastern Europe.

As for the complaint about Trump’s executive orders, what about all the executive orders given by Obama and Biden? So Democrat presidents can issue executive orders but when Trump does it somehow the Constitution is being violated? I say to all Democrats, especially to Governor Wes Moore and his lament over the “chaos” in Washington (Star Democrat, Feb 5), please focus on fixing the chaos your policies have caused in our schools and in our cities, where too often violence reigns.

 

 I started a podcast for our local GOP. Episode #7 is HERE.

 

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Marie-Antoinette as Model

 
From East of the Sun, West of the Moon.

A painting showing Louise Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun painting Marie Antoinette, Queen of France and Navarre. The painter and Marie Antoinette were quite close and Madame Vigée Le Brun painted many portraits of the Queen. Having left France in 1789 due to the French Revolution, returning until 1805, she remained a royalist throughout her life: a self-portrait painted in 1790 shows Louise Élisabeth painting the Queen.

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Sanctuary City Defiance

 From Amuse on X:

Federal law is unambiguous in its supremacy over immigration matters. Under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, federal law takes precedence over conflicting state or local policies. The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) grants the federal government exclusive authority over immigration enforcement, and Congress has determined that cooperation between local law enforcement and federal immigration authorities is essential. Statutes such as 8 U.S.C. §1373 explicitly prohibit state and local governments from enacting policies that restrict communication with federal immigration agencies. This statute ensures that local officials cannot block or impede the flow of critical information needed to enforce federal immigration laws.

Moreover, the refusal to honor ICE detainers undermines the public safety rationale underlying immigration enforcement. Detainers are issued against individuals who have been arrested for violating state or local laws, meaning these are individuals already found to pose a threat to the community. By refusing to comply with ICE detainers, sanctuary jurisdictions actively shield criminal aliens from deportation, allowing them to be released back into communities where they may reoffend. The Trump administration has repeatedly cited cases in which violent criminals, shielded by sanctuary policies, have gone on to commit additional crimes, including murder, rape, and assault. This dereliction of duty by local officials places political posturing above the safety of law-abiding citizens.

The deliberate lawlessness of sanctuary cities is a direct affront to the rule of law. Cities and states that refuse to cooperate with ICE are not simply exercising discretion; they are willfully obstructing federal immigration enforcement. This reckless defiance emboldens criminals, undermines border security, and weakens national sovereignty. President Trump, alongside Border Czar Tom Homan and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, has pledged to end this dangerous practice and restore federal authority over immigration enforcement.

Sanctuary jurisdictions argue that ICE detainers are merely requests, not mandates, and that the Tenth Amendment prevents the federal government from compelling states to enforce federal immigration laws. They further argue that detaining individuals without a judicial warrant may violate the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unlawful seizures. However, these objections do not withstand scrutiny. The anti-commandeering doctrine established in cases such as Printz v. United States and Murphy v. NCAA applies to instances where the federal government seeks to directly force state officials to administer a federal regulatory program. Immigration enforcement, however, is not a regulatory program but a matter of national sovereignty, over which the federal government has plenary power. The detainer system is merely a mechanism by which federal officials take custody of individuals already arrested and detained by local authorities. (Read more.)

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Cloning: Ethical & Moral Questions

 

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