royalcello
Moderator
Registered: 05/24/06
Posts: 5,938
|
| Posted 06/01/06 at 05:54 AM | Reply with quote #1 |
|
June 1, 2006
Versailles Journal
Marie Antoinette's Devotees, Including Bakers, Celebrate
By ELAINE SCIOLINO
VERSAILLES, France, May 29 — France is a republic, but it still takes the story of its royals very seriously, especially if the story happens to be retold by an American.
So the release last week of "Marie Antoinette," Sofia Coppola's $40 million film, has revived a centuries-old fascination with the ancien régime's last queen.
No matter that some critics savaged the Coppola film. Even the highbrow world of French culture recognizes the power and profitability of the woman who is still portrayed by some history teachers — incorrectly — as the heartless spendthrift who told the poor to eat cake if they had no bread.
"The royalists still portray her as a martyr and a saint, the republicans as an evil foreigner who deserved beheading," said Évelyne Lever, one of Marie Antoinette's most authoritative biographers.
"There is an effort to understand her as a tragic figure, a woman who suffered and fell despite her youth, beauty and riches," Ms. Lever said. "Hers is a story that endlessly fascinates because it speaks to all women."
Le Figaro has issued a special 112-page glossy magazine on Marie Antoinette's life as "princess, icon, rebel." The women's magazine Atmosphères has devoted most of its current issue to her "secrets." The weekly Le Point put a portrait of the queen on a recent cover with the caption, "Misunderstood, decapitated, Marie Antoinette, the remorse of the French."
Nowhere is the interest more intense these days than at the Palace of Versailles, Marie Antoinette's home from 1770, when she arrived from Austria at age 14 to marry the future Louis XVI, to October 1789, when revolutionaries compelled the royal family to leave for Paris.
For a fee of $20,000 a day — modest by American standards — Ms. Coppola was allowed to film the movie at the palace. Versailles has timed the opening next month of a new Marie Antoinette "domaine" surrounding her cherished private retreat, the Petit Trianon, to follow the release of the film.
Visitors will be able to peek into some of Marie Antoinette's personal spaces, including the fragile wooden and papier-mâché mini-theater where she performed, a grotto where she held private encounters and her "hamlet," where she constructed an ersatz working farm.
It is part of a campaign to attract visitors and private money by presenting the intimate, sensual, female face of court life, in contrast to the protocol-driven, male-dominated power world of Versailles.
"She was a woman full of youth and frivolity who sought a private, personal life but suffered tragically, a little like Jackie Kennedy or Princess Di," said Christine Albanel, the director of Versailles. "The more we talk about her the better. This is an extraordinary opportunity for us."
In related marketing mania, the best-selling biography of the queen by Lady Antonia Fraser, which served as the basis for Ms. Coppola's script, has been published in French for the first time.
The book will be listed as the No. 2 best seller for nonfiction in the weekly magazine L'Express next week. Huge advertising billboards featuring Kirsten Dunst, who has the title role in the film, hang in several Paris Métro stations. The blurb calls Marie Antoinette "a Lady Di before her time."
The Louvre is promoting the sale of dozens of related items at its museum store, including a $160 children's costume modeled on a portrait of Marie Antoinette at the age of 7.
The Paris confectioner Ladurée, whose towers of colorful macaroons grace the film, is running advertisements paying "homage" to the queen, with a Marie Antoinette "collection," including a white and milk chocolate ganache cake imprinted with her carriage.
The perfumer Francis Kurkdjian consulted 18th-century accounts of Marie Antoinette's taste in concentrated scents in creating a perfume in her honor. Baccarat has produced it as a limited edition of 10 — selling for $10,000 each — as well as a $450 version in a less expensive crystal.
The fashion designer John Galliano made Marie Antoinette his muse in his haute couture show in Paris early this year. Lalique has made crystal earrings and a pendant inspired by one of her portraits. The Raynaud porcelain house is selling copies of her royal dishes, the knife maker Couteaux de Sauveterre a $280 limited edition jackknife engraved with the initials MA.
Marie Antoinette was said to be a picky eater, but at the one-star Trois Marches restaurant in Versailles, the chef Gérard Vié has created a $127, five-course Marie-Antoinette menu featuring adaptations of favorite 18th-century royal dishes: stuffed sweetbreads with mushrooms, slowly boiled beef and St. Pierre fish with spinach and herb sauce.
This is certainly not the first time that Marie Antoinette has been vilified, mythologized and trivialized by France.
In October 1993, for example, to commemorate the 200th anniversary of her beheading, thousands of Marie Antoinette loyalists marched in her honor along the route used to cart her to her death at the Place de la Concorde. Her trial was re-enacted on stage with the audience playing the role of jury. Most nights, the queen was spared death and sent into exile.
Historians and commentators in this history-obsessed country, meanwhile, have been quick to point out the film's flaws.
Marie Antoinette would never have appeared nude in front of her putative lover, Count Axel Fersen of Sweden, if indeed he ever was her lover, they say. A ball scene was filmed at the Opéra Garnier, even though its foundation was not laid until 1861. The fireworks were all wrong. The film focuses almost solely on the young Marie Antoinette.
"There's too much eating of cake and drinking of Champagne, little about her maturing, her evolution," said Michèle Lorin, the director of the Marie Antoinette Association, whose Paris apartment is stuffed with the queen's memorabilia, including a Marie Antoinette Barbie doll.
There is at least agreement on one thing: a final judgment of Marie Antoinette, if there ever is one, will be made by the French, not by Hollywood. "The question is to know if an American is naturally inclined to distort the history of a country that is not her own," wrote Stéphane Denis in Le Figaro.
Some viewers were frustrated that Ms. Coppola did not tell the rest of the story. "The ending was left out," said Clara Nordon, a 22-year-old film production assistant, as she emerged from the UGC Odéon cinema on the Left Bank. "You can't tell the story of Marie Antoinette without the guillotine."
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/01/world/europe/01marie.html
|
| Loading... | |
WhiteCockade
Registered: 05/25/06
Posts: 316
|
| Posted 06/01/06 at 06:27 AM | Reply with quote #2 |
|
"a Lady Di before her time." I'm not sure I see the connection here or one between His Most Christian Majesty Louis XVI and Prince Charles. Not having seen the move I can not comment on it, but I fear it may have played up her vices (real and invented) which would make her a “modern woman” and downplay her Catholic faith. I hope they did not make her a feminist. I can not imagine the movie not presenting her cruel treatment and murder.
__________________
"By me kings reign... and the mighty decree justice" - Proverbs 8:15-16
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Catholicmonarchists/ |
| Loading... | |
royalcello
Moderator
Registered: 05/24/06
Posts: 5,938
|
| Posted 06/01/06 at 06:45 AM | Reply with quote #3 |
|
I suppose Marie Antoinette and Diana could be compared in the sense that they were both unprepared for life as wife of the heir to the throne. They were both glamorous and considered leaders in fashion. Louis XVI and Charles were both somewhat eccentric and unglamorous men who were ridiculed for having hobbies deemed inappropriate for the heir to the throne (Louis's fascination with locks, clocks, and humble trades in general; Charles's alleged "talking to plants").
While it seems that this movie will not be everything we would like it to be, if it stimulates interest in and sympathy for Marie Antoinette, that will be a good thing. |
| Loading... | |
WhiteCockade
Registered: 05/25/06
Posts: 316
|
| Posted 06/01/06 at 08:51 AM | Reply with quote #4 |
|
Perhaps you are right there are some similarities. I guess it is just am not one of those people that found Princess Diana all that extraordinary, so I find the comparison a bit annoying, and find a number of differences between them far more important than the ones that connect them. Movies can move people. I hope they are moved in the right direction. Any sympathy for her would be welcome. This movie will not movie diehard republicans but perhaps others will be.
__________________
"By me kings reign... and the mighty decree justice" - Proverbs 8:15-16
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Catholicmonarchists/ |
| Loading... | |
gboleyn
Registered: 07/28/06
Posts: 377
|
| Posted 07/30/06 at 06:29 PM | Reply with quote #5 |
|
I think it would actually be an inaccuracy to present Marie-Antoinette as a seriously devout Catholic. Her confessor commented that, as a late teenager, his queen was never going to be "a devot." She never allied herself to the substantial devot faction at Versailles, headed by her husband's paternal aunts. She had devout episodes, when she became conspiculously religious, but these were treated as exceptions by her intimates, rather than the rule. During her imprisonment, it was her sister-in-law Elisabeth who stressed the need to continually pray. Marie-Antoinette's famous response was, "I no longer dare to pray. God Himself has abandoned me." It's true that she was a believing Christian, opposed to pro-republican juror priests and that her last will and testament confirmed that she died a Catholic, but I think that by the standards of the 18th century she wasn't particularly devout. |
| Loading... | |
mdmroyale
Registered: 07/21/06
Posts: 84
|
| Posted 07/30/06 at 06:45 PM | Reply with quote #6 |
|
Quote: BOOK REVIEWS: Trianon, A Novel of Royal France
Unmasking the Formidable Myth
about Queen Marie Antoinette
Marian T. Horvat, Ph.D.
Book-review on the work Trianon, A Novel of Royal France by Elena Maria Vidal
(Long Prairie, MN: The Neumann Press, 2000), hardcover, 205 pp.
Published in The Remnant, December 15, 2000
 The topic was compassion. The place, a Catholic social journal. The tiresome historical error was repeated in the example the writer used to typify the opposite of compassion: “Marie-Antoinette, born and raised with an aristocrat’s unawareness of the plight of her indigent neighbors, suggested that the people ‘eat cake’ when informed that they had no bread.”
Yet another Catholic scholar entrapped by the revolutionary myths of history. For a long time I have been painfully aware of the pitfalls of the American Catholic history texts, filled with attitudes that blatantly or unconsciously celebrate Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, the Trilogy of the French Revolution condemned by the Church and Popes (1).
Time and time again, American history books, even the “old” Catholic textbooks, make Marie-Antoinette (1755-1793) the scapegoat to justify the horrors and excesses of the French Revolution, which, after all, was only a more radical French version of our own American Revolution that “liberated” the people from the evils of monarchy. (1) For example, Pius VI condemned the “omnifarious liberty and absolute equality” established by the Civil Constitution of the Clergy as “foolish and even monstrous concepts” in his Decretal of March 10, 1791 and his Encyclical Inscrutabile Divinae Sapientiae of December 25, 1775. See also: Pius IX, Encyclical Nostris et nobiscum of Dec. 9, 1949; Leo XIII’s Encyclical Humanum genus against Freemasonry of April 20, 1884; St. Pius X’s Notre charge apostolique of August 25, 1910; Benedict’s XV’s Allocution of July 11, 1920, apud Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, Nobility and the Analogous Traditional Elites (Hamilton Press, 1993) Appendix III, pp. 382-89. Therefore, it follows that the Queen’s greed, frivolous excesses and total disregard for the little people would have fed the flames of the revolt of the people against the monarchy. However, this is not true. There is a sophism hidden in this myth.
The Real Marie Antoinette:
Compassionate and Generous Hearted
In fact, it was because Marie Antoinette was aristocratic, generous-hearted, and courageous that she became the target of the lies and defamation campaigns of the revolutionaries (2). The false image of the frivolous heartless Queen bent only on amusing herself and satisfying her whims and passions was artificially created for posterity and included in history books, with the aim of etching this image into young malleable minds. Such a process leaves deep, long-lived impressions, difficult to erase. (2) A surprisingly frank and honest academic work that exposes the lies, deceits and horrors of the French Revolution is Simon Schama’s Citizens: a Chronicle of the French Revolution (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989). While modern historians have steered clear of anything that could be construed as subscribing to the literary conspiracy theory of the French Revolution, Schama reported how the revolutionary ferment was nourished by “pornographic libels, vitriolic satire and radical political theory” (p. 176). The deconstruction of Marie Antoinette’s image was a pathetic thing: the Marie Antoinette of the libelles[scandal sheets] was a sexual monster, a vindictive harpy, and political spy for Austria (pp.220-226). For the facts on all points in this case are quite the opposite. The French Revolution, as with many succeeding revolutions, did not rise spontaneously from the discontent of the people. Its ideas were born from the Enlightenment thinking that circulated in the Masonic lodges, spread through the societés de pensée. From there these new exciting notions infiltrated the conversation salons and to the multifarious semi-secret clubs, so numerous in that epoch. Their perpetrators desired the destruction of the sacred hierarchy of both Church and State in their hatred for the remnant order of the Age of Faith.
The real Marie Antoinette did not despise the people. To the contrary, the Queen of France had a compassionate, generous-hearted spirit and a genuine feminine concern for the plight of the poor. It was well known at the court that it was only necessary to reach the ear of the Queen with a tale of financial misfortune or personal misery to receive a pension, dowry or alleviation for the woe. At the beginning of her reign, she relieved the people of the tax known as “the Queen’s belt” with the remark “Belts are no longer worn.” However, it is not this quip that has survived as legacy for posterity.
Because of most of the deplorable literature - that has permeated English-speaking ambiences and served to perpetuate the false myths and lies about the French Revolution, it has long been my hope to see a book for young adults which would help to destroy these revolutionary germs in their first stages of development: A book that would present an accurate picture of the heroic Queen. A book was needed that would underscore Marie-Antoinette’s admirable qualities, so that the young people of the future would not imbibe the same prejudices against the French Monarchy swallowed unthinkingly by the generations before them.
A Book that Breaks the Myth
Recently I came across such a book that certainly will begin to fill this lacuna. Trianon is a short but compelling piece of historical fiction written by Elena Marie Vidal. In her preface, the author tells the readers that this is the story “of the martyred King Louis XVI and his Queen.
The fruit of years of research, the book attempts to correct many of the popular misconceptions of the royal couple, which secular and modern historians have tried so hard to promote. Louis and Antoinette can only be truly understood in view of the Catholic teachings to which they adhered and within the context of the Sacrament of Matrimony. It was the graces of this sacramental life that gave them the strength to remain loyal to the Church, and to each other, in the face of crushing disappointments, innumerable humiliations, personal and national tragedy, and death itself.”
Author Elena Vidal made use of a charming device to tell the true story. Each chapter is viewed through the eyes of one of the key players in the life of the Royal Family, e.g.: - Madame Louise, the Carmelite aunt of King Louis XVI who counseled the King to dedicate France to the Sacred Heart;
- the King’s saintly youngest sister, Madame Elizabeth of France, who wanted to enter Carmel but remained at Court at her brother’s request to exert her good influence on the Queen and court;
- the Irish confessor of the King, Abbé Edgeworth de Firmont, who was privileged to witness Louis XVI’s last moments. It was his voice that cried out after the blade fell: “Ascend to heaven, son of St. Louis!”
- Rosalie, the young maid who served the Queen faithfully in her last days and reported the great courage and fidelity to the Faith of Marie-Antoinette: her refusal to accept confession from the revolutionary priest who had sworn the oath of the Civil Constitution, her calm and assured bearing to the end., when she was driven to her execution in an oxcart in the same manner of common criminals.
Finally, the author enters boldly into even the minds and imaginations of the King and Queen, whose human defects and frailties were purified, as gold by fire, by the humiliations and great trials they suffered at the hands of the revolutionaries. By the time of his trial and execution, King Louis XVI, a man who himself admitted he was scourged with weakness and irresolution, had assumed firm and courageous attitudes. In her Memoires, his daughter Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte of France (Madame Royale), the only member of the Royal family who would escape death at the hands of the Revolution, described her father’s conduct at his trial before the Convention in December of 1792 as something “all the world knows – his firmness, his gentleness and kindness, his courage amid assassins thirsting for his blood, traits which will never be forgotten and which the most remote posterity will admire” (3). (3) Elizabeth Powers, The Journal of Madame Royale (New York: Walker & Co., 1976), p. 94. The daughter’s portrayal of her mother, for whom she had the greatest love and unrestricted admiration, presents the true face of the martyred Queen, the Marie-Antoinette who had matured into a loyal, dedicated wife and mother with unparalleled courage. One scene in particular from Madame Royale’s “Memoires” remains forever etched in my memory. It was the day the revolutionaries marched on Versailles, October 6, 1789. Bread was scarce in Paris, “the people” were starving and the rumors had been spread that flour was being hoarded at Versailles. Some of the ruffians rushed the guards and stormed the King’s staircase . Entering the royal chambers, they stabbed the Queen’s bed with their pikes. The rabble continued its cry: “We want the Queen! We will cut off her head, fry her liver, and that won’t be the end of it.” It seemed that the only thing that would calm the people would be for the Queen to show herself.
To spare the danger threatening her husband and children, she chose to appeared before the riled mobs. She stood before them, her expression noble, her countenance serene without the slightest sign of alarm. This great spirit and courage, which always characterized the Queen, silenced the crowd. For the moment the situation was saved. "I later learned that one of the conspirators aimed his firing-piece at her, but could not dare to complete his crime.” Madame Royale recounted.
The revolutionaries then compelled the Royal family to return to Paris. Drunken men and women ran alongside the carriage shouting obscenities and insults until they reached the Tuilleries where they became prisoners of state. The sun finally fell on that horrendous day, which no words could adequately describe. And then, Madame Royale recounted, my mother said something very strange to my father: “It is tribulation that first makes one realize what one is” (4). (4) Ibid., pp. 26-31 It was certainly the great trials and horrors of the days ahead that served to show who and what Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette really were. It is to Maria Elena Vidal’s credit that she succeeds in portraying their fortitude and fidelity to the Church, their nation, family and each other. Her work is “historical fiction,” but after reading it, one will begins to understand the real evil and hatred of the French Revolution for all that was good and virtuous, and its despisal for all that was aristocratic, noble and hierarchical, that is to say, Catholic. It is no wonder that this hatred and scorn focused on Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, who embodied in their very persons and beings these qualities. This is a book I would add to every Catholic high-school curriculum as must reading on the history of the French Revolution.
An Eulogy to a Much-maligned Queen
It is impossible to end this commentary without a few words to honor one of the most maligned and wronged queens in History. This is the Queen reputed to have the most exquisite translucent complexion in all Europe, painted often in the celebrated portraits of court favorite Madame Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun. This is the Queen who entered a room and filled it with her presence, whose grace and charm of movement distinguished her immediately in a group and identified her as Marie-Antoinette, Queen of France.
 |
Elegant and charming, the real Marie Antoinette
| |
The charm of the youngest daughter of Holy Roman Emperor Francis Stephen and Empress Maria Teresa was a special gift from her father’s lineage, the house of Lorraine. The people of Lorraine are famed for a certain charisma to attract and charm. A first example: the Maid of Lorraine, St. Joan of Arc, whose very name inspires a certain awe. This is the result not only of her fidelity to her supernatural vocation, but also the personal charm and charisma that the words and actions of the Virgin of Lorraine transmits until today.
Another example: Mary Stewart, Queen of Scots (1542-1587), the red-haired spirited beauty who at age 16 married the French Dauphin, who briefly became king before his death in 1560. During her sojourn in France, she perfumed the French court with her charm and grace, leaving a fragrance that lingered long after her return to Scotland in 1560. It was no doubt in fear of the force of this peculiar charm that could impel her countrymen to follow her and restore her to the Crown that Elizabeth I confined Mary for 18 years and finally had her tried for treason and executed in February 1587.
Another instance of this very curious Lorraine gift can be seen in the Guise family from the House of Lorraine. Three men and a women, Henry of Guise, the Cardinal of Lorraine, the Duke of Mayence, and the Duchess of Montpensier, became the embodiment of the spirit of the Counter-Reformation in Catholic France of that time. This leadership extended beyond the battle lines; their followers were literally charmed by the family. At that time, there was a serious debate as to what family would succeed to the Crown of France and the decadent House of Valois: the Catholic line of Guise or the Protestant Bourbon family. It was necessary to murder Henri de Guise to make Henri de Navarre the first Bourbon king.
A Swan in a Lake of Glory
This same Lorraine charm was inherited by Marie Antoinette. Her “goodness, affability and gaiety” charmed the Abbé de Vermond who came to Vienna to prepare the young Archduchess for the role that she had to play in France. At her touching farewell to her mother in 1770, the discerning Empress counseled her: “You have the gift of pleasing others; use it for the happiness of your husband.” Her simple childlike charm won the heart of aging King Louis XV and earned a delirious reception from the people upon her entry into France when the fountains of Paris literally flowed with wine. It was a fairy-tale wedding that “dazzled the eye and astonished the mind” with the most magnificent firework displays ever seen at Versailles.
She also won the devotion and love of her husband. Later, Louis XVI, would grieve more for her sufferings and deprivations in their imprisonment than for his own. “Who would have foreseen,” he mourned, that in uniting your lot to mine, you would have descended so low?” The Queen replied: “And do you esteem as nothing the glory of being the wife of the best and most persecuted of men? Are not such misfortunes the noblest honors?”
She inspired the devotion of friends who followed her even to death. Princess of Lamballe, one of Queen’s most intimate friends, had been safely out of the country at the start of the French Revolution, but she returned from England to be with her sovereign in her bad moments. “One who shared in the joys of so good a Queen should also share in her sorrows,” she responded to the Queen’s entreaties for her to escape.
Such was the charm and majesty of this Queen, a majesty that shone with special brightness in the tragic events of the French Revolution. It was her majesty that dominated at the end of a life that closed prematurely as she climbed the steps of the scaffold to be executed. To the end, she maintained a dignified bearing and showed no fear.
This was a Queen so great that even though she was Austrian, she was able to synthesize the French soul and became a model of France. When one thinks of a French king, one immediately recalls Louis XIV, the Sun King who shined not only on France but over all of Europe in the 17th century. When one thinks of a French queen, one recalls Marie Antoinette. The revolutionaries did all in their power to destroy her reputation and soil her image. They even succeeded in executing her. But her elegant figure - her stately form, her alabaster long neck supporting a majestic head with its classical powered coiffure - remains as a model moving in a world of dreams, a swan among humankind swimming gracefully in a lake of glory.
This book is available from:
The Remnant Bookstore
336 280th St., Osceola, WI 54020
715-294-4139 | | |
__________________
Never frown.
You never know who is falling in love with your smile.  |
| Loading... | |
mdmroyale
Registered: 07/21/06
Posts: 84
|
| Posted 07/30/06 at 06:58 PM | Reply with quote #7 |
|
How could you ever compare this known adulterous, proven, admitted to out of her own mouth, this supposedly great humanitarian to the Catholic Queen Marie Antoinette. History shows that all were slanders against her, the necklace affair, the liesof adultery, she was in fact a very devout wife and mother and I would highly suggest that people read the books Trianon and Madame Royale. Read of her despicable treatment. Explain to me how wearing the Sacred Hearr of Jesus Badge, was enough to declare you an enemy of this wretched, inhumane government and you were automatically sentenced to death. Explain to me the degredation of the nuns of Compaigne. Make no mistake this was a reveloution to overturne both monarchy and The Holy Catholic Church. These dispicable men hated Louis and Marie because they were CATHOLIC MONARCHS and must be destroyed for what they represented to the people.
__________________
Never frown.
You never know who is falling in love with your smile. |
| Loading... | |
gboleyn
Registered: 07/28/06
Posts: 377
|
| Posted 07/30/06 at 07:25 PM | Reply with quote #8 |
|
Mdmroyale, please don't misconstrue what I've said about the personalities of Louis XVI or Marie-Antoinette to mean for one moment that I am defending the revolution or belittling their sacrifice. I am more than aware that Marie-Antoinette "had a compassionate, generous-hearted spirit and a genuine feminine concern for the plight of the poor." But, the EVIDENCE speaks for itself. Marie-Antoinette was NOT a devout Catholic, except for certain episodes during her life and towards the end. She was a believer, but not a devout. That is a FACT. And Ms. Vidal is WRONG if she claims otherwise. I am an ENORMOUS admirer of Marie-Antoinette. She is one of my historical heroes and I detest the French Revolution. But, it can only be countered and argued against by realistically acknowledging the facts about both the royalists and the revolutionaries. |
| Loading... | |
Registered: Member deleted
Posts: N/A
|
| Posted 07/30/06 at 07:56 PM | Reply with quote #9 |
|
Quote: Originally Posted by royalcello
I suppose Marie Antoinette and Diana could be compared in the sense that they were both unprepared for life as wife of the heir to the throne. Royalcello, With all due respect, to compare a daughter of the Imperial House in the XVIIIth century with the daughter of an English Viscount in the XXth as being (I assume you meant equally) "unprepared for life as wife of the heir to the throne", is a bit much. HIRH the Archduchess Maria Antonia was raised with the expectation of marrying a senior Prince of a ruling House. Lady Diana Spencer was raised to be a rich, idle Englishwoman and, tragically, happened to catch the eye of the Prince of Wales. |
| Loading... | |
royalcello
Moderator
Registered: 05/24/06
Posts: 5,938
|
| Posted 07/30/06 at 08:04 PM | Reply with quote #10 |
|
OK, that was a bit of a stretch. I basically agree that it's not a good comparison and was just trying to explain what the person who made it might have been thinking.
|
| Loading... | |
Registered: Member deleted
Posts: N/A
|
| Posted 07/30/06 at 08:45 PM | Reply with quote #11 |
|
And despite the fact that Marie Antoinette was Queen in an absolute monarchy, I think she had considerably more principles and self-restraint than Diana. Marie Antoinette was also the daughter of one of the greatest queens in history (in my opinion); Empress Maria Theresa. Diana did alot of good for alot of people and no one can take that away from her, but at the same time she was totally self-absorbed and would let nothing detract her from whatever *she* wanted. Marie Antoinette would never have divorced her husband (even if the rumored affairs were not a total slander), she would never have announced the scandals of the royal house to the public and she would never have went fornicating with a nominal Muslim. Probably being fashion plates was as far as the similarities go. I also believe that Marie Antoinette was a much more mature and grounded person. Though much is made of her frivolty (and she liked to have fun -so what?) she showed her strength when the horrors came. Diana didn't have to endure anything close to that kind of hardship and she buckled under, quit, played the blame game and spent her final years continuing her disgraceful lifestyle. Marie Antoinette stood firm, kept her dignity and went to her death a true Queen. 
|
| Loading... | |
mdmroyale
Registered: 07/21/06
Posts: 84
|
| Posted 07/31/06 at 12:06 PM | Reply with quote #12 |
|
Quote: Originally Posted by gboleyn But, the EVIDENCE speaks for itself. Marie-Antoinette was NOT a devout Catholic, except for certain episodes during her life and towards the end. She was a believer, but not a devout. That is a FACT. And Ms. Vidal is WRONG if she claims otherwise. Do a favor for yourself and get the real evidence about her in the books Trianon and Madame Royale it may seem that I'm taking this to seriously but after reading these books I think it necessary to tell the truth about Her and her Husband.
__________________
Never frown.
You never know who is falling in love with your smile. |
| Loading... | |
gboleyn
Registered: 07/28/06
Posts: 377
|
| Posted 07/31/06 at 03:03 PM | Reply with quote #13 |
|
Mdmroyale, I have read the two NOVELS in question and I am in the happy position of not having to rely solely on two pieces of FICTION for my "evidence." I'm currently writing a thesis on the reputation of Marie-Antoinette, so I've actually read the vast majority of original first-hand sources and, at a conservative estimate, one hundred pieces of secondary NON-FICTIONAL evidence - a considerable number of which were monarchist. Ms. Vidal's books, whilst entertaining and reverent, are novels. They are fiction and thus, by default, they cannot be taken as evidence which trumps or overrules those of people who actually knew Marie-Antoinette. |
| Loading... | |
royalcello
Moderator
Registered: 05/24/06
Posts: 5,938
|
| Posted 07/31/06 at 04:35 PM | Reply with quote #14 |
|
I'll repeat what I wrote elsewhere.
Quote: Originally Posted by royalcello
Mdmroyale, I can assure you that my friend Gareth is not "against" Marie Antoinette. He is merely arguing that as a young woman she was not particularly pious, which seems to me to be true. I like Elena Maria Vidal's Trianon too, but it is not infallible.
Certainly Marie Antoinette faced her downfall, imprisonment and death with heroic faith and virtue, and I hope that she is canonized someday. But I also think that if one accepts that there was perhaps a bit more to the young Marie Antoinette than the thoroughly saintly picture painted by Vidal, the real woman that emerges is more fascinating and likable than if she were perfect.
It's also worth noting that Trianon begins its narrative in 1787, after the relatively "frivolous" period of the queen's life was over.
|
| Loading... | |
mdmroyale
Registered: 07/21/06
Posts: 84
|
| Posted 07/31/06 at 04:38 PM | Reply with quote #15 |
|
then I am sorry to have gotten carried away with this subject.
__________________
Never frown.
You never know who is falling in love with your smile. |
| Loading... | |
