Posts tagged historical fiction
a marie antoinette blog
His touch, the unexpected kindness of his voice, brought a lump to her throat. Instinctively, she flung herself into his arms and clung to him in the darkness. …
“Are you awake, Louis?” she whispered.
“Yes.”
“It isn’t what I expected.”
“It isn’t what I expected either.”
“Getting married is disappointing.”
“Yes.”
“Goodnight, Louis.”
“Goodnight, Marie.”
-Marie Antoinette by F.W. Kenyon
Marie Antoinette, her daughter, and a pug. What else could you need?
(from Moi & Marie Antoinette by Lynn Cullen)
Book to film adaptations I’d like to see: The Secret Diary of a Princess by Melanie Clegg
The dramatic and often tragic years of Marie Antoinette’s early life, told in her own words. This book follows her privileged childhood and adolescence in the beautiful palaces of Vienna as the youngest and least important of the daughters of the all powerful Empress Maria Theresa of Austria and invites the reader to share the long journey, both emotional and physical that ended with her marriage to the Dauphin Louis of France at Versailles.
This is the unforgettable story of a charming, fun loving and frivolous young girl, destined for greatness, coming to age in one of the most magnificent and opulent courts that the world has ever seen.
We lodgers—logeants, as those who were privileged to live at the chateau used to be called—were experiencing the negative side of our cruel isolation. How nice, how wonderful, to live apart like this, in sublime unawareness. How frightening, how terrifying, to know nothing, or almost nothing, when the rest of the country was joining in league against us. …
Maybe it was just me; maybe I had gauged the value of my time so completely in terms of my reading sessions with the Queen that I had completely drifted away from reality. Perhaps I had carried the sheltering effect of “these parts” further than the others had, but I had the feeling that everyone around me, each person staggering to and fro in his separate darkness, was in the same plight as I.
—Farewell, My Queen by Chantal Thomas
In honor of World Book Day, a few of my favorite quotes from ‘Marie Antoinette’ novels:
The Queen had never experienced the dark side of these corridors, salons, and private studies. She had never in her life come up against a closed door. She had never opened a door, for that matter, never touched a door. …. She stood motionless, stiff, facing the impassable threshold of the Hall of Mirrors. There was no longer any guard to announce The Queen. Not a single courtier to react to an announcement. Her presence caused no stir. Everything hung upon the movement she could not bring herself to make.
—Farewell, My Queen by Chantal Thomas
Thérèse had lived in many places, but there was none so haunted as Trianon, or as vibrant with memory. Its haunting was a wistful and compelling call to linger, as if the murmuring poplars and cedars entreated one to stay forever. The soul seemed drawn into an enchanted realm where time itself dallied. She breathed in the scented air. No one would ever live there for long in peace; no one could ever again make it a dwelling place, for the person who had enlivened Trianon with her own spontaneous magic was gone from the world. Trianon was no longer a home, but a tangible dream of lost happiness.
—Madame Royale by Elena Maria Vidal
Three hundred six mirrors and in every one of them no Antoinette.
—Versailles: a Novel by Kathryn Davis
“Will the date of the event,” she demanded bitterly, “be preceded by an official announcement?”
“Yes, undoubtedly.”
Shyly she asked, “Have you been able to decide on a date?”
Louis nodded and blinked at her. “I had a consultation with Lassone and Maurepas this morning. … Maurepas suggested a week from today, which is my birthday. It does seem appropriate.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Has it been announced yet?”
“No. Maurepas is waiting for my final decision.”
“Let it be announced then!” she cried, in sudden excitement. “The 23rd, your birthday!”
Puzzled by this quick change, he looked at her uncertainly.
“My dear—”
“Louis, how slow you are!”
He gave a loud shout. “But not as slow as you think, you scheming little minx!”
“You can actually read my mind?”
“I can actually read your mind!”
“Tell me what you read!”
He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “It will be possible for us to—well, for us to be together before then, secretly.”
“Yes, secretly!”
He took her quickly in his arms but she squirmed free.
“No, Louis! You must court me first, like an ordinary man courts an ordinary woman. You agree? Do please say you agree!”
“Of course I agree!” he shouted.
—Marie Antoinette by F.W. Kenyon
Confessions of Marie Antoinette by Juliet Grey: Virtual Book Tour
Monday, September 23rd
Review at Reading Treasure
Tuesday, September 24th
Interview at Reading Treasure
Panic ignores pauses. She does not consider rank, nor does she distinguish between a casual au revoir and a final adieu. For her there are only solutions or obstacles.
—Farewell, My Queen by Chantal Thomas
(Source: vivelareine)
… the silence hanging over Versailles was so unaccustomed that it claimed my attention. The silence intrigued me. It amounted to an enigma. Let me be clear about something that most people would probably have trouble imagining today: noise was inseparable from Versailles. The sound of Versailles remains a part of me even now. It is a single block compounded of myriad individual sounds: ritual, military, religious, the changing of the guard and the ringing of the bells, a continuous background of barking, neighing, coach wheels turning, orders being shouted, raised voices at day’s end, music being played on all sides in the night, and the endless to-and-fro of servant’s footsteps on the wooden floors.
All this surrounded by the din, the disorder, the dust of the the omnipresent construction projects, never finished and always starting up again, the permanent “work in progress” that went on night and day … The noise comes back to me, occasionally, perhaps deafening to the outsider, but deep, violence, mysteriously nourishing, vitally necessary to the person living inside it.
—Farewell, My Queen by Chantal Thomas
(Source: vivelareine)
