The Sister of Kings

M. André Castelot, a scholarly historian, does not spare Marie Antoinette. She was vain, arrogant, perverse, dissipated and frivolous. But she was also Royal. Her beauty was not a legend; it was truth. She maintained an unassailable purity despite the most vile of slanders. She may have had one lover—the handsome Swede, Axel Fersen—but this is not proved. And their devotion to each other was in all respects idyllic. Fersen risked his life repeatedly to save the Queen and, in one of the most harrowing adventures in history, he arranged for her flight from Paris, himself driving the berlin. He had to suffer the unendurable torment of his failure.

The solemn horror of her end is not diminished by the certainty that it could have been no other way. Marie Antoinette asked for it—at every turn. Opportunity after opportunity was given her by moderates of the revolution to ensure herself and her husband at least some status of authority and respect in the new France. But Marie Antoinette could not forget that she was the daughter of the Empress Maria Theresa and the sister of kings. The challenge of sans-culottes to the absolute power of royalty was to her an affront by vulgar, lewd and calumnious ingrates. It was impossible for her to compromise. She was treacherous with the constitutional monarchists who were bent on saving her. And she sent her irresolute husband to the guillotine. Her own execution was an inevitable aftermath.

M. André Castelot, a scholarly historian, does not spare Marie Antoinette. She was vain, arrogant, perverse, dissipated and frivolous. But she was also Royal. Her beauty was not a legend; it was truth. She maintained an unassailable purity despite the most vile of slanders. She may have had one lover—the handsome Swede, Axel Fersen—but this is not proved. And their devotion to each other was in all respects idyllic. Fersen risked his life repeatedly to save the Queen and, in one of the most harrowing adventures in history, he arranged for her flight from Paris, himself driving the berlin. He had to suffer the unendurable torment of his failure.

The solemn horror of her end is not diminished by the certainty that it could have been no other way. Marie Antoinette asked for it—at every turn. Opportunity after opportunity was given her by moderates of the revolution to ensure herself and her husband at least some status of authority and respect in the new France. But Marie Antoinette could not forget that she was the daughter of the Empress Maria Theresa and the sister of kings. The challenge of sans-culottes to the absolute power of royalty was to her an affront by vulgar, lewd and calumnious ingrates. It was impossible for her to compromise. She was treacherous with the constitutional monarchists who were bent on saving her. And she sent her irresolute husband to the guillotine. Her own execution was an inevitable aftermath.