vivelareine

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Costume Parisien Fashion Plate, 1808

From Paris Musees, les Musees de la Ville de Paris

[vivelareine]

now and then I say in my head "we are not in lent: it is successful" if I'm doing something or enjoying something a little excessive, and going through my blog for something unrelated, I remember where that quote came from...

too bad I lost all my bookmarks in 2020, no idea what the theater review was now.

I’m doing some research for a piece on the development of the “Marie Antoinette shepherdess” myth and came across this gem from a theater review: “This piece is a little décolletée but we are not in Lent: it is successful.”

I feel like “but we are not in Lent” should be added to everyone’s vocabulary

[vivelareine]

Costume Parisien Fashion Plate, 1808

From Paris Musees, les Musees de la Ville de Paris

[vivelareine]

I’m not blind to my own credibility; I just know that when it comes to politics, I do not carry much weight in the king’s mind. Would it be prudent of me to make scenes with his minister over things about which the king would almost certainly not support me? Without making a show of it or lying, I let the public believe that I have more credit than I actually have, because I would have even less if I didn’t [do so]…

–Marie Antoinette to Joseph II, September 22 1784 [translation: Mary Hudson, The Indomitable Marie Antoinette (S. Bertiere)]

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#using twitter means that you are a bird brain in this year of our lord 2025

Sorry, I like to engage with people that I've met through Twitter and because I believe in staying on platforms to continue to correct misinformation. Not sure why you'd follow me & throw out a silly insult. Bye though! It's 2025 and I don't put up with unnecessarily rude comments anymore.

I’m a million years late on this meme

[vivelareine]

people are being silly on twitter gotta bring this back

I’m a million years late on this meme

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A drawing and engraving depicting an allegory of Marie Antoinette kneeling before the coffin of Louis XVI. By an unidentified artist. Set to be auctioned by Maître Bruce Roelens.

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Gentlemen, I come to place in your hands the wife and the family of your sovereign; do not suffer those who have been united in Heaven to be put asunder on Earth.

–a speech written by Marie Antoinette on July 17, 1789. Louis XVI had traveled to Paris after the fall of the Bastille and she believed he would be taken prisoner there; if he was held captive, she intended to travel to Paris with her family and remain with him.

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thank you!!! and now happy birthday almost-birthday twin @tiny-librarian!!!

Happy Birthday to my almost birthday twin, and the reason I joined this hellsite, @vivelareine

[vivelareine]

You will think my style a little frivolous, considering the circumstances, but as there is no counter-revolution in it, I can be forgiven. Far from thinking of counter-revolutions we are about to rejoice (two weeks hence) with all the militia of the kingdom and celebrate the famous days of July 14 and 15, of which you may perhaps have heard. They are making ready the Champs de Mars, which can contain, they say, six hundred thousand souls.

I hope for their health and mine, that it will not be as hot as it is this week, otherwise, with the liking that I have for heat, I believe I should explode.

Pardon this nonsense; but I was so suffocated last week, at the review and in my own little room, that I am still dazed. Besides, one must laugh a little, it does one good. Mme. d'Aumale always told me, when I was a child, to laugh, because it dilated the lungs.

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[Image: Detail from July 1789 page from Volume 1 in the ‘Journal of Louis XVI’ collection at the Archives Nationales; via the Archives Nationales.]

Volume 1 encompasses pages in which Louis XVI wrote a record of walks, trips, reviews, festivals, engagements, ceremonies, and similar noted events, particularly those that occasioned visits from others or visits to specific locations. In some cases, the entries appear to have been written on a daily basis; in others, written in larger batches later on.

On July 14th, 1789, the king wrote “rien,” or “nothing.”

Although much has been made in popular culture of this particular phrase,  it should be noted that “rien” is the phrase used most often to indicate that there were no official engagements, not necessarily that nothing noteworthy had happened. Aside from especially personal or extraordinary events–such as the births and deaths of his children, and the royal family’s forcible move to Paris–Louis XVI rarely wrote down anything other than these official engagements within these particular pages.

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A July 14th/Fête nationale ceremony held in Coursuelles-sur-Mer, Normandy, on July 14th, 1944.

Image: French, British and American troops join with local inhabitants of Courseulles-sur-Mer in the ceremony at the War Memorial. Courseulles-sur-Mer was the first town to be liberated by the Allies.

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Marie Thérèse Charlotte in prayer for her family

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Louis XVI on July 14th, 1789:

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On June 16, 2025, the Castle of Versailles exercised its right of exemption for the acquisition of a pastel portrait of the Count of Provence, brother of Louis XVI and future Louis XVIII, by Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, dated 1776.

The first portrait of a member of the royal family made by the artist, this work marks a turning point in her career and reveals her mastery of pastel.

In her "Memoirs", Vigée Le Brun remembers Monsieur as a well-educated, kind and talkative man. She recounts her posing sessions, sometimes accompanied by trivial songs.

Source

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In the cabinet in the tourelle was a narrow opening through which we could see my brother when he went up to the battlements, and the sole pleasure my mother had was to see him through that little chink as he passed in the distance. She stayed there for hours, watching for the instant when she could see the child; it was her sole hope, her sole occupation.

–the memoirs of Marie Thérèse Charlotte, on Marie Antoinette after her son, Louis Charles, was separated from his remaining family at the Temple tower. [image: Detail from a work by Edward Matthew Ward, 19th century.]

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On July 3rd, 1793, a decree from the Convention ordered the separation of Louis Charles from the rest of his family. An account of this day written by his sister, Marie Therese, describes the suffering of this separation:

‘On the 3d of July, they read us a decree of the Convention ordering that my brother be separated from us and lodged in a more secure room in the Tower. Hardly had he heard it when he flung himself into his mother’s arms uttering loud cries, and imploring not to be parted from her. My mother, on her side, was struck down by the cruel order; she would not give up her son, and defended, against the municipals, the bed on which she placed him. They, absolutely determined to have him, threatened to employ violence and to call up the guard.

My mother told them they would have to kill her before they could tear her child from her. An hour passed in resistance on her part, in threats and insults from the municipals, in tears and efforts from all of us. At last they threatened my mother so positively to kill him and us also that she had to yield for love of us.

We rose, my aunt and I, for my poor mother no longer had any strength, but after we had dressed him she took him and gave him into the hands of the municipals herself, bathing him with tears and foreboding that she would never see him again. The poor little boy kissed us all very tenderly and went away in tears with the municipals.’