Marie Thérèse Charlotte de France, Füger, c1795. Photo: Hermitage Museum.
The unfortunate Marie Thérèse Charlotte of France was born in Versailles on this day in 1778 to Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. I’ve always been fascinated by Marie Thérèse and her tragic life story, which goes from riches to rags and then back to riches again. Although she left memoirs of her experiences during the Revolution, she was so naturally reserved that it’s still hard to get a proper feel for how she must have actually been and how she really felt about the events that destroyed her world and left her orphaned.
Anyway, all of this lay far ahead in the future at the point when the infant Marie Thérèse was born to her delighted and very relieved parents. Relieved because by the time of her birth, they had already been married for over eight years and had been ruling for over four amidst a swirl of rumours about the reasons for the couple’s continued childless state and pressure from perhaps the most overbearing mother in law in history, the Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, to produce grandchildren as soon as possible.
Marie Thérèse Charlotte de France, Wertmüller, 1786. Photo: Lofstad Castle.
You can imagine therefore her delight when Marie Thérèse arrived – okay, the new baby wasn’t the much longed for boy heir to the French throne (girls having long been barred from succession due to that whole pesky Salic Law malarkey that caused SO much trouble back in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries) but she was nonetheless considered a definite move in the right direction and definitely a cause for celebration.
So let’s leave them there, shall we? Celebrating the birth of their new baby: Marie Antoinette exhausted, flushed with pride and exertion, eyes sparkling with tears as she gazed down at the daughter that she had perhaps given up all hope of ever meeting while at her side stood Louis, pink cheeked, unable to prevent himself from grinning, bear hugging anyone unwise enough to approach him and probably bursting into tears of purest joy every few minutes. Let’s leave them there.
******
‘Frothy, light hearted, gorgeous. The perfect summer read.’ Minette, my young adult novel of 17th century posh doom and intrigue is now £2.02 from Amazon UK and $2.99 from Amazon US.
Blood Sisters, my novel of posh doom and iniquity during the French Revolution is just a fiver (offer is UK only sorry!) right now! Just use the clicky box on my blog sidebar to order your copy!
Follow me on Instagram.
