#ancien regime

[lionofchaeronea]

Portrait of a Violinist, Anne Vallayer-Coster, 1773

[fashionsfromhistory]

Longcase Clock

c.1673

France

Indianapolis Museum of Art (Accession Number: 1989.72A-D)

[illustratus]

‘Athos placed his hat on the point of his sword and waved’

by Rowland Wheelwright

[meerawrites]

Almost done my novel research, I just need to get to the terror and the (justified) trial and execution of Marie Antoinette and Louis le incompetent <- I’m not saying his number he doesn’t deserve that.

Ah yes, the French revolution the most divisive event in history, my beloved.

Also... Robespierre was a saint compared to feudalism, monarchy and what Louis (and every French monarch before him) was doing to Haiti.

Marie Antoinette’s execution (from a French Revolution pamphlet).

Marie Antoinette on the way to her execution (Francois Fleming 1887).

[digitalfashionmuseum]

Oil Painting, 1787, French.

By Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun.

Portraying Marie Antoinette in a red velvet dress with black fur trim, with her children.

Château de Versailles.

[tiny-librarian]

It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the Queen of France, then the Dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like the morning star full of life and splendour and joy.

Oh, what a revolution! and what a heart must I have, to contemplate without emotion that elevation and that fall! Little did I dream, when she added titles of veneration to those of enthusiastic, distant, respectful love, that she should ever be obliged to carry the sharp antidote against disgrace concealed in that bosom; little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honour, and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult.

But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded, and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever. Never, never more, shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart, which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom! The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise is gone. It is gone, that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honour, which felt a stain like a wound, which inspired courage whilst it mitigated ferocity, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice itself lost half its evil, by losing all its grossness.

Edmund Burke

[racefortheironthrone]

did the madam mistresse- the ones with the title gifted by the king- of French court have her own ladies? Separate to the queen

If you're referring to the maitresse-en-titre, I don't think so. Quite often, she was one of the Queen's ladies-in-waiting.

But I would ask @goodqueenaly for more on this.

[little-desi-historian]

OP--turned off reblogs and it is bad tumblr etiquette to try reblog it again, but I am sharing this with two cents cause I have opinions + media criticism credentials + done archivist historian work + my current wip centres largely around this nuance and the nuance of inherent human unreliability. See here, and here. Meaningful citation I am gonna quote a lot… also this is just my opinion having read Das Kapital and worked at a unions museum and being a historical fiction writer + gothic horror writer.

when I say "apologize" for Robespierre I don't mean take away his humanity or complexity. The same applies to Marie Antoinette as much as I don't like at all what she stood for or her irl views, she was still a person, as well Napoleon I Bonaparte (the first 'Liberal' Dictator) are all people, not necessarily 'moral' or 'good' people, and we don't have to erase their humanity to talk about how they were not 'good.'

As competent as Louis XIV nicknamed, Louis the Great (Louis le Grand) or Sun King (le Roi Soleil) for his competence and ability to win France's colonial wars (a thing shockingly-- historians of all political leanings agree upon), could've spared France and all of its citizenry a lot of hurt if he just took away the ancien regimes social powers but left them their titles etc. TLDR: if France became a constitutional monarchy none of the French revolution would've happened.

Robespierre was by no means an "avenging angel" but it is important to keep in mind most of what he fought for was warranted and he was the victim of a posthumous smear campaign.

I cannot possibly reiterate enough times just how messed up the ancien regime was, yeah, not all nobility had power or wealth, like country nobility. But, unless you are the bourgeoise new money, titled and wealthy or court nobility. You along with the 99.9% (who is not the clergy or the second estate) might as well be getting by on scraps, Dangerous Liaisons (the book) touches on this conflict a lot.

Historical fiction is by nature fiction it shouldn't be moralized differently from any other fiction.

The French (and by extension European + American) empires never really 'died' they just rebranded themselves a lot.

[eyes-of-laura-mars]

[lafiametta]

Portrait of Madame Grand (Catherine Noele Worlée) by Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, 1783 (detail)

[meerawrites]

Deceased Characters

The Lady Désirée.

@writeblrgarden

Audrey's lover and former 'keeper', whom she parted with on their amiable own terms but never had the chance to say goodbye to or embrace (even platonically) one last time before the Terror of 1793 began... because there were at least four other terrors in the French Revolution that no one besides academic historians discussed.

[digitalfashionmuseum]

Oil Painting, 1782, French.

By Élisabeth Vigée-Le Brun.

Portraying the artist in a straw hat and puce dress.

The Nationally Gallery.

[fearfully-dusty]

Some shit never changes, going back for the entirety of history

[agentfascinateur]

Dear Ridley, close but no cigar...

For those of us descended from the Ancien Régime, who did not live under Napoleon and after learning of Napoleon's time in Rhineland, and if someone bothers to read the Niall Ferguson biography on bankers, one discovers a puppet general, the prototype we see to this day - minus the talent and grandeur, no pun intended. Ridley Scott forgets La Grande Terreur where hundreds of thousands of French people were killed after the Revolution by Robespierre to midwive Napoleon's reign. When Napoleon outlived his usefulness, his puppet masters turned on him but not after having devolved the key levers of power where they could manipulate the political power framework undetected, and pass the knowledge through generations with the ultimate result that we have today a global blood economy and banking system built on the spoils of war for the purpose of war, that makes peace a distant aspiration. Napoleon was more a tool to this global overthrow and never will he be a sun king like Louis XIV. Not even close.

[privateandshamefulvices]

Beloved Frev tumblr community, I come to you with a query:

Is there any reason why Philippe Égalité/the Duke of Orleans seems to be so hated?

Is it literally just because he voted for the death sentence at the King's trial? Because, like, Dominic Sandbrook calling him "one of the worst men in history" is one thing, Tories gonna Tory, but I read a post from someone the other day saying basically the same thing, that he's an almost uniquely evil person, and the Marie Antoinette show is portraying him as an evil scheming rapist misogynist grain hoarder coward with no sincere beliefs whatsoever who is masterminding the downfall of the Bourbons out of spite and unrequited lust for the queen and,,, this is a bit much, right? Even for a show as untethered from history as this? Even for a piece of royalist propaganda?

Because it seems like he and MA just didn't like each other.

As far as I can parse, his major crime seems to be that he was a Prince of the blood who thought divine right was a suboptimal method of selecting an all-powerful head of state. And I mean if that's the case, fuck Richard III, this is the long dead royal in need of a revisionist society doing posthumous PR on his skeletal behalf.

[inmate-24601-911]

Broken on the wheel.