Fraser dismisses, with lengthy precision, the possibility of phimosis - an overtight foreskin - in favour of sheer laziness and apathy. She suffered in growing dejection his inability to consummate the union for seven years. She was a dynastic pawn who, aged 14, met her young husband on a Monday, and married and went to bed with him on Wednesday. Ultimately her reader can't help but feel sorry for a woman trapped in the structures of her age and position. Marie Antoinette is "a piece on her mother's chessboard" her family's blood lines course "like great rivers whose tributaries flowed into each other so frequently that their waters were inextricably mingled" the crowds of the early years of the revolution operate in a "bloodthirsty frenzy", while those of September 1792 staged a "maniacal assault" on the prisons of Paris, executing inmates in a "bloodthirsty delirium".įraser is broadly sympathetic to her subject, arguing that the queen was often misunderstood, and in her final months, heroic. This is grand narrative biography in a familiar, pacy form: it is perhaps no coincidence that Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire makes an appearance. The author has catholic taste - her span covers 18th-century make-up, the family connections of Europe's major and minor royal dynasties, and the severity of the haemorrhoids suffered by the Austrian ambassador to Versailles. Big set pieces such as the lavish banquets at the Austrian and French courts are colourfully depicted, as are the elaborate rituals of rising, dressing and eating in public that shaped the daily life of Marie Antoinette and her husband.
It offers but one example of the author's skill in telling a good story - drama, betrayal, religion and sex, it's all here, adorned by often fascinating, at times esoteric detail. This tense episode marked the beginning of the end for the French monarchy during the revolution and is grippingly narrated by Antonia Fraser in her biography of Marie Antoinette.
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