Customer Reviews

Marie Antoinette: The Last Queen Of France

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Like the reviewer who precedes me, I was not impressed with this biography of the Queen. More to the point, this book is NOT the most valuable addition to an understanding of Marie Antoinette's life since de Nolhac that John Rogister of The Times Literary Supplement would have us believe. As the title to this review indicates, I am in complete agreement with the other consumer's review...a rather surprising lack of critical facts and no feeling what so ever for the subject. In fact, Lever does little to soften what can only be the most horrible calumny of M.A.'s life: the fictitious case of incest between mother, aunt and her Louis XVII. Lever would lead us to believe that this child concocted the accusations against his mother and aunt purely of his own volition. The child's "tutor", the cobbler Simon, was no more than an imbecile, and Louis Charles, (by his mother's own admission in her admirable letter to Madame de Tourzel), had a vivid imagination. As every biographer of note before her has surmised, the "confession" was coerced from the boy. Period. Bottom line: the Queen refers to the accusation of incest clearly in her final letter, or will and testament, directly to Elisabeth herself, in the form of an apology which remarks words easily extracted from a child who does not understand what has been put to him. Yet it seems that Lever believes the child, by every account devoted to his mother, to have been a monster. Further more, Lever, like M.A. biographer Farr, makes much of Madame Royale's indifference to her mother, yet both feign ignorance that 4 year olds commonly hate, and even wish dead, the very person who prevents them from having fun, i.e., Mom. Certainly Marie Therese grew to favor her father and Aunt Elisabeth, but the tantrums of a toddler are hardly an argument for some deep seated hatred of her mother. It's interesting that recently we have had a spate of books published about the life of M.A., and yet none have added squat to anything that has come before. It bears repeating, Andre Castelot's Queen of France and The Fatal Friendship by Stanley Loomis are the only biographies needed by anyone interested in the last queen of France. Finally, the geneology featured on the inside front cover offers some interesting dates for the births of Marie Antoinette's contemporaries. Louis XVI was not born in 1744, dear. I would also check the dates regarding the Duc d'Angouleme. Strange too, that Lever did not include one likeness of Fersen, but instead chose Madame de Staal. While de Staal certainly witnessed the revolution and lived to tell about it, her feelings towards the Queen often changed with the wind, and I never felt Mme.de Staal to be a completely reliable source of information on M.A.(regardless of her plea for the reunion of the Queen and her son). Until truly illuminating correspondences, memoirs, etc. are unearthed, I hope we have seen the last of the biographies of Marie Antoinette.

A very good biography of Marie Antoinette, which mixes both the politics of the time along with the many mistakes made by Marie Antoinette. It is fascinating to read about a woman who when presented with two choices, almost always made the wrong one.

The last few chapters of the book, about the time period after the King and Queen are imprisoned by the revolutionaries is presented in a very harrowing manner. It is hard to imagine living through what Marie did in the final years of her life. The constant turmoil and apprehension and the pure misery that must have accompanied her final days is well documented and excellently written.

I would highly recommend this biography.

My curiousity about Marie-Antoinette and her life first came about in high school, when my French teacher would tell us about the French queen's "Petit Trianon" and her "hameau" at Versailles. When I visited these places on a trip to France, I became even more intrigued. But not until I read this book did history truly come alive for me. I pictured this queen as a one-dimensional character. But in this book, I not only learned about the real person -- who had some very bad qualities, such as selfishness and an inability to understand that her choices brought consequences, but also some good qualities, such as her dignity and regal bearing during her last days and her last moments -- but I also learned a great deal about French society and royal life during the queen's day. For instance: Did you know that the public could watch the queen give birth to her first child, so that there would be plenty of impartial witnesses to verify that this indeed was a child of royal birth? This very readable book is a great peek into an important moment of history.

I am an avid reader of history and biography and, in this book, I found the perfect blending of BOTH!

I have complete confidence in Madame Levers'sources and in her historian/writer perspective. It was, as Carl Sandburg put it, a "cracklin' good yarn" and I am certain that I will be "reliving" it, come autumn. Thank you for a "time/travel" journey to a fascinating past!

BILL MOEN

This extraordinaory book delves into the soul of Marie Antoinette as a fickle, self-destructive woman, a loving mother,a temptress,an ignornant polictical pawn and a marytr in her own right. An excellent, quick read,the book expands on the flamboyance of Versailles, secret love, ill-fated luck and personal tragedy. The best of books!

Palace suspicions had kept her at arms length from the main events in France.
Marie Antoinette, the daughter of Maria Theresa of Austria (Empress of the Habsburg dynasty), was the victim of gutter press and the intrigues of ambitious lackeys, consequently was to take part of the blame that followed.
For example recent literature revealed she had never said `let the people eat cake if they don't have bread' - during the height of a bread shortage in Paris. The alleged quotation was magnified in the press to her detriment when the time for the Revolution came.

Cardinal de Rohan, France's Envoy to Austria, whose ambition to become France's Prime Minister had been blocked several times by Marie Antoinette {because some of the Cardinal's letters were intercepted in which he said he `bedded half the royal court of Austria"}. The Cardinal worked hard to tarnish Antoinette's image.
de Rohan propagated that the queen secretly sought to buy a necklace for two million Livres, but such accusation was never true.
During the trial the Cardinal was acquitted, and the Queen was condemned.

She was accused of amassing fortunes, jewels, wardrobe filled with myriads of latest fashions - extremely expensive dresses and hundreds of `shoes' -.
Her husband, King Louis XVI, whose optimism with the future of France only days before the July 14th deluge, was extremely feted as much for her magnificent presence as for his known weakness of characters.

As daughter of Maria Theresa, her fondness for France was in direct proportion to her natural love for Austria. The Queen carried soil from Vienna in a jewelled box and planted seeds in her garden. But politics and greed were indeed cruel to this young queen who married the King `boy' when she was only 14.

I am disappointed that of all the excellent biographies of Marie-Antoinette written by French scholars, Lever's is the one that was translated into English and found its way into the American bookstores. She is a very romantic lady, and stretches the facts to created a romance between the queen and Count von Fersen, even imagining that the queen built her Temple of Love for him, without presenting any solid facts to prove her point. The ordeal of the little dauphin, who is taken from his mother and abused, is downplayed in an outrageous manner. For a better biography of the queen, please read Desmond Seward's. For a true account of what happened to little Louis XVII, read Deborah Cadbury's superb book. There are novels which have better history than Lever's biography, such as Vidal's "Trianon." I would not recommend this book and I hope that Bertiere's biography is soon translated into english.

This book doesn't read like a biography of the Queen at all. I enjoyed it nonetheless, but I don't feel like I know a whole lot about marie-antoinette now. I feel like I know more about France and what happened to France at that point in time. Even though I like finding out about the political situation at one point in the book I realised it was too detailed in telling the reader what was happening regarding the Estates General and how it changed and progresses. I know it is essential to tell what was happening in France while telling her story, but my feeling is that the background info about France was the leading topic of the book and the book should be re-titled. In some parts however the author was really skimpy on detail and for example in the case of the diamond necklace if I hadn't have watched the movie about the necklace I wouldn't have been able to follow and understand the events in the book. In other words, you almost needed some background info yourself before you read it.

If you're a fan of Marie Antoinette, this book is definetly worth a read. Although there have been many books written about her, this book offers fresh insight and new anecdotes that give a better perspective on who she was as a person. A very fair biography, one that neither romanticizes her nor condemns her. Rather, it shows her to be an ordinary human dealing with extraordinary circumstances, which I think is what makes her so engaging. Two thumbs up.

I found this book to be quite boring. Not only were some of the facts incorrect-but many interesting facts were omitted altogether. I don't believe the author even tried to understand the person about whom she was writing