Nevertheless, legend focuses where it will. The most degenerate Plantagenet would have spat in their faces. No matter what Naslund would have you believe, neither Marie nor her Dauphin were particularly intelligent or charismatic, and on top of that, they were cowards – they fled their kingdom, were caught running away. There’s not even a special concentration of personal characteristics. Louis himself had about a dozen ancestors who suffered identical fates. And I don’t really SEE that drama – a corrupt, venal, attenuated monarchy was overthrown by a people prone to doing just that. Like they were resting heavily on the inherent drama of their subject. I’ve read a wheelbarrow full of Marie Antoinette novels, and almost all of them seemed … well, lazy. The whole Louis and Marie milieu has never done much for me. Not only did she write Ahab’s Wife, which has its moments, very distinctly has its moments (although its version of Ahab is woefully anemic), but she wrote Sherlock in Love, which is a very good Sherlock Holmes pastiche novel (trust me, I’ve read ’em all, and good ones are hard to come by). Naslund has a pretty good track record with me. This evening’s book was Abundance by Sena Jeter Naslund, a great big historical novel about Marie Antoinette.
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