Marie-Antoinette: Chosen Princess to Last Queen
By PHOENIX CARLISLE | Cover courtesy of SCHOLASTIC INC.
Paris in the spring, what couldn’t be more romantic, more luxuries, more … nerve wracking? When the luxuries of a paradise became the canter of your world hundreds of miles away one has to wonder if a gilded prison is still a prison? A crown worn by a queen that everyone will learn to know but will the queen be known by herself? Marie Antoinette, the last queen of France and a fashion icon, was forged by the public eye in an image of spitefulness. An inclusion to The Royal Diaries Series, Marie Antoinette: Princess of Versailles, Austria, France, 1769, from Kathryn Lasky is the fabulous sneak peek into the world of preparation to be the perfect queen.
Lasky invents a diary of the headstrong 13-year-old Marie Antoinette in 1769, the year she is to be married off to Dauphin Louis Auguste, the boy destined to be the last monarch in France, but a boy she has never met. Thus, the future of Austria and France falls upon her young shoulders. To prepare for the heavy responsibility, she must be trained to write, read, speak French, dress, act … even breathe. Things get even more grim as she is shipped off to the court of Versailles and introduced to her shy, timid future husband and confronted with the court’s ridiculous customs.
Marie, an opinionated and insightful young woman, mocks the court of “impeccable etiquette and manners” that makes up nasty rhymes about those they hate, but panics when her hair is mussed. Lasky has done an excellent job of creating a very human character in the young Marie Antoinette, one whom young readers will want to learn more about.
I watched the 2006 film Marie-Antoinette at a fundamental age in my life and ever since then I have been obsessed. I have done projects, read books and watched every form of media I can get on her life, yet none of them were able to humanize her the way this fictional diary has.
Reading about a historical figure as a teenage girl navigating her complicated feelings, much like I had, was refreshing. It made me feel less alone and how every teenage girl would feel the same no matter the century.
The book is incredibly well-researched to ensure accuracy from all aspects of preparation, historical context and what a day would have looked like for the young princess. A lot of fictional diaries I find try to be historical while adding in elements of modern thinking, traditions or slip ups that would make sense for our time but aren’t exactly accurate. When observing history from a modern direction, we are viewing it with different perspectives, yet the original perspectives from the time cannot be avoided to add context and understanding to why they lived the way they would. The diary only shows a minor glimpse into her life at Versailles, focusing more on the preparation and journey to France.
Once I read this book, I have added to my bucket list traveling the roads Marie Antoinette did. Traveling from her Austrian home to the foreign land of France is an experience I can’t imagine. A series like this takes historical characters and reimagines them to be more than just the rumors. As historians, you must look at all angles before believing the judgments made hundreds of years ago, who we may know from the perspective of some may not be the same person from the perspectives of others.
The Royal Diaries Series also includes Anastasia Romanov and Mary, Queen of Scots. These perspectives are just as inclusive and eye opening as Lasky’s on Marie Antoinette. Spend the warm spring days under the sun in your favorite sundress as you read about the luxuries presented to a young girl to soon be the queen of France.
