June 23rd, 1703: The birth of the Polish Queen of France

On this day in 1703, one of the most powerful aristocrats in the Poland-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Stanislas Leszczynski, marked the birth of his second daughter, Maria (above). Christened in honour of the Virgin Mary, baby Maria's full name was Maria Carolina Sophia Felicity Leszczynska. Both the baby and her mother, Katarzyna, were in fine health and a year later they both acquired a royal title, when Stanislas was able to pursue his claim to the Polish throne, thanks to his Swedish allies.

Stanislas I's reign in Poland, however, was short and troublesome. He was king for less than six years before being deposed and the royal family were forced to seek asylum in Lorraine, in modern-day Germany. They also endured personal tragedy when Maria's elder sister, Anna, died at the age of eighteen after contracting pneumonia.

The ex-king, queen Katarzyna and princess Maria lived a relatively quiet life in exile until Maria's name was unexpectedly put on the list of ninety-nine eligible princesses to marry the young King Louis XV of France. Louis's chief minister, Cardinal Fleury, lobbied hard for the King to pick Maria as his bride, since she had royal ancestry and a Catholic faith (both pre-requisites for a future queen of France), but, more pragmatically, her father's lack of political power meant that a marriage to Maria Leczszynska would not pull France into any dangerous or costly foreign alliances, as the marriage of Louis XIV to Maria-Teresa of Spain had done in the previous century. The marriage between the exiled Polish princess and the handsome young monarch took place at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Strasbourg on the Feast of the Assumption in 1725.

The marriage itself was an unremarkable one, although it began happily enough. Marie (as she was known in France) endured her husband's numerous affairs with relative complacency. With unusual grace and tact, she managed to establish a friendly relationship with her husband's most notorious mistress, the marquise de Pompadour, a famously beautiful but unpopular woman, who was the only one of Louis XV's lovers to treat the Queen with anything like respect and courtesy. 

A devout Roman Catholic, Marie was noted for her charities and for her large family. Between 1727, two years after the marriage, and ten years later, the Queen gave birth to eleven children - including the future duchess of Parma and the father of three kings, Louis XVI, Louis XVIII and Charles X. 

Novelist Elena Maria Vidal writes on her blog of Marie's time as queen: -

"She was the last Queen of France before Marie-Antoinette. According to Jean Chalon, the author of Chère Marie-Antoinette, Queen Marie tightened up the rigorous court etiquette that Marie-Antoinette later relaxed because it was so suffocating. The daughter of a dethroned monarch and wife of a blatantly unfaithful husband probably needed the highly ritualized pomp to boost her morale and her rank more than did the "daughter of the Caesars." Yes, Marie Lesczynska's father was the dethroned king of Poland and her early life was complicated by upheaval and exile. Yet for this very reason, she was chosen to be the bride of the teenage Louis XV, because she had no political entanglements at all... Queen Marie quietly devoted herself to her faith and her family. Courtiers mocked her Polish ways and called her La Polonaise even as later they would call Marie-Antoinette L'Autrichienne. All of Marie's children were as religious as she was; her youngest daughter Madame Louise became a Carmelite nun and a Blessed of the Church. Some of her grandchildren were quite pious as well, especially Louis XVI, Madame Clothilde, and Madame Elisabeth. Clothilde was declared a Venerable and Louis XVI and Madame Elisabeth can be regarded as martyrs in that they would not surrender their religious principles. When she died in 1768, Louis XV sincerely mourned the mother of his children, and we hope he regretted causing her such pain with his infidelities."

"An extremely funny book"

My novel Popular has been reviewed by British novelist Katy Moran, the author of Dangerous to Know and the medieval thriller series Bloodline, Bloodline Rising and Spirit Hunter. The full review is on my Popular blog, but here are some highlights: -

"Meredith Harper rules Mount Olivet Grammar School in Belfast with beauty, charm and despotic power, aided by a small tribe of It-girls all equally as beautiful (well nearly) and just as bitchy... It’s an extremely funny book – I laughed a lot and kept reading bits out loud to people, which must have been very annoying but I couldn’t help myself.  

Popular has the convincing weight of authenticity – at first, I thought Meredith’s friend Kerry was a caricature, but a few chapters in I started to suspect that the author knows someone exactly like her, so I just went along for the ride. Russell does mercilessly laugh at his characters quite a bit, but he chooses his targets carefully. There’s nothing funny about Meredith Harper. There are serious issues, too, which I won’t go into lest I spoil the plot for you. It’s all very well dealt with, though: nothing is clear cut or black and white, just like life... There’s more to come in this series and I’ll definitely be looking out for the next serving of evil glamour."

Popular by Gareth Russell is released in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland on July 7th, South Africa on August 1st, Canada on August 23rd and Australia and New Zealand on August 29th.

"Evita" back on Broadway

Glorious.

Evita will be revived on Broadway this Spring, with Argentine actress Elena Roger (above) reprising the role of Argentina's glamorous First Lady which she won critical acclaim for in 2006. Pop star Ricky Martin is playing the show's narrator Che and I'm really glad I'll be in New York in the spring time to see it.

Below is a trailer of the London production with Elena in the leading role.

Modern Royal couture

Via Tea at Trianon comes an article about this magnificent gown by Norman Hartnell, which was worn by the current Queen on a State visit to Paris in 1957.

The Kings and Queens of France

I thought I would post a genealogical table (of sorts) of various monarchies over the next few weeks. Traditionally, the French monarchy was seen by most people in Europe as the premier throne in Christendom. A view, understandably, rejected by the Hapsburgs at every available opportunity for eight consecutive centuries. In any case, because of her early conversion to Christianity, the French kings were entitled to be addressed as "His Most Christian Majesty," an honorific which later moved the kings of Spain and Portugal to such jealousy that they petitioned the Pope to grant them something similar (they got "His Most Catholic Majesty" and "His Most Faithful Majesty," respectively.)

The monarchy in France lasted over fourteen centuries and, even today, it still continues to provoke fairly heated debate. For purposes of clarity, I have excluded the Merovingian dynasty of kings, who ruled France between the fifth and eighth centuries A.D. Although some of that family bore the title "King of the Franks," the monarchy's power was in such a state of flux in that period that they often had to resort to the more honest title of "King of Paris."  I have chosen, therefore, to start with the Carolingian dynasty and continue up to the deposition of Louis-Philippe in 1848. I have not included the two Napoleons who used the title of "emperor" in the nineteenth century. Although they had the title, they were not technically monarchs and few royalists today would accept the Bonaparte family's claim as a legitimate one. In any case, they were "emperors", not "kings".

An article on "Popular"

Over on my other blog, actress Emerald Fennell (seen above in her role as 1930s aristocrat Lottie Mountstuart in the recent British television drama Any Human Heart), writes a very kind and very funny article about my novel Popular, which will be published in the UK and Ireland on July 7th this year, then in South Africa (August 1st), Canada (August 23rd) and Australia and New Zealand (August 29th.) 

Click here to read Emerald's full article and I hope you enjoy it!

"When Gareth gave me the first draft of Popular, I was in the middle of my university exams and supposed to be reading Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde, a grim task that I had already been putting off for months. I told myself that I would quickly read the first chapter of Gareth’s book and then get down to some serious study. That serious study never happened. I was completely gripped, and read the whole thing in one sitting, laughing like a lunatic and compulsively turning the pages. My degree almost certainly suffered, but unfortunately Chaucer didn’t stand a chance in the fight against Meredith and her friends: they kicked him in the crotch, called him a smelly peasant and sent him hobbling back to the fourteenth century."

Wilhelm II: Seventy Years On

"Anyone who reads about the personalities of his era cannot but be intrigued by him. Vilified and caricatured as he was - and his speeches and distinctive appearance were a gift to opponants - it is clear with hindsight that he was a much more complex and interesting figure than he once appeared. At times bombastic and vainglorious, at others insightful and far-sighted, a man who could be both bullying and selfless, he still arouses strong feelings..."

Over on his blog Once I Was A Clever Boy, John Whitehead reflects on attitudes to Kaiser Wilhelm II on the seventieth anniversary of his death. The former emperor of Germany passed away in exile in the Netherlands on June 4th 1941, after having abdicated at the end of the First World War twenty-three years earlier. The emperor was survived by his second wife, Hermine; his first wife, Augusta-Viktoria, had died shortly after the downfall of the monarchy. And by six of the seven children from his first marriage - Crown Prince Wilhelm, Prince Eitel-Friedrich, Prince Adalbert, Prince Oskar and the Kaiser's only daughter, Viktoria-Louisa, Duchess of Brunswick. His youngest son, Prince Joachim, who had struggled with severe depression for much of his adult life, had tragically committed suicide in 1920 in the aftermath of the Treaty of Versailles and his divorce from Princess Maria-Augusta von Anhalt. 

The emperor was buried in Doorn, Holland, where he had lived in exile since 1918 and his tomb can still be seen there today (below).