In the Shadow of the Empress: The Defiant Lives of Maria Theresa, Mother of Marie Antoinette, and Her Daughters

Absolutely compelling read! I couldn't put it down. After reading the book I went back to read reviews to hear others takes and I noticed the particularly harsh review from Elle (see above).In response to Elle's criticism regarding Louis XVI's possible autism, Goldstone makes a compelling case. The critic states that the author's primary argument for Louis' diagnosis is that he did not know how sex worked. This is wholly incorrect.Goldstone lists a number of Louis' characteristics which are consistent with autism including his preference for routine, difficulty with verbal language, difficulty with gross motor movements, difficulty with social interactions and highly specific interests (locks). The author goes so far as to consult with a Yale doctor regarding the matter. If Elle would like to argue the sources for Louis' characteristics I'd be all ears.Elle also criticizes the author for allegedly not acknowledging that sexual intercourse was painful for Louis which is confusing because Goldstone clearly lays this out when discussing the matter in the chapter on their early marriage.Elle also argues that the author states that Louis is oblivious to Marie Antoinette's affair because of his autism. Again, an argument that the author never directly makes. She notes that Louis never showed ill will towards Fersen and leaves the reason why open for interpretation. It was never in the context of a discussion about his potential diagnosis.While my knowledge base on Marie Antoinette is limited to a handful of books, I do work with autistic children, have autistic friends and am neurodivergent myself. Never once did I get the impression that the author characterized Louis as "an emotionless robot". Perhaps she's referencing the journal entry about a family member's death but there are other instances in which he clearly displays emotion such as at the birth of his child or when he breaks down in tears after his trial. The author does note that Louis didn't speak for 10 days after a harrowing ordeal nearing the end of his life. This was something I interpreted as shutdown which is not a lack of emotion but an overwhelming of emotions. Never does Goldstone characterize him as someone who doesn't care about his family.I can't speak to Elle's critiques of the sources and scholarship as she is clearly more well read on the subject. I can certainly understand a serious scholar's annoyance with the fun tone. Perhaps academics expect the tone to be more serious and dry. Being a casual reader with few opinions on the subject at hand, I personally enjoyed the ride.

It's very telling that the sources most often cited in Nancy Goldstone's chapter on Marie Antoinette are two outdated 19th-century biographies and Evelyn Farr's 2013 book ; this book, like Farr's other books, is filled with romanticized "scholarship" in which she fervently argues, without strong evidence, that Marie Antoinette and Axel von Fersen were engaged in a decade-plus long affair and even that Fersen fathered two of her children.Goldstone parrots Farr's arguments regarding the affair, with a strong emphasis on repeating those which are based on flimsy "must haves" and "would haves," rather than on any logical, historical research.Goldstone's own arguments based on her personal "research" (and I use the term loosely)--namely that Louis XVI had autism--are just as flimsy.For example, Goldstone's argument that Louis XVI "must" have been autistic rests heavily on her belief that from 1770 to 1777, Louis XVI had no idea about the mechanics of sexual intercourse and had to be told by Marie Antoinette's brother, Joseph II, on what to do.For one: the idea that someone with autism would not know about sex whatsoever for 7 years is infantilizing and offensive.Secondly: This belief that they simply "didn't" consummate between 1770 and 1777 and that Louis XVI had no idea what sex was throughout that period is rooted in outdated research from the 19th century (aka, Goldstone's primary research material), rather than modern research which takes the uncensored letters between Marie Antoinette, empress Maria Theresa, and the ambassador de Mercy into account.In these uncensored letters, published in 20th century-21st century works, you can read that: Marie Antoinette's marriage was consummated as early as 1773, that the couple were engaging in sexual contact throughout those years, that intercourse was causing physical pain for them both, just to name a few other factors. We also learn that Louis XV hired a physician to examine Louis XVI, then just Louis Auguste, and explain to him everything regarding sexual intercourse.Why does Goldstone ignore all this? Because it doesn't suit her narrative? Or because she couldn't be bothered to do the research to find out the facts? She can't argue "autism" if she has to consider the fact that Louis XVI said sex physically hurt him and Marie Antoinette, and that they had to overcome the pain gradually.Goldstone's other claims regarding autism are similarly offensive. She argues that Louis XVI must have been autistic because Axel von Fersen and Marie Antoinette were 100% having an affair, and the only reason why a man wouldn't care about his wife having an affair and two children (dynastic children whose paternity was of political importance, mind you) is because he had autism. Words don't even express how ridiculous this notion is.Again and again, Goldstone paints people with autism as emotionless robots who don't care about their wives cheating on them, who don't care about the safety of their children or family, and who are essentially big children who must be "protected" by others.The book is filled with many easily debunked claims, flimsy arguments, and such a strange obsession with perpetuating Axel von Fersen as Marie Antoinette's lover that she ignores the real Marie Antoinette. She doesn't talk about why Marie Antoinette preferred the Petit Trianon as described by her contemporaries, as gleamed from her own letters; no, no, instead Goldstone claims it's because she could get away from the king with her friends--and to be with Fersen. A glance at the Journal de Louis XVI in the Archives de Nationales shows that Louis XVI went to this retreat very often, sometimes just as much as Marie Antoinette. The facts just don't support Goldstone's claims.Oh, and Goldstone starts off her biographical chapter on Marie Antoinette with a genealogical chart which says that Axel von Fersen was definitely the father of two of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI's children. There is no evidence to support this, and Goldstone's arguments are quite ridiculous. At one point she claims that because Marie Antoinette wrote to Fersen that holding her son in her arms was comforting to her, that it was a secret signal of her love for Fersen and his paternity over Louis Charles. Excuse me? What kind of historian would ever make this argument?How a publisher, editor or even a friend didn't stop Goldstone from making the offensive and inaccurate claims about autism (to say nothing of her inaccurate claims about Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette) found in this book, I really don't know.If Goldstone exhibited such poor scholarship on a fairly easily researched figure like Marie Antoinette, I don't know that I can trust anything she says about the other figures in this book.Skip this one unless you're in the mood for historical fiction... though even then, there are better novels if you're in the mood for a Fersen romance.

Once again, Nancy Goldstone has introduced me to fascinating, powerful, important women that history has tried to minimize or erase, and Goldstone has done it with her usual appealing style and with a touch of humor thrown in.I thoroughly enjoyed this look at the renowned empress Maria Theresa and several of her daughters. Of course, I was somewhat familiar with Maria Theresa and Marie Antoinette, and I knew Marie Carolina essentially saved Horatio Nelson and the British navy and enabled Nelson to defeat Napoleon in Egypt, but that’s it. I knew nothing of Marie Christina, and I have to say I adored her; she was my favorite. Such an intriguing person. I also saw a side of Emma Hamilton that was new to me, and my respect for her grew, along with sadness for how her life ended. In fact, we see how several of these women were betrayed in the end, both on a personal and a national level.I have read a few books on Marie Antoinette, and they all disagree on certain points, which I will not argue here, and Goldstone has her own conclusions, some of which surprised me, but I understand her reasons for them.I do need to mention that it seems there was just war after war after war during the lives of these women. Each time another conflict began, I just thought, oh, no, not again.All in all, I found this book so interesting, and so compelling, I had a hard time putting it down each night to get some sleep. I very much enjoyed reading this book and can recommend it to anyone interested in this time period and women's history.

Wonderful biography/history by a fine narrative historian. The author writes with wit and intelligence. I loved this book so much, I immediately purchased all her books now available.

This ambitious book, whose main text is 596 pages long, deals not only with the lives of Maria Theresia, but also extensively with the lives of three of her daughters, Maria Christina, Maria Carolina and Marie Antoinette, while the chapters on these four women also tell us much about the lives of Maria Theresia’s other children, notably of Joseph, her eldest son, who became Emperor and co-regent with her after 1785, and of his brother Leopold who succeeded Joseph as Emperor in 1790. The result is a book which is rather ungainly in composition. But Goldstone writes in a lively manner, and the pages describing the personalities in the book and life at the various courts are a pleasure to read. However, her accounts of diplomatic manoeuvres and of military campaigns are not easy to follow. *** Maria Theresa.We are given the details of her youth, of her struggles with Frederick the Great of Prussia, and of her reluctant participation in he First Partition of Poland. She was very fecund: gave birth to sixteen children, of whom thirteen survived infancy; and of those thirteen, three died of smallpox – a disease that killed several more of her extended family, though some others who had caught it, including Maria Theresa herself, survived it. She organized the dynastic marriages of four of her daughters. Three of these were married, against their will, to princes whose serious defects of character were well known: only the fourth married someone she loved. She also forced her son Joseph, on the death of his beloved first wife of smallpox, to marry a second wife, whom he detested. ***Maria Christina (nicknamed Mimi) was Maria Theresia’s second daughter who had survived infancy. She was able to marry for love: her cousin Albert. Albert was made governor of Hungary, and in 1781 was moved from Hungary to become the governor of the Austrian Netherlands. That was a poisoned chalice. Joseph II had become sole the Habsburg ruler after his mother’s death in 1780, and embarked on a policy of abolishing traditional rights which the Netherlands enjoyed. They rose in rebellion in 1789 and proclaimed a republic. Albert and Mimi had to flee to Vienna. When Joseph died in 1790, his brother Leopold succeeded him, restored the Netherlands’ privileges and, with some use of force, brought the rebellion to an end. Albert and Mimi were restored. But they were now exposed to revolutionary France, whose army defeated an army headed by Albert at Jemappes (November 1792), and Albert and his wife fled into Germany. Albert resigned his office to Francis II, who had, seven months earlier become Emperor on the sudden death of his father, Leopold. When the Austrians recovered Belgium in March 1793, the Archduke Charles, Francis II’s younger brother, became governor, and Albert and Maria Christina retired contentedly into private life in Vienna, where Mimi died in 1798 ***Maria Carolina (nicknamed Charlotte) was the eighth living daughter of Maria Theresa. Maria Theresa had arranged for her sixth living daughter, Maria Josepha, to marry King Ferdinand of Naples, the son of King Charles III of Spain; but just before she was to leave for Naples, she, too, died of smallpox. Charlotte, aged fifteen, was substituted. and, despite her protestations, they were married in 1768. (Charlotte, too, was very fecund and would have eighteen children, seven of whom died young, six of them of smallpox. Her eldest daughter married the Emperor Leopold’s eldest son, who succeeded his father as Emperor Francis II in 1792.)King Ferdinand, at age eighteen, was ignorant, infantile and an oafish prankster. The government and the king himself were controlled by the chief minister, Tanucci. Charlotte began to control the king by pretending to love him, playing infantile games with him, and forcing herself to submit to him in the bedroom. But she became self-assured, In 1776, after eight years as queen, she was strong enough to have Tanucci dismissed, and was thereafter, for the next twenty-three years, effectively the hard-working and efficient ruler of Naples. She became very friendly with the British ambassador, Sir William Hamilton, and especially with Emma, whom Sir William married in 1791. We get a full account of Lady Hamilton’s life and of her affaire with Nelson.When the French established their republic and executed first, Louis XVI and then Charlotte’s sister Marie Antoinette, Charlotte made a secret alliance with England in 1793.In July 1794, the most extreme phase of the French Revolution came to an end with the overthrow and execution of Robespierre. The Directory was set up in September 1795, and in March 1796 its general, Napoleon Bonaparte, led an army into Italy and, over the next two years, set up client states in the North of the peninsula. In 1798 the British sent a fleet under Nelson to seek out and destroy the French Mediterranean fleet. He destroyed a French fleet at the Battle of the Nile (August 1798), leaving Napoleon and his army stranded in the Middle East, and then docked again in Naples, which he had visited five years earlier. This time he used Emma as a link with Charlotte: he persuaded Charlotte to send the Neapolitan army to drive the French out of Rome, which the French had occupied since 1796. The small French force withdrew from Rome without a fight, but reinforced French troops not only retook it, but now began to invade the kingdom of Naples and were helped by Neapolitan republicans. The French took the capital (1799).Ferdinand blamed his wife for having provoked the French, and stripped her of all powers. Nelson came to the rescue and, together with Neapolitan royalists, managed to defeat the rebels and drive out the French. There followed a month-long reprisals. They were not very extreme, but they were blamed on Charlotte, though she no longer had the power and had in fact tried to restrain the reprisals.In 1799 Napoleon, leaving his army behind, had landed in France and carried out the coup d’état which made him dictator of France. In 1806 he again overran Naples, and made his brother Joseph King of Naples. In 1808 he moved Joseph to become King of Spain, and replaced him as King of Naples with his own brother-in-law, General Murat.A further humiliation for Charlotte was that her son, the Emperor Francis II, made a peace with Napoleon by which, in 1810, his daughter (Charlotte’s granddaughter), Marie Louise, became the second wife of Napoleon, after he had divorced the childless Josephine.Ferdinand and Charlotte held on only to Sicily, where they were protected by the British. These effectively took over the government. In 1813 they forced Ferdinand to hand over his power to his more pliable son, Francis, and deported Charlotte, who returned to Vienna. There she died of a stroke in 1814. Ferdinand was restored to the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies by the Congress of Vienna in 1815. ***Marie Antoinette was Maria Theresa’s youngest daughter. In 1770, to cement the Franco-Austrian alliance, she was, at the age o fourteen, married to Louis XV’s grandson, the Dauphin, then aged fifteen. Once again Maria Theresa sent a daughter into a marriage with a youth of whose character and abilities she had had poor reports.The humiliating rituals to which Marie Antoinette was subjected as she crossed the frontier into France beggars belief: she was stripped of all her connections with Austria – not only of her entourage and her little dog, but, literally, even of her clothing. After a nuit blanche, the Dauphin showed no interest in his wife. She took no offence, but tried to make friends with him, and he slowly got used to her. The author is sure that he was autistic.In 1774, Louis XV died – of the smallpox that was ravishing the court. Louis XVI (aged nineteen) and Marie Antoinette (eighteen) had no experience whatever of government: he had never attended a council meeting or read any state papers. He let his ministers make all the decisions, and hardly ever appeared in public. And Marie Antoinette saw her elevation as an opportunity for frivolous amusements and lavish expenditure on jewellery. She spent much of her time away from her husband, at the Petit Trianon. Her marriage had still not been consummated. Soon she became the target of attacks from scurrilous pamphleteers. Her marriage was not consummated until 1777, seven years after her marriage – as the result of Joseph II, on a visit to France, having explained to Louis the mechanics of intercourse. So unpopular Marie Antoinette had become that the alliance with Austria, which she represented, was now equally resented.France’s participation in the American War of Independence plunged the country into bankruptcy, and forced Louis to summon the Estates-General, which turned out to be the trigger for the French Revolution. That story is then told at length, (with a great many details that are not familiar, and plenty of focus on Marie Antoinette until her execution in 1793), and is so well-known that I need not summarize it here.

I have to applaud this book for engaging me in something I wouldn’t have thought I’d enjoy - military history. I found myself gasping at the double crossing and schemings of Frederick of Prussia and cheering for Theresa and Madame du Pompadour. It’s an entertaining read, but does contain several moments of conjecture.There is a claim that Louis 16th, Marie Antoinette’s husband, had autism, which, if explored in more depth and showing some consultation with medical professionals looking at the records of his behaviour, might have read better than Nancy just stating “the Mayo Clinic website says this *list of symptoms follows* and I asked one doctor who agreed with me” (this is literally the extent of the footnote)If you want to learn about strong women, a large, complicated family and be drawn into a wild period of European history (that also takes in pre-independent America) I would recommend this book, but would advise you that the recorded facts are often presented alongside the author's opinions.Still, I definitely learned a lot and found myself entertained by the style.

This is an extremely good book . The author comments , I was writing about all these dead people, but Nancy you made them come alive !And when I put the book down it was like coming out of the cinema after watching. a movie And bang ! I was back in the 21st Century after being back in the 18th Century ! Excellent ! I really enjoyed reading it and loved Nancy's style of writing..

Excellent. A reminder of what women can achieve when given the chance! The author manages the perfect blend of erudition and humane, amusing comment bringing her personages to life.