Chapter 3
I have never made a secret of my heritage, as you know, but I grow so fatigued of the reminders to think of Austria while I am Queen of France that it is curious I have ben mated with France at all!
And how can I think of Austria when I am barely permitted to think of France?
I am never allowed to attend meetings involving foreign affairs and negotiations.
I must feign knowledge in order to obtain it.
I am already declared to be too fond of foreigners simply because of my love of music and art and entertainment, and yet it is a weakness rather than an asset.
I am, apparently, Queen of France. Yet what sort of queen am I when I seem to be used only as adornment?
Antoinette
Brothers were a menace.
Brothers who were emperors of Austria tenfold more so.
Joseph was making his intentions plain as far as his sister was concerned, despite the fact that Marie Antoinette had been Queen of France for ten years now and the Dauphine four years before that.
No, Joseph now wanted Antoinette to be a voice for Austria to her husband.
A source of information for their people.
An influence upon French policy and politics.
Because she had been so very welcomed into the political realm upon her marriage to Louis . . .
It was all Antoinette could do not to crumple her brother’s letter in her fist before flinging it at the fire in her boudoir.
What did he expect her to do? March into meetings she was not invited to and fling herself into a seat at the table, demanding to be informed about everything and expect to be answered accordingly?
Interrogate her husband over supper about the day’s meetings, despite her husband’s reticent nature and general reluctance to discuss politics?
Seduce her husband and hope to pry details from him in a moment of rapture when he was at his most vulnerable and unguarded?
That was exactly what her husband’s early ministers had been afraid of, and why Louis was still apprehensive about telling her anything political.
They had sworn that she would try to take over Louis’s mind and empire, that she would hold sway over his ability to make decisions, or that she would turn him into a puppet and rule through him.
Adviser after adviser had poisoned her husband’s susceptible mind even if they did not all agree, because it was easier to maintain that distance from her rather than alter the way of things.
Thus, Louis did not trust her with politics, and she had yet to manage the slightest shift in his opinions.
He refused to see the ploy of his ministers and the plot against her, and without proof to support her claims—or her aims—why should he?
She was an Austrian who had married into the throne for an alliance.
No one would trust her to act in the interest of France.
She had tried to talk with Louis about including her, but he would either snap at her in an ill temper or grow embarrassed by the request. Her husband, she had come to learn, was a sensitive man who thought the best of those around him, so any idea of people intentionally acting against him was an affront he could not afford to consider.
His ministers would never act against him, he was certain, and in his sensitivity, his blind certainty of loyalty, he was more stubborn than any mule.
And so, Antoinette had taken matters into her own hands by picking up bits of information here and there and going to those who were not suspicious of her and letting them believe that the king had told her everything so they would confide in her.
Knowing enough to lay those hints in a trap had given her more information than she could have hoped for, and so long as she was careful about who she approached with the scheme so no one grew suspicious, she could maintain it.
But her brother did not need to know the information she possessed, only what lengths she had to go to in order to obtain it.
Perhaps if he understood exactly what she was forced to do among her husband’s court, he would stop pestering her for insight she could not sacrifice even if she had it.
Yes, the French ministry lacked vision, and every point Joseph complained about was one Antoinette had already considered some months before.
But Louis did not have the resources and means at his disposal that Joseph had, nor were his character and prejudices the same.
Louis was not a sociable man, even with Antoinette and even at their most congenial, and it was rare that their scant conversations contained anything political simply because it was not in his mind to discuss it with her.
He was not a cruel or thoughtless man; he was kind and good and quiet, which she appreciated more as their marriage and lives intertwined.
They were distant, yes, but their natures were so different that it was only natural to maintain separate lives at times.
It was simple and orderly, the perfect arrangement for a marriage made for the sake of alliance.
And though Antoinette felt dismissed by those surrounding Louis, she had never felt dismissed by her husband.
She could still see the youth in his eyes, no matter what age he was, and the glimmers of naivete that ought to have been removed before he’d ascended the throne.
But Louis XV had not understood his son’s nature, and instead of creating the perfect heir, a timid one had formed.
An insecure one.
A soft one.
Weak.
Not to Antoinette, though. Not anymore. Not once she had come to know him and see Louis for what he was and understood what he had endured.
Cruelty had not turned her husband into a tyrant. It had only made him afraid.
And she could not encourage him to be brave when she had no power to shield him with.
She had nothing to shield him with.
She had no shield.
The most Antoinette could say for herself was that she had been an admirable wife and mother, having provided her husband with both a dauphin and a princess as well as currently being with child.
Her match with Louis had provided France with an alliance with Austria and an air of security, but it had not done much to grant her favor with the French people.
They were a fickle breed, the French. It was as though they had never experienced a foreign queen before, which was utterly ridiculous.
Louis’s mother, the Dauphine, had been from Saxony, and his grandmother, wife to Louis XV, had come from the Holy Roman Empire.
And that was only the previous two generations.
Foreign marriages among royals were the standard not the exception.
But for whatever reason, Antoinette was suspicious.
She was not good enough.
She had been trained up and educated for one purpose and one purpose only, and now found herself lacking in the eyes of those she was bound to serve.
Thankfully, Antoinette knew she was not alone in suffering such a fate. Many of her extended relations across Europe suffered similar marriages and situations, and everyone advised the same thing.
Patience.
Or, for the poetic, perseverance.
Win the people over with compassion and generosity, they said. Prove yourself a loyal daughter of France, they said.
How was she to do that when her options were so entirely limited, and her every action was misconstrued?
Her simple gatherings with friends made her appear shallow and vain to the world.
The emerging fashions in Paris that she adored—that everyone adored—painted her as frivolous and simpering, and the newssheets called her spoiled for wearing court fashions.
The people had mocked her for not conceiving a child easily.
Indeed, sometimes Antoinette was convinced that the only person truly happy to have her as the Queen of France was Louis himself.
She would not take that for granted; she could not.
Her husband loved her, in his way, and she loved him, in hers.
It was not the great passion she might once have wished for herself, but what royal wife had a marriage of passion?
The mutual trust, sincere affection, and heartfelt respect that she shared with Louis was far more lasting and meaningful.
Far more rare, perhaps.
But no one spoke of passionate marriage in letters, so how was she to know for certain?
She had no complaints, apart from the menace that was her brother, the ministers against her, and the general attitude of all of France about her.
Insignificant details, really.
It was astonishing that her brother was the least of those complaints with how infuriating he could be.
She was in too much of a state to pen a coherent response to Joseph, so she settled for reading her most recent correspondence.
It was always a delight to receive a letter from someone who could understand the demands Antoinette faced daily, who knew only too well the isolation one felt despite being constantly surrounded, the difficulty in being a mother on a throne, and the secret desire to occasionally be a simple woman.
A letter that asked nothing of her that she would not readily give.
A letter that was just to Antoinette and not to the Queen of France or archduchess of Austria.
A letter that appealed to the heart of her and let her forget for a while.
“‘Dearest Antoinette,’” she read aloud with a slight giggle. “Oh, Charlotte, you are not one for flattery. I can hear the sarcasm in your pen.”