The fate of the daughter of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI ( )

Good view of French Revolution history, but very long book. The ups and downs of Marie Therese's were continuous. Lots and lots of French name dropping, almost became tedious. Glad when it was done. ( )

Marie-Thérèse, sometimes called Madame Royale, was the daughter of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. As a young girl, she spent years living under severe restraints including a three-year stint in prison. Later in life, she was a member of the Bourbon diaspora, living a peripatetic life traveling from one place of exile to another. She participated in two restorations, only to be sent back on the road again, along with her royal family and its retinue. She was an integral yet never determinative member of a family that remained fascinating to millions while it became more and more mired in irrelevancy. Nagel, apparently an ultra-royalist, takes Marie-Thérèse's side at every opportunity, which is not necessarily the job of a biographer. She writes well, though, and her book has become the number one "reliable source" used by Wikipedia for articles on the later Bourbons and related topics. I have to say, however, that the shaggy dog story about the "dark count and countess" takes up too much space and time. ( )

The bummer of historic biographies: nobody makes it out alive. ( )

I heard the author talk about this book at my library. It wasn't a great program, (the author just read from a script) but it was enough to intrigue me to want to know how the story ended, but I knew I'd never be able to get through reading the 400 plus pages(translates to 15 discs). So, I listened to the audio edition. And that was a great choice on my part. I was a fascinating story about the history of the French government after Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, based around what happened to Marie-Therese plus some intrigue about a possible switch. But there were so many players, that it was sometimes hard to remember who did what and who was who. But, I wanted to read more non-fiction this year and this was a good story. ( )