Sleeping Beauties

In the fairy tale of 'The Sleeping Beauty', the prince must cut his way through century-old brambles and briars to break the spell of the wicked fairy, reach the castle and wake the sleeping princess. Like all fairy tales, there is an inherent truth in the story that can be applied to many situations and it becomes increasingly apparent how apt a metaphor 'The Sleeping Beauty' is for delving into the past. 'Sleeping' kings and queens especially are surrounded by brambles and briars of lies, planted sometimes by victors who wished to justify and conceal their own faults and sometimes by the hypnosis that leads us to take everything at face value.

Richard III of England, Nicholas II of Russia and Marie Antoinette of France are three such 'sleeping beauties' surrounded by scathingly simple adjectives as murderous, foolish or weak, when in fact all three were quite different from the popular myths. Richard, happily still loved in the north of England, was been so defamed by the usurper, Henry VII, that even all these centuries later, many still see him as the 'murderer of his nephews'. Marie Antoinette is still seen as a silly and frivolous girl who said nothing apart from 'Let them eat cake...' and did not care a hoot for her people - and it is quite forgotten that she might have escaped from France but remained there because she would not desert her husband in his hour of need. And Nicholas - Nicholas-the-weak - who was anything but weak, who tried harder to prevent the First World War than any other monarch attempted; who had such a desire for peace in the Balkans that he worked from dawn till dusk and late into the night, seeking solutions - which King George shot grouse and the Kaiser took his Norwegian cruise and poor old Franz Josef was duped by his war council. And then there is the last Austrian Emperor, Karl, whom I admire more by the day, the more I learn of him. Seen as a traitor by his own people because - having seen the mindless carnage with his own eyes - he desired to end the war that he had no part in starting.

Nothing is ever as it appears and no matter how many times lies and myths are repeated, and no matter how many professors cast judgement on men and women in whose shoes they have not walked, I think anyone who wishes to take more than a cursory glimpse at history needs first and foremost a basic understanding of psychology and empathy to cut through the briars and brambles and awaken the really beautiful people of the past.

Louis XVI & Marie Antoinette

I read a Primary School article today about the French Revolution. It said more or less that Louis XVI was tyrant who incarcerated anyone who disagreed with him in the Bastille; and Marie Antoinette was a heartless woman who said, when people were starving, "Let them eat cake." The revolutionaries, on the other hand, according to this article for children, wanted people to be free and to be fed and cared for.

Of course, being an article for children, it didn't say that Robespierre was utterly paranoid and a megalomaniac who was so tyrannical he even knew what 'happiness' meant for everyone, and no one else's idea of happiness was valid. It didn't mention, being an article for children, that The Terror led to the bloody mass slaughter of countless innocent people (rich and poor) or that some of the revolutionaries were so intoxicated by their own power that they thought they were suddenly kings...and, in the case of Robespierre, that vile, vile man, ended up going to the guillotine with half a face (the other half having been shot away by the same rabble that he had created).

Nor did it mention - which would have been more accurate - that Louis XVI was a man who ardently loved his country; a man who would had no desire for power but would have been far happier among his clocks and clockwork mechanisms; a family man (like Nicholas II) and nothing like the tyrants who came afterwards. Nor did it mention that Marie Antoinette was first officially married to him when she was still an infant; was actually married to him when she was still a child, was sent from her home to a foreign place and was stripped of her clothes on the border in order to symbolise that passing and was then at so tender an age thrown into a completely different world with a husband she didn't know. It didn't mention the way in which she, like Alexandra of Russia, suddenly was treated as an enemy simply because of where she was born, nor how, later, she might have escaped from France but chose to stand by her husband...There is so much more to say of them both...

Oh please...stop writing glib lines!! Disagree by all means but don't keep repeating the same old, same old lies!!