Vodka at Versailles

Fan fiction, and bad fan fiction at that. The most common mistake early fan fiction writers made was the creation of a "Mary Sue". In prehistoric Star Trek fan fic, the Mary Sue was usually the female ensign that was brilliant, reserved and beautiful only to the special few who could see past her reserve. This might be Kirk, once Ensign Mary Sue had saved them from attacking Romulans. As fan fic expanded, the Mary Sue included both fangirls and fanboys. Why write fan fic? A lot of reasons, but at least one is that you don't like the way the characters are handled "canonically", i.e. either by the original authors or those charged with them. For example, despite J.K. Rowling's firm objections, there is a flourishing "Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy Are a Couple!" fan fic genre (one of the first things fan fic did was establish a "slash" genre, in which couples were paired. The couples were usually characters who had hitherto been identified as heterosexual, such as Harry and Draco --- the proto slash was Kirk/Spock). So what does all of this have to do with Ms. Vidal's romps through the histories of Marie Antoinette, Louis XVI and their children? She certainly doesn't make the mistake of ridiculous pairings (Louis XVI/Fersen, say). But she does fall into the Mary Sue trap. Marie Antoinette and Louis become her best friends, to the point of adopting Ms. Vidal's attitudes about lots of things, including Roman Catholic Triumphalism. In her attitudes, poorly voiced by her characters, Ms. Vidal makes Pius IX sound like Garibaldi. There are a lot of readers who crush on Marie Antoinette, God knows. As Caroline Weber points out in her highly readable Queen of Style, the last widely acknowledged Queen of France knew how to dress. She was reasonably attractive . . . for a queen. That's not a knock of Marie Antoinette's personal attributes, but a statement of fact. If you look at portraits of other 18th century sovereigns, the bar is low. Moreover, she was generally in the vicinity of Louis XVI, who despite many sterling qualities, looked like a lump in homemade gravy. Marie Antoinette also had one of the great exit lines in history: "Monsieur, I ask your pardon. I did not do it on purpose." Okay, she was apologizing to her executioner for stepping on his toes, but really, what else could she say about her life? Ms. Vidal writes about the Trianon, flowers, music, simple dances a la Anglaise, delicious meals that appear when wanted, etc. as though it appeared by magic and not on the backs of the French peasantry. Was the Queen culpable for this? Of course not. She was a 14 year-old mailed to France as a deal-sealer for an Austrian/French alliance (oops, there's that slash again). It would have required far more will and intelligence that Marie Antoinette ever possessed to ward off bad behaviors. Despite all of this, the evidence suggests that the Dauphine, then young Queen was simply silly, not corrupt. But Ms. Vidal takes all of this and adds the startling twist that Louis was determined not to touch her until he had won her love. In support of this, Vidal instances the idea that Joseph II made a field trip to France in order to see why his sister and brother-in-law were so loved, and then mutters something about how he also passed on some medical advice to Louis. Come on. That's not what happened, and if the author is honest, she knows it. As I said above, Louis XVI possessed many sterling qualities, and I do think Ms. Vidal at least gets the main one right: he was devoted to France. And as such, he knew perfectly well that a good king secures his succession. Ms. Vidal is writing hagiography, not history. The reader might quibble and say, "no, she is writing literature." Well, she can't have it both ways, although as a novel, this wouldn't make it past most community college creative writing classes. I read a lot of historical novels. Most fall into one of a few categories --- the weirdly intimate (Sharon Kaye Penman, despite being highly entertaining, is the champ at this --- "Uncle Dickon?" "Yes, Ned?" "Now that Aunt Anne has developed the consumption, are you thinking of stealing my throne and marrying my sister Bess so that Harry Richmond may not bed her?" Like that), the very weird (Carolly Erickson's The Tsarina's Daughter --- the poor children of Nicholas and Alexandra are a lot of fan fic writer's best imaginary friends (BIFFs!) or the "want to see how much I have read?" ("Yes, I was at the National Assembly today where Mirabeau harangued us all on the Rights of Man, using the same language that the rascally Thomas Paine has used in one of the many pamphlets that are being distributed in Paris as I speak, pamphlets which defame the very purity of the Queen in ways that are unspeakable, because when the Queen disported herself at the small Trianon, she smelled of flowers and little knew that it had been built for La Pompadour or perhaps it was La Du Barry, anyway, La Somebody Who Was Not Marie Antoinette and therefore it is so unfair!" "Resign yourself to the Sacred Heart!"), a genre that Ms. Vidal has cornered. Then there is the unpleasant Catholic Triumphalism. I am Catholic, born and bred, and even I had some trouble following Ms. Vidal through the thickets of the Sacred Heart devotion (the Miraculous Medal shows up in Madame Royale) and the reception of Extreme Unction by the dying Abbe Edgeworth. Ms. Vidal's point is that things had slid downhill since the French Revolution, which was apparently caused by the pesky philosophes, Masons and the Illuminati (along with the nasty Comte de Provence and the Duc d'Orleans). She is sort of the Jim Garrison of the Revolution, coming up with so many theories as to its cause, none of which are remotely historical. All of this would be tolerable if the writing was remotely good. Alas, even there Ms. Vidal drops the ball. The characters thud along, talking to each other as though they were aware of Ms. Vidal in the corner, scribbling down each sentence, and had decided to posture for future reference at Sodality meetings. Here's the deal: you can't keep describing someone as incredibly charming unless you can demonstrate it by the way she speaks and interacts with other characters. In this book, Marie Antoinette finally emerges as someone you would want to know when Ms. Vidal uses her actual answers at her trial. Not recommended.