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Archiver > GEN-MEDIEVAL > 2002-11 > 1037670442


From: "Stewart, Peter" <>
Subject: RE: The House of Valois and "The Affair of the Necklace"
Date: Tue, 19 Nov 2002 12:47:25 +1100


> -----Original Message-----
> From: D. Spencer Hines [mailto:]
> Sent: Tuesday, 19 November 2002 11:03
> To:
> Subject: Re: The House of Valois and "The Affair of the Necklace"
>
>
> Fascinating Details, Peter.
>
> So Cardinal de Rohan had become severely crossthreaded with Maria
> Theresa?

Indeed he had - by spreading venereal disease through her entourage. Louis
XV had sent Rohan to Vienna in the hope that his little problem wouldn't be
noticed there, like Hamlet's madness in England, because everybody suffered
from it already. But he didn't count on the ambassador's easy access to
Maria Theresa's attendant ladies....

>
> If you see the film, please tell us what you think of it.

I was going to buy the DVD, but after reading a very bad review I wanted to
hear first from someone who had seen it.

>
> Any recommendations on a good book?

I'm not sure that Antonia Fraser covers the scandal as well as the poster to
SGM seemed to think. There is an entertaining book by Frances Mossiker, _The
Queen's Necklace_ (Gollancz, London 1961) which should be in any good
lending library. This is a compilation of extracts from contemporary
accounts, translated & with editorial links written in a steamy, 1950s
roccoco style.

Jeanne de la Motte-Valois was such a vivid character, formed equally in a
lady's chamber & the gutter - lurid, greedy & shrewish, but for the most
part sympathetic to a modern audience - I can't imagine many an actress
doing any kind of justice to her.

Peter Stewart

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