Abstract
The collapse of monarchical authority during the English Civil Wars and French Revolution followed a sustained period of delegitimization of the respective royal families of England and France. During the reigns of Charles I and Louis XVI, the queen had been judged within the popular ideological climate concerning the place of women within their families without respect for her position. This process, which occurred before an ever expanding public sphere, stripped away the royal mystique and reduced each consort to the position of any other vulnerable public figure, creating the potential for the seeming paradox of “royal treason.” The delegitimization of the queen also served as a framework for observers to critique the state of monarchical government without directly attacking the king because his consort was perceived to occupy the role of advisor. The accessibility of the positions of wife and mother to a broad audience made critiques of the queen possible for all social estates, which was facilitated by the increased proliferation of printed political tracts. Dismantling the queen’s legitimacy in her domestic role was a crucial part of the process wherein new governments asserted their rule. If the consort was not fulfilling her duties in roles that combined both domestic and political implications, the king appeared unable to act as the head of his household or his kingdom.1
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Notes
Jacques Dupperon, A Warning to the Parliament of England (London: R.W., 1647), p. 9.
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Charles Carlton, Archbishop William Laud (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1987), p. 86.
Simon Schama, Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution (New York: Vintage Books, 1989), p. 597.
See Orr, Queenship in Europe, pp. 171–172 and Roger D. Congleton, Perfecting Parliament: Constitutional Reform, Liberalism, and the Rise of Western Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 315.
Sarah Poynting, “Deciphering the King: Charles I’s letters to Jane Whorwood,” The Seventeenth Century (Volume 21, Number 1, Spring 2006), pp. 128–140.
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See Marie Thérèse, Duchesse de Angouleme, Memoirs, ed. M. de Barghon-Fortrion (Paris: Bureau de la Mode Nouvelle, 1858), pp. 54–65.
Thomas Kaiser, “Who’s Afraid of Marie Antoinette: Diplomacy, Austrophobia and the Queen,” French History (Volume 14, Number 3, 2000), p. 243
See Gerard Walter, Le Procés de Marie Antoinette, 23–25 Vendemiarie an II (October 14–16,1793), Acts du Tribunal ré volutionnaire (Paris: Éditions Complex, 1993)
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Germaine de Stael, Réflexions sur le Procès de la Reine, ed. Monique Contret (Paris: Montpellier, 1994), pp. v
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© 2016 Carolyn Harris
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Harris, C. (2016). The English Civil Wars and the French Revolution. In: Queenship and Revolution in Early Modern Europe. Queenship and Power. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137491688_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137491688_6
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