The Fatal Friendship: Marie Antoinette, Count Fersen & the Flight to Varennes by Stanley Loomis lands on the shelves of my shop, where it will be found in my History section.
London: Davis-Poynter, 1972, (First Edition) Hardback in dust wrapper.
Contains: Black & white plates; Appendix;
From the cover: The fatal friendship began in 1774 at an Opera Ball in Paris when Princess Marie Antoinette approached Count Axel Fersen, a Swedish nobleman. It ended for Marie Antoinette at the scaffold in the Place de la Revolution and for Fersen at the hands of an infuriated mob in a Stockholm square.
Were Fersen and Marie Antoinette lovers in the full physical sense ? How constant was Fersens love? Did Louis xvi know of the affair? What was Fersens part in the planning and execution of the Royal Familys disastrous flight to Varennes?
The story of the intimacy that developed between the two lovers is one that has intrigued and puzzled historians. This portrait of Marie Antoinette is the fullest ever written revealing that the follies of the Queen grew out of the very qualities that made her a fascinating, even a good woman, and that circumstance and fate combined with her personality to make her the most hated, the most loved certainly the most celebrated queen in the history of France.
Stanley Loomis in his retelling of a famous royal romance demonstrates that, for all the happiness and comfort the affair brought to the lovers, politics and the cruel sweep of events turned it into a weapon that helped to destroy them both: that it was, indeed, a fatal friendship.
Very Good in Good Dust Wrapper. Gently faded at the spine of the dust wrapper with a short, closed, tear to the head of the spine. Text complete, clean and tight.
Black boards with Gilt titling to the Spine. 341 pages. 9¼” x 6″.
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