In her desperation to prove that Marie Antoinette did not have an affair with Count Axel Fersen, Weber cites a 2019 non-peer-reviewed study by a French geneticist claiming to have proved that Louis XVI was the father of the queen’s second son, Louis XVII. If Weber had bothered to investigate further, or even read the … Read more
To the editor of the New York Times Book Review, Caroline Weber’s self-serving, error-filled review of my book, in which she focuses on the minutiae of whether or not Marie Antoinette had an affair, as though In the Shadow of the Empress was about that one point and not about Maria Theresa, three of her remarkable daughters, and … Read more
Sometimes researching the life of a major historical figure can teach as much about the present as it does about the past. Often it illustrates how far we have progressed since the days of superstition and intolerance—but sometimes it instead points out how ingrained are prejudice and narrow-mindedness. This, I have found, is especially true … Read more
When, during my research for In the Shadow of the Empress, it became clear to me that Marie Antoinette had had an affair with Count Fersen, and that he was the father of her two youngest children, I had no idea that so obvious an observation could provoke such outrage. In my introduction to the book, … Read more