Not me going through the autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt in hopes of finding more information about Charlotte’s stay in 1941, only to find this freaking (& only) sentence : “In February, 1941, the Grand Duchess of Luxembourg came to stay and we had the customary parties.” 🥲🥲🥲

"My fear of being real, of being seen, paralyzes me into silence. I crave the touch and the connection, but l'm not always brave enough to open my hand and reach out. This is the great challenge: to be seen, accepted, and loved, I must first reveal, offer, and surrender.”

Anna White, Mended: Thoughts on Life, Love, and Leaps of Faith.

Elizabeth, Ingrid & Silvia in 1960's style white boots

Crown Prince Constantine and Crown Princess Sophia photographed in 1900.

Sky, Wind, Fire, Water, Earth (Naomi Kawase, 2001)

I’m sooooo excited!!! Princess Irmingard of Bavaria's memoires. She was Charlotte's niece.

We shall ignore the fact I speak very little German, so I'm counting on DeepL 🫶🏻 although I did understand one sentence which was that Antonia (her mother & Charlotte's sister) was one of the first women to own/drive a car, so woohoo go me

Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna on a swing photographed by her daughter Xenia, 1912.

(x)

Extract from Queen Mary’s photo album showing Princess Mary with her infant son George Lascelles! And, of course, one with Grannie too!

30 April 1963 | Grand Duchess Charlotte of Luxembourg and her son Prince Jean arrive at the White House for the State Dinner hosted by President John F. Kennedy & First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy.

“To all the women who silently made history”

Joseph-Noël Sylvestre - Danton embrasse le cadavre de sa femme (1893)

On 10 February 1793, while Danton was on mission in Belgium, Antoinette Gabrielle Danton died in Paris giving birth to her fourth son, who did not live. On his return to Paris on 17 February 1793, Georges Danton found an artiste from the faubourg Saint-Marceau, the sculptor Claude André Deseine, who was deaf and mute, and took him (in exchange for a bundle of assignats, to the Sainte-Catherine cemetery where his wife was buried.

In the middle of the night, with the cemetery caretaker's aide, Georges Danton had his wife Antoinette Gabrielle disinterred and her coffin opened, covering her with kisses and imploring her to pardon him for his many sexual indiscretions, and had a death mask taken. The mortuary bust of Antoinette Gabrielle Danton, which caused a scandal when first exhibited in the year of her death, is now visible in the museum in Troyes in Aube. (source)

Love watching historical films about events I know nothing more than surface level details about. the inaccuracies go blissfully over my head like a flock of birds taking flight

Giselle, act 2, dutch national ballet | Nationale Opera & Ballet

Caleb Hahne Quintana (Mexican-American, 1993) - Brushing My Mother's Hair (2022)

The choice of the American Consuelo [Duchess of Marlborough] and three other tall duchesses [Winifred Cavendish-Bentinck, Duchess of Portland; Millicent Leveson-Gower, Duchess of Sutherland & Violet Graham, Duchess of Montrose] was orchestrated by Alexandra for effect rather than tradition, as the biographer Tisdall related:

Four of these ladies who were to stand by her throne in the Abbey and 'arrange' her crown, she was going to pick for herself. She was not interested in dusty claims or precedents and was sorry to cause disappointment if somebody had already selected them for her. She would have four Duchesses. The really important thing was that they should all be tall like herself. They must all be beautiful and they must have a certain similarity of appearance. She was not going to have the effect spoiled by some lady who did not match the rest (Tisdall 1953: 201).

According to Edward himself, it was successful, and he wrote that the synchronization of these ladies as they placed their coronets upon their heads when Alix was crowned was 'like a scene from a beautiful ballet' (Fisher 1974: 169).

Source: Inside the Royal Wardrobe, a Dress history of Queen Alexandra by Kate Strasdin

The anointing of Queen Alexandra as queen consort was a significant moment for her. Her strong beliefs in the power of anointment had to be addressed before the ceremony, when she summoned Archbishop Maclagan to explain her anxieties: 'Like most women of her age and generation, she augmented her own hair with a toupet. If she were to be properly anointed she felt that the holy oil must touch her own body, not merely this erection of false hair; she therefore begged the Archbishop to be sure that some of the oil ran down onto her forehead (Battiscombe 1969: 249-50).' This duly took place, according to the account of the Duchess of Marlborough: 'From my place on her right, I looked down on her bowed head, her hands meekly folded in prayer, and watched the shaking hand of the Archbishop as, from the spoon which held the sacred oil, he anointed her forehead. I held my breath as a trickle escaped and ran down her nose. With a truly royal composure she kept her hands clasped in prayer; only a look of anguish betrayed concern as her eyes met mine and seemed to ask "Is the damage great?" (Vanderbilt Balsan 1973: 132).

Inside the Royal Wardrobe: A Dress history of Queen Alexandra by Kate Strasdin

Queen Alexandra on the Coronation Day, 9 August 1902.

Alexandra had ensured through careful planning, fine detail and her now well-practised flair for what an occasion demanded in terms of dress, that she shone - spiritually and materially at this most splendid of events. The reporter for the New York Times was effusive in his praise as he looked at Alexandra on the throne: 'No wonder the whole nation admires her, for surely a younger looking woman of her years was never seen, or a more graceful one. She is endowed with that natural grace and instinctive knowledge of the fitness of things which the most laboriously acquired manners can never equal.'

Inside the Royal Wardrobe: A Dress History of Queen Alexandra by Kate Strasdin