Kings draped in ermine and queens declaring, “Let them eat cake!” The royal characters populating the House of Bourbon never disappoint in the drama department!

The number of angles I feel fascination for the House of Bourbon monarchs is endless so you can expect an ample number of posts here on The Diary of an Improvateur that feature these larger-than-life figures of the past. Several diary entries I’ve already posted include Ancienne Manufacture Royale patterns still being produced by Bernardaud, the lauded porcelain manufacturer in Limoges, France. In one of these, Dining with History, I begin my homage to these one of these royals, Marie Antoinette, with the question, “How is it that someone who lived so long ago can feel so present to so many people and in so many ways?”

We can thank filmmakers, of course, and we also have a handful of novelists responsible for our continued fascination, such as Sena Jeter Naslund, who wrote Abundance: A Novel of Marie Antoinette. Then there are manufacturers like Bernardaud, which keep pieces of her daily routine alive in the porcelain tabletop items they produce. I cover other subjects relating to these monarchs in other posts filed under this tag.