Daughters of the Empress (with Veronica Buckley)

Summary

Noble Blood: “Daughters of the Empress (with Veronica Buckley)”

Date: March 3, 2026
Host: Dana Schwartz
Guest: Veronica Buckley, author of Seven Sisters: Captives and Rebels in Revolutionary Europe's First Family

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Episode Overview

In this special episode of Noble Blood, host Dana Schwartz interviews historian and author Veronica Buckley about her new book Seven Sisters, which tells the dramatic stories of the seven surviving daughters of Empress Maria Theresa of Austria. Together, they discuss the unique blend of privilege and restriction in these Habsburg princesses’ lives, their complex roles as dynastic pawns, the heartbreak of forced marriages, the devastation of smallpox, and the rare cases of love and companionship among them. Much more than a simple recounting of royal lives, this episode provides a nuanced and empathetic look at women whose personal desires often came second to political strategy—ending with reflections on Marie Antoinette, the French Revolution, and the legacy of these forgotten daughters.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Habsburg Marriage Strategy

[02:45–05:18]

• Catchphrase: "Others make war, you, happy Austria, marry"
• Veronica Buckley: “The Habsburgs...decided it was better to simply marry into other royal families and other prominent families to gain territory, to gain prominence, to gain political power that way."
• This meant raising large families—many sons to inherit, and many daughters to be exchanged for alliances.
• Daughters were “bartered” for peace and dynastic strength.

Maria Theresa: Mother and Monarch

[05:18–06:44]

• Gave birth to 16 children; five died young.
• Children were both a personal and dynastic imperative.
• "She encouraged her daughters to have big families, too. She said to many of them...I want to see you producing a baby every year." (Buckley, 06:17)

The Challenge of Habsburg Names

[06:44–11:30]

• All daughters named "Maria X"; repeated and recycled names due to infant mortality.
• Home: German (Viennese dialect); formal/Diplomatic: French.
• Buckley’s historical methodology: picks distinctive names or context (e.g., “Josefa” for the sister, “Maria Josefa” for the brother’s wife) to avoid confusion.

Elizabeth: The Beautiful, Unmarried Princess

[14:17–21:11]

• Elizabeth was famed for her beauty, attracting high-level suitors.
• Became unmarriageable after being disfigured by smallpox at 24, an "old maid" by dynasty standards.
• Exiled by her brother Emperor Joseph to be a "secular abbess" in Innsbruck—an honorary, independent position, not a nun.
• "She was spared yearly baby producing...It wasn't too bad of a life." (Buckley, 19:58)
• Maintained a court, enjoyed theater, and was lenient with her ladies.

The Daughters as Political Pawns: Amelie’s Tragedy

[21:11–25:39]

• Amelie fell genuinely in love, but was forced into a marriage with the Duke of Parma for political reasons.
• Deep humiliation: demoted from archduchess to duchess, married a much younger man under control of advisors.
• Separated after four children, yet continued to produce more children in annual conjugal visits—reflecting overwhelming dynastic pressure.
• Of 15 children, only four survived. She was never allowed back to Vienna, due to her “difficult” nature.
• "She was never allowed to come home...she had a very, very sad life." (Buckley, 25:05)

The One Allowed to Marry for Love: Marie Christine

[25:39–30:11]

• Maria Theresa’s favorite, Marie Christine, was the only daughter permitted to marry for love (to Prince Albert of Saxony).
• Their marriage was "companionate" and notably happy, though their only child died young.
• Sparked jealousy among siblings as she received a disproportionate share of the inheritance.
• “She liked to play the grand lady...she was the light of her husband’s life. He just worshipped her." (Buckley, 28:15)

Marie Antoinette and Family Reactions to the French Revolution

[30:11–33:21]

• Marie Antoinette (“Marie Antonia”) became the tragic Queen of France, executed in the revolution.
• Her siblings, initially sympathetic to reform, became staunch conservatives as the revolution radicalized.
• Efforts to rescue her failed; "Even those who loved her most had really given up hope for her life long before she was condemned to death." (Buckley, 31:38)
• Carolina, Queen of Naples, particularly feared sharing her younger sister’s fate.

On Favorites, Handwriting, and History’s Gaps

[33:21–35:31]

• Buckley finds herself drawn to Amelie, despite (or because of) the heartbreak and the difficulty reading her “terrible handwriting”—which rendered many of Amelie’s letters illegible, even to experts.
• “The actual ciphers are much easier to decipher than Amelie’s normal handwriting.” (Buckley, 34:47)
• Expresses hope that AI might unlock more of Amelie’s perspective in the future.

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Notable Quotes

• On the Habsburg strategy:
  “You married your girls off in order to ensure peace for a time. Of course, it never lasted very long, but it was better than fighting all the time.”
  —Veronica Buckley [04:57]

• On names and identity:
  “In the documents, of course, that’s how they’re referred to...if you’re reading letters written in French, of course, it looks as if they called her ‘Antoine’, which they didn’t.”
  —Veronica Buckley [08:05]

• On secular abbesses:
  “Elizabeth...was spared yearly baby producing...she had a good income. If she wanted to, she could have had quite a lot of political influence, but she wasn’t really interested in that...She liked the theater.”
  —Veronica Buckley [19:58]

• On dynastic priorities:
  “Their personal happiness did not seem as important, or I would say, frankly, wasn’t as important as their roles in the family dynasty.”
  —Dana Schwartz [21:11]

• On Marie Christine’s marriage:
  “She went against all...advice...and allowed the two of them to marry. And it was really, grotesquely unfair, giving Marie Christine and Albert half of all the money...lots of jealousy!”
  —Veronica Buckley [28:51]

• On Marie Antoinette’s fate:
  “Even those who loved her most had really given up hope for her life long before she was condemned to death.”
  —Veronica Buckley [31:38]

• On Amelie’s letters:
  “The actual ciphers...are much easier to decipher than Amelie’s normal handwriting.”
  —Veronica Buckley [34:47]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [02:45] — Habsburg marriage policy explanation
• [05:18] — Maria Theresa’s progeny and dynastic expectations
• [06:44] — Naming conventions and Buckley’s research choices
• [14:17] — Princess Elizabeth and smallpox tragedy
• [21:11] — Amelie’s forced marriage and tragic life
• [25:39] — Marie Christine’s rare love match
• [30:11] — Marie Antoinette and the revolution’s impact on the Habsburgs
• [33:21] — Buckley reflects on her own “favorite” daughter

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Memorable Moments

• The poignant realization that the Habsburg daughters’ lives, while privileged, were often paved with loneliness, frustration, and maternal loss.
• The story of Amelie, caught between love and duty, who would “never be allowed to come home.”
• The discussion of Marie Christine’s marriage for love—still rare, even among royalty.
• Buckley’s confession that, despite all her research, “the actual ciphers are much easier to decipher than Amelie’s normal handwriting.” (34:47)

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Overall Tone and Takeaway

Schwartz and Buckley maintain a sympathetic yet incisively curious tone, pairing historical rigor with sly humor about royal absurdities (“It would double your word count!”) and poignant reflection on the costs of dynastic glory. The episode will fascinate anyone interested in women’s history, court intrigue, and the personal consequences of power.

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For more, check out Veronica Buckley’s book Seven Sisters: Captives and Rebels in Revolutionary Europe’s First Family.

Transcript

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[Dana Schwartz]

Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim and Mild from Erin Menke. Listener discretion advised.

[Dana Schwartz (Host of Noble Blood)]

Hi, this is Dana Schwartz. I'm so thrilled to be here for a very special episode of Noble Blood. For a conversation with the author Vero Buckley, who's written a new book, Seven Sisters, Captives and Rebels in Revolutionary Europe's First Family, which tells the stories of the daughters of Maria Theresa, the Habsburg Empress of Austria, the Holy Roman Empire. Of course, her most famous daughter is Marie Antoinette, I would say, to most people, but all seven of the daughters that survived to adulthood lived fascinating lives. Fascinating, tragic, interesting. All of the above.

[Dana Schwartz]

Ms. Buckley, thank you so much for joining me.

[Veronica Buckley (Author)]

Thank you very much for having me. It's lovely to be here, Dana.

[Dana Schwartz (Host of Noble Blood)]

So, one thing that struck me right when we start this book, we get the famous Habsburg catchphrase that sort of summed up their dynasty. Others make war, you happy, Austria marry. Can you sort of explain what this perspective was, what that catchphrase meant?

[Veronica Buckley (Author)]

Yes. Well, I mean, in those days, we're Talking about the 18th century, warfare was a sort of normal aspect of noble people's lives, the noble men, of course, and also a normal aspect for many of the other classes in society, though not automatically. So there are a lot of people, of course, involved in agriculture and so on. So huge numbers of people in Europe were involved in fighting, basically. And in those days, they had a system which is called the sort of great power system, which we're in a wee bit, a little bit sort of reverting to at the moment where the people who had the most power simply took what they could and everybody else had to put up with it. Now, the problem is that when you do that, even if you are the most powerful, you lose a lot of people, you lose a lot of your population, you lose a lot of your agricultural produce, a lot of your trade goes down the tubes and all of that sort of thing. The Habsburgs, who had once been the most powerful dynasty right across the German speaking world and the Spanish and Italian speaking world, had now split into two families, the Spanish Habsburgs and the German Habsburgs. Even though they were based in Vienna, which is of course now in Austria, they regarded themselves as Germans. They decided that it was costing them too much to keep fighting like this. So they very cleverly decided it was better to simply marry into other royal families and other prominent families to gain territory, to gain prominence, to gain political power that way. And of course, what that meant was you needed to have big families because you needed a lot of princes who could be the rulers and you needed a lot of princesses who could be effectively bartered to other people's princes to make these connections. So you married your girls off in order to ensure peace for a time. Of course, it never lasted very long, but it was better than fighting all the time.

[Dana Schwartz (Host of Noble Blood)]

So Maria Theresa, who's just a fascinating figure, when her father dies, it takes her eight years, the War of Austrian Succession, to actually cement her position on the throne. But once she does she is a formidable ruler and, like you said, fulfills her duty of having children incredibly well. How many total children did she have?

[Veronica Buckley (Author)]

She had 16 children, and five of them. Oh, my gosh, yes, absolutely, amazingly. And five of them died as either babies or young children. Now, she didn't regard this as problematic to have 16 children. She regarded it as a very good thing because her first idea was of her personal duty as a Habsburg monarch was to continue the dynasty. And what this meant was have as many children as possible. Sons were more valued because they were Habsburgs themselves and would have. They would inherit Habsburg territories. But daughters were also useful, as I said, because they could be dynastically paired off with other people to increase territory and influence. And she encouraged her daughters to have big families, too. She said to many of them at several times, I want to see you producing a baby every year.

[Dana Schwartz (Host of Noble Blood)]

Your book focuses mainly on the seven daughters who survived to young adulthood. But one just logistical question I have is these daughters have so many names. They all have Maria at the beginning of their names. They have long names. How did you choose how to refer to them in your book? Because I've seen them referred to by different names throughout different points in their life. Obviously, someone like Marie Antoinette, we know by her French name, but that wasn't the name she was given when she was Austrian. So as a. As a historical writer, how did you make the decision of how to refer to these. These women?

[Veronica Buckley (Author)]

Okay, well, this is a nightmare. And as you say, all of the women have the first name Maria, because that's the German version of Mary or Marie. And it's a bit like. It's as if they were nuns, because, you know, all nuns basically had at that time, or until recently, the first name Mary, and then another name afterwards, Sister Mary. So. And so. And they didn't necessarily call themselves Maria, but in the documents, of course, that's how they're referred to now at home, they spoke in the family. Maria Theresia's family spoke only German. They spoke a Viennese dialect of German. And of course, they were supposed to learn French, which was the international diplomatic language, and consequently the lingua franca. The lingua franca, absolutely. And when the. When they're writing to each other, certainly the older members of the family wrote always in French because this was the sort of elegant thing to do. And sometimes they would intersperse their letters with bits and pieces of German or something else, but mostly German. Now, the problem was that this has led a lot of historians to assume that they were known within the family by their French, the French versions of their names. So Marie Antoinette, whose name of course was Antonia, Maria Antonia. In French that would be Marie Antoine, but she was not called Antoine in the family, she was called Antonie, which is the German abbreviation of Antonia. But if you're reading letters written in French, of course, it looks as if they all called her Antoine, which they didn't. So the way you work it out. Well, for example, there was one of the daughters named Josepha and brother Joseph married a woman whose name was also Josefer. So this is obviously complicated. So in the book I decided to call the sister Josefer, just Josefer, because I don't put Maria in all the time, because you would be driven mad by Maria's basically. But with the wife of Josef, I call her Maria Joseph.

[Dana Schwartz (Host of Noble Blood)]

It would increase your word count, the book would be doubled in length.

[Veronica Buckley (Author)]

Yes, absolutely. And then you've got a real problem on your hands. And there, of course there were several men in the family, all called Ferdinand or France or goodness knows what. So you have to make a distinction. So one is King so and so, one is Don, so and so. And these are the ways you do it. But it takes a bit of working out and you have to be always alert and when you're working through the sources, because quite often they're talking about several members of the family at the same time and though they know them, they know who they're talking about, you could quite easily confuse them. So you do have to be careful with all these names, it's much easier nowadays.

[Dana Schwartz (Host of Noble Blood)]

And one thing that I also imagine is very confusing is they would reuse names, I believe. Right. Of children who passed away in infancy, they would use those names again.

[Veronica Buckley (Author)]

That's right. That was a standard thing historically, not just among royal families, but at a time when there was a great deal very high incidence of infant and child mortality, a lot of children were named after their deceased elder siblings. So for example, Carolina, who became the Queen of Naples, Maria Theresia had two daughters before her who were named Karolina. So she was actually the third Karolina. Now, luckily for me, the two first Karolinas died in infancy, so there wasn't much in the records about them. I didn't have to worry. But had they died as older girls, it could have been a bit confusing.

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[Veronica Buckley (Author)]

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[Dana Schwartz (Host of Noble Blood)]

Specifically, I want to jump ahead to number, I believe number three of the surviving daughters, Elizabeth, because I was fascinated by her story. This is a figure that I frankly did not know much about to put it in very superficial terms, she was still unmarried at 24, briefly engaged to the widowed King of France, who would have been the grandfather of the man her sister Marie Antoinette would marry. But then she was tragically disfigured by smallpox. Can you tell me a little bit about where Elizabeth's life took her?

[Veronica Buckley (Author)]

Yes, Elizabeth was the beauty of the family, and she knew it, and she made a lot of it. And she was always, her mother complained, she was always flirting with all the guardsmen and any prince who turned up at court and so on. But because she was so beautiful and because her two elder sisters, their fate was more or less organized, she was likely to marry about half a dozen different powerful people, the King of Poland, the king of France, the king of Spain and other important people. Because of that, nothing could be agreed until she was actually quite old, because, if you recall, Marie Antoinette was married at 14, so 24 was very old at this point. But the problem was that while all of these things were being arranged and certain people were eliminated because they were too old or did not, weren't rich enough or whatever the problem was, she contracted smallpox and she was dreadfully disfigured by smallpox. Several of her siblings, actually, including Marie Antoinette, also had smallpox, but they only had little marks on their skin afterwards. But she was completely disfigured, and after that, of course, she had no, call it, personal value on the marriage market. She wasn't a beauty anymore. The only thing that was going for her was that she was still a Habsburg princess, and that was still an important political.

[Dana Schwartz (Host of Noble Blood)]

Although by this point, she was old, much older than was considered prime marriageable.

[Veronica Buckley (Author)]

Yes, that's true. Comparatively old, she was in her mid-20s, but that still would have been all right, particularly since the kings of France and Spain were in their 50s by then, and she was still of an age to bear children and so on. So that was the crucial thing, of course. But, you know, in the end, people didn't want to marry him. These men didn't want to marry a grossly disfigured woman. They had options, and she remained unmarried. And when her mother died and her brother Josef became the emperor, he was already the emperor, but he became the sole ruler of the Habsburg monarchy and the Holy Roman Empire. He couldn't stand her and he drummed her out of town effectively, and he sent her off to the provinces, to Innsbruck itself, a charming town in the mountains in Austria, where there was a very grand court, a very grand palace recently refurbished, because it had seemed that Maria Theresia herself might want to retire there, because that is where her very beloved husband had died. Elizabeth became what was called the secular abbess of this foundation for Noble Ladies. Now, this doesn't mean she became a nun. In fact, her mother was very against nuns. She thought that celibate life was abnormal, and she was opposed to it. She herself had a very lively and happy sex life with her husband, and was very keen for her children to have the same.

[Dana Schwartz (Host of Noble Blood)]

Of course, 16 children.

[Veronica Buckley (Author)]

And it's very interesting because they were the only royal couple in Europe at the time who spent every night together. Not that Franz Stefan didn't have other ladies. He did, but he always came home at night. And it's interesting. Maria Theresia thought this was very important, not just for having children, but also because, of course, it gave the couple an opportunity to spend some quiet time together, away from court troubles, away from political things where they could just talk over normal things. So she was very much against their girls becoming nuns. And Elizabeth, and also the eldest daughter, Mariana, who also became a secular abbess, they really had courts of their own. They were princesses. They were treated as princesses. They were the head of their courts. And although in their courts there were nones, they weren't nuns themselves. And most of the noble ladies who lived in them, although they were expected to live obviously decent Christian lives, they were allowed to go to balls and parties and theaters and things like that. And if they wanted to leave and get married, they were able to do that. So actually, Elizabeth could have done that too, if anybody had turned up. But once she went there to Innsbruck, nobody did turn up, so she remained there.

[Dana Schwartz (Host of Noble Blood)]

It doesn't sound like too bad of a life, to be completely frank.

[Veronica Buckley (Author)]

It wasn't too bad of a life, because, first of all, you were spared yearly baby producing, which is not in itself an easy thing. A lot. A lot of people, of course, a lot of women died in childbirth. And in fact, at that time, a lot of women would prepare for childbirth and by basically preparing for a funeral, because the chances were that they might not survive. So it wasn't too bad. It was very comfortable. She had a good income. If she wanted to, she could have had quite a lot of political influence, but she wasn't really interested in that. She liked the theater and so on, so she had a good time. She was also very nice to the ladies who were in the foundation with her. She wasn't. She didn't expect them to be too particular about their religious duties. She was, of course, a firm believer, and she observed the normal proprieties but they didn't have to spend every second hour on their knees in prayer and so on. She wasn't very harsh like that, and as long as she could afford it, she made sure they were very well fed and had lots of life going on in the court.

[Dana Schwartz (Host of Noble Blood)]

That's wonderful. I will say one thing that emerges throughout the stories of these daughters is that they were Habsburg dynastic pieces before they were individuals. Their personal happiness did not seem as important, or I would say, frankly, wasn't as important as their roles in the family dynasty. And I think that story is very striking with, I believe it's the fourth surviving daughter right in the middle, Amelie, if I'm pronouncing that right, who had married a man that she did not choose to marry. Can you speak a little bit about how Amelie's marriage came to be?

[Veronica Buckley (Author)]

Yes, Amelie. Well, it's a doubly sad story, really, because she fell in love with a very suitable prince who fell in love with her and wanted to marry her. And it looked as though they were going to marry, but at the end, it was decided that he wasn't quite important enough. There were other people interested in marrying a Habsburg princess, and the Habsburgs needed a stronger connection to northern Italy, and there happened to be a northern Italian prince in Parma who was looking for a bride, or rather, the people looking after him were looking for a bride because he was only 15. And they decided that Amelie would be the person at first. In fact, they thought Elizabeth would be the person, but Elizabeth was quite a bit older than the prince, and so they chose Amelie instead. Now, this, of course, broke her heart for two reasons. First, she lost the prince she loved, and second, she was forced to marry a man she couldn't stand. This prince was quite a bit younger than she was and really just a boy, whereas the man she loved, Prince Carl of Zweibrucken, he had been a soldier, and he was a handsome man and spoke many languages and all of this kind of thing. So she was palmed off not only to a man she didn't want, but she was an archduchess of Habsburg, and the man she married was only a duke. So she was demoted from archduchess to simple duchess, which is pretty bad, considering that two of her younger sisters were promoted from archduchess to queen. So she felt it as a very, very humiliating step. And when she got to Parma, she found that her husband, unsurprisingly, since he was so young, was very much enthralled to the real ruler. The first Minister of Parma. And she found that an extra humiliation. She felt that at least he should be able to stand up and be boss in his own territory, as it were. So she caused an enormous amount of difficulty there. Really caused a lot of trouble to no ultimate effect except that she did make herself loved by the people by spending a great deal of money that she didn't really have by giving it in charity and so on. She herself had 15 children. And it shows you how strong this dynastic pressure was that after the first four children she and her husband separated. They lived in separate palaces in different towns. Nonetheless, they had 11 more children together. He would visit her and they would have sex and she would produce a child more or less every year. The sad thing is that all those later 11 children died young. So she really, although she had 15 children, only four of them survived to adulthood.

[Dana Schwartz (Host of Noble Blood)]

It's quite a tragic life.

[Veronica Buckley (Author)]

It is a tragic life. And she was, because she was always making trouble, she was never allowed to come home. All the others made visits to Vienna to their mother and their sisters and their nieces and so on. And she was never allowed to do that because she was regarded as too troublesome. So she had a very, very sad life in that respect. Alth she did have good friends, loyal friends who supported her to the end, which is nice to think of. And her two daughters also did. The surviving daughters also looked after her to the end.

[Dana Schwartz (Host of Noble Blood)]

If I'm correct. The only one of the daughters who married for love was their mother's favorite, Marie Christine, who I almost want to say we've done an episode of Noble Blood on her very intimate letters with her sister in law, Princess Isabella of Parma. But of course after that period she would go on to be allowed to marry for love. Can you talk a little bit about her because I just find her delightful.

[Veronica Buckley (Author)]

Yes, Mari Christine, her brother Joseph, who became the emperor, he was married to Isabella. Isabella is an interesting case in her own right because she was actually lesbian and she was very much in love with Mari Christine, her sister in law. Marie Christine was not lesbian and didn't return Isabella's passion, but she was a good friend of hers and was very fond of her and listened to what she said and took advice from her in terms of art. She was a very good artist and so on. And also in the way she managed her mother. Isabella was an absolutely charming and really quite a brilliant woman and she managed to manipulate anybody she wanted to. And she taught some of these arts of manipulation to Marie Christine which meant that Mare Christine became After Isabella's death, Maria Theresia's favorite, now she was in love quite quickly, not immediately, but quite quickly, with Prince Albert, who had absolutely nothing, was one of 12 children, was penniless, his father was a demoted king of Poland, all this kind of thing. But the thing was that by this time, Joseph, the eldest son, was already married, had two little girls, and Maria Theresia could afford to allow one of her daughters to marry for love. If Joseph had not had any children by that time, Marie Christine would have had to marry somebody dynastically more important. But also, it is very clear that by this time Maria Theresia, who had very recently, only months before, lost her dearly beloved husband. She saw in Mari Christine and Albert, Prince Albert, a sort of resurrection of herself and her husband when they were young because they had married for love. And so she went against all, you know, everybody's advice, went against the wishes of her late husband and so on, and allowed the two of them to marry. And it was very, very, actually, really grotesquely unfair, giving Mari Christine and Albert half of all the money and everything that was supposed to be shared out among the 11 of the children. So you can imagine there was quite a bit of annoyance about this, quite a bit of jealousy. Although it wasn't only jealousy, but Marie Christine was. She liked to play rather, the grand lady. She was a very grand lady. She was herself a beauty. She was a gifted linguist and a very elegant woman. And she was the light of her husband's life. He just worshipped her. And so they had a very. What appears to have been, judging by their correspondence and so on, a very happy marriage and a very unusual marriage for the time, an absolutely companionate marriage. Although they didn't manage to have any children, Their only child died as a baby. Marie Christine had puerperal fever, which is childbed fever, which can itself be, and was often fatal for the mother and was also, in this case, fatal for the daughter. And it left Marie Christine infertile, so she never had any other children. But they did have a very close marriage. And later on they adopted one of brother Leopold's sons and he became their darling.

[Dana Schwartz (Host of Noble Blood)]

That's at least one comparatively much happier story. And now to turn our attention towards sort of the most famous tragedy, the baby of the family and Marie Antonia, or Marie Antoinette, who, I don't think I need to remind our audience, was beheaded in the French Revolution. But one thing that I did find striking in your book is how her sisters reacted. Can you speak a little bit to how her family felt after The French Revolution.

[Veronica Buckley (Author)]

Well, it's interesting that in the beginnings of the revolution quite a lot of them were in favor of it. They were not hopeless reactionaries, they were reformist people. But they were really still, let's call it, they were of course absolute monarchs. They felt that reform should be introduced by the monarch. And Marie Antoinette's favorite sister was Carolina, who was the Queen of Naples. And it is interesting to see that even Carolina, at the last stage of Marie Antoinette's imprisonment, she had given up hope for her survival. And it is interesting to see the letters going backwards and forwards between the different siblings. Can we get her out? No, we can't get her out. It will look bad if we try to do something that will make her situation worse. If we send in an army, they will kill her. We'd better not do that. Can we trade her out? What can we do? But it seems that even those who loved her most had really given up hope for her life long before she was condemned to death. Of course, she was condemned to death and executed within a 24 hour period.

[Dana Schwartz (Host of Noble Blood)]

One other I think interesting thing about this book is how Carolina, as you mentioned, the Queen of Naples and Sicily reacted after the French revolution in Naples. Specifically how she sort of circled the wagon, so to speak.

[Veronica Buckley (Author)]

Absolutely. And she was not alone in that. Even Leopold, who was by now the Emperor and the Habsburg emperor and he had been the most liberal and forward thinking of all of the children, really, even he had to backtrack. And this saw will help. This is completely out of hand. This is not what we meant at all. We wanted reform, but this is chaos. And of course by then Napoleon was, well, Bonaparte not yet the emperor. Napoleon was on the rampage throughout Europe and fermenting revolution. The revolutionary forces were fermenting revolution everywhere they went. Carolina, it is clear from her letters she really believed that she would be beheaded too. And in fact there were attempts on her life and there were plans to kill her which were foiled, luckily.

[Dana Schwartz (Host of Noble Blood)]

I know that mothers aren't supposed to have favorite children, even though obviously Maria Teresa did. But in researching and writing this book, did you find that you had a favorite of the daughters?

[Veronica Buckley (Author)]

You know, a lot of people have asked me this and it's not easy to answer that. When I was working on somebody in particular, I think, oh, this person's my favorite and then this other person's my favorite. And this, I think possibly, you know, you feel, you really get involved with these people and you are living sort of day to day with them and feeling, feeling for them of course, as if they were still alive. And of course, when you're picking up the letters that they themselves wrote and looking at their handwriting, shaking perhaps with tears, blotting the pages, whatever, you know, you can't help but be affected. I think if I could know more about any of them, it would probably be Amelie. The problem with Amelie is because she had such terrible handwriting. Many, many, many letters that she wrote, including letters that she wrote to the king of science, Spain, apparently urging him to intervene to save Marie Antoinette, were rendered, were declared illegible by all the scribes at the courts. You know, her, her handwriting was always bad, and it just got worse and worse and worse, so that in the end, there are countless letters of hers, nobody is sure what they actually say, not even handwriting experts. And so, oh, no, you know, I think maybe with sort of sophisticated AI systems, at some point we'll be able to decipher them. But the actual ciphers, and there are many letters in cipher, the actual ciphers are much easier to decipher than Amelie's normal handwriting, added to the fact that her French and her Italian were both terrible. And it doesn't help. So I think if I, if there was one that I, if I needed, would like to know a bit more about, I think it would be amazing, but I don't know that that's likely to happen anytime soon.

[Dana Schwartz (Host of Noble Blood)]

Well, that's a wonderful answer. The book is Seven Captives and Rebels in Revolutionary Europe's First Family by Veronica Buckley. Thank you so much for joining us today. This was such a wonderful interview, and thank you for this book. I learned so, so much.

[Veronica Buckley (Author)]

Thanks very much, Dana. I wish you all the best for your continuing work.

[Dana Schwartz]

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