Cross-Dressing, Pint-Sized Provocateur Thwarted by Traitor

From the world of political intrigue, back-biting, wanna-be monarchs, and a heck of a lot of inbreeding, comes this narrative of the duchesse de Berry, whose son was heir to the French throne before the ouster of the Bourbons. An early day Princess Diana type, she endeared herself to the populace when she came on the scene, mixing with the public and shopping on the town. Hot on the heels of the French Revolution, this was an era fraught with the potential for dire consequences if one was caught on the wrong side of the ruling powers. Although, after the Bourbon exile, the Duchess utilized her talents as disguising herself as a boy to escape detection, eventually her bad choice of cohorts caught up with her. Enter Simon Deutz, an opportunist of monumental proportions, who even "converted" to Catholicism when he thought the winds of fortune were blowing that direction. The reason this was so staggering was that he was the son of France's Chief Rabbi. This betrayal of the beloved Duchess was unfathomable to many, and quite unfortunate for the Jews of the land. While France had been a relatively friendly place for Jews to live, after this the rumbling anti-semitism that had been previously subdued was renewed, with a fervor that was frightening and vicious. And we all know what came of that.

While a very well-researched book, sometimes I felt that I was in for a wade along the shore but instead found myself in a submarine in the Mariana Trench. Lots of unnecessary detail and commentary (for example, the small size of her feet, rendering her unable to wear anything but the softest of leathers--really?) made it a bit tiresome. Unlikely opinions aside, it was a thorough documentation of an unfortunate sequence of events that had huge global and societal impact.