Danubia: A Personal History Of Habsburg Europe - Plot & Excerpts
While other children were playing the same game sensibly featuring those old favourites Mrs Bones the Butcher’s Wife and Mr Soot the Sweep, we were engrossed in swapping cards featuring little paintings of historical personages. So we would swap Marie de Médicis for Bertrand Duguesclin – ‘pig-faced soldier of destiny’ – or a nicely dressed Henri III for Clemenceau. We must have spent a huge amount of time over the years on this game. What in retrospect seems rather attractive is the way that we never had any idea who any of these people were (except for an unrealistically gamine and available-looking Joanne of Arc) and stubbornly refused to engage in any way with their identities. We never learned anything historical from handling King Clovis or the funny-looking Marshal Ney, and the Duc de Richelieu may as well have been Master Bun the Baker’s Son.I mention this because it was thanks to the game that as an adult reading about post-Napoleonic France, I found myself taking an odd interest in Charles X.
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