Farewell My Queens, from Marie Antoinette to Farah Diba
Ellie Abdi & Stewart Essence Parr & Nooshin S. Manshadi
When I visited Versailles in 2014, I did not know much about Marie Antoinette. That night my sister and I started reading about Marie Antoinette and that did not stop till today. Sometime in 2018, I decided to write about her. So much has already been said but I was destined to take it a little bit further by inviting other authors. In November of 2019 I started writing this book. Along the way I met Stewart, a British teacher, historian, education consultant and author who agreed to write on the causations of The French and American Revolutions. Stewart is British and French educated and has extensive experience in writing history and puts forward his ideas based on known historians, primary sources, secondary sources, documented and oral work. Further, as a historian his ideas are objective and subjective taking into account what evidence prevails. And then Nooshin an Iranian author who took many tours to Versailles wanting to compare the last queens of Iran to Marie Antoinette, joined us. Noushin has good grapes of the French monarch in late 1700s and Iranian Monarchy before the 1979 revolution. I looked at the monarchs who lost thrones in the recent history of the past 50 years and no Royal family came closer to the Iranian royals with strong French ties.
As our thoughts were gaining momentum, Marjorie, a French/English faculty and editor joined us therefore agreed to edit the book. En voyage, Edith de Belleville , a French historian, took a look and made a few helpful suggestions. What you have in hand is the result of two years researching, watching tremendous number of documentaries, exchanging countless emails among us and others such as The British Library, University College of London, City of Paris, Palace of Versailles, along with the frequent zoom meetings, numberless conversations over Whatsapp, and of course many hours of putting our thoughts into writing.
Certainly, we are proud of what we have produced about one of the most iconic characters in the rich French history.
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