Sidonie laborde biography

The narrator Agathe-Sidonie Laborde is unsophisticated and politically naive.
The book begins in 1810, in Vienna.
Sidonie Laborde, the Queen's young reader, carefree and entirely devoted, takes full advantage of the intimate moments which tie her to Marie-Antoinette.

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Excerpt from Farewell, My Queen by Chantal Thomas, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Prologue
Vienna, February 12, 1810

My name is Agathe-Sidonie Laborde, a name rarely spoken, almost a secret. I live in the émigré quarter of Vienna, in an apartment on Grashof Street. Its windows open above a paved inner courtyard surrounded at ground level by a number of shops: a second-hand bookshop, a wig maker's, a small printshop, a tailor's. There is also a spice seller's stall, just at the foot of my apartment building. A lively neighborhood, but not too noisy. In the summertime, along with Eastern aromas, there are always notes of music floating in the air. The rosebushes winding their way up the building fronts add a garden charm to this little corner of Vienna. But in the dead of winter, which is what we have at present, the rosebushes have ceased to bloom and the sounds of life from the shops no longer reach me. For me, in a general way, the sounds of life are well and truly stilled, whatever the season. It's as though the terrible winter aro

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Léa Seydoux

French actress (born 1985)

Léa Hélène Seydoux-Fornier de Clausonne (French:[leasɛdu]^ⓘ; born 1 July 1985) is a French actress. Prolific in both French cinema and Hollywood, she has received five César Award nominations, two Lumières Awards, a Palme d'Or, a BAFTA Award nomination, and the Trophée Chopard Award. In 2016, Seydoux was honoured with the Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters.^[2] In 2022, the French government made her a Knight of the Legion of Honour.

She began her acting career with her film debut in Girlfriends (2006) with early roles in The Last Mistress (2007) and On War (2008). She won acclaim for her French roles in The Beautiful Person (2008), Belle Épine (2010), and Farewell, My Queen (2012). During this time she expanded her career appearing in supporting roles in high-profile Hollywood films, including Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds (2009), Ridley Scott's Robin Hood (2010), Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris (2011) and the action film Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011).

Her break

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Farewell, My Queen

It was once the job of Madame Agathe-Sidonie Laborde to read books aloud to Marie-Antoinette. Now exiled in Vienna, she looks back twenty-one years to the legendary opulence of Versailles and meticulously reconstructs July 14, 15, and 16 of 1789.
When Agathe-Sidonie is summoned to the Queen's side on the morning of the 14th, Versailles is a miniature universe, sparkling with every outward appearance of happiness and power, peopled with nobles of minutely calibrated rank, and run according to a hundred-year-old ritual called the Perfect Day. But with the shocking news that someone has woken the King in the night, order begins to disintegrate and word of the fall of the Bastille seeps into court. Soon Versailles's beauty is nothing more than a shell encasing rising panic and chaos. Agathe-Sidonie watches as the Queen's attempts to flee are aborted; her most intimate friend betrays her; and the King, appearing to sleepwalk through this crisis, never alters his routine of visiting the Apollo Salon several times a day to consult a giant crystal thermometer.
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