In Which we talk about Marie Antoinette and Croissants!

Hello and good morning everyone! Almost lunchtime here, and I had some nice moments, as I'm already at the beach, and to stay here for somedays, how are you? How are things going? I wish you the best, hope this January is going well, I'm having a pleasant month so far, some ups and downs, I didn't make as many drawings as I should... There's still time to change it and I indeed could work on some sketches, but anyway, we have productive and unproductive times, it does suck to rely on your mood but well, it happens... How is the weather? Here it's between cloudy and sunny, overall being fine... Well, I wanted to share a small finding with you guys, one that I haven't considered before, even if I love Marie Antoinette and the 18th century and stuff, well, let's jump to it!

These are chocolate croissants I found on the internet, not quite the croissant Marie had, but still delicious!

I absolutely love Croissants, my favorite kind of bread, and apparently my soulmate Marie Antoinette loved them, too! The tale tell us that the first kind of croissants came from Austria, birthplace of Marie, there are a lot of mythology surrounding this delicious piece of food. Many people associate Marie with indulging with food, unfortunately the still very good movie Marie Antoinette (one of my favorites) by Sofia Coppola contributed to that somehow... or did it? If you notice, Marie never touches the macarons that surround her in the movie (they get a bit of ill appreciation by everyone, actually! If you pay attention, no one finishes a single macaron in the movie, usually putting them aside with a kind of disgusted face). Anyway, the relationship of Marie with food is way more complex than the legend, which is the case many times. In France, the Monarchy was a very much public affair, everything was at show, the palace of Versailles was a public place, being opened to everyone properly dressed (sometimes that would mean just wearing a proper hat, which were always sold on the surroundings of the big building), everyone that could would attend the meal cerimony where the king and queen would have their official meal, they were being watched by everyone, everything was filled with meaning and cerimony, like Louis XIV envisioned, like the baroque era was so fond of. Marie grew up in the much more private and free austrian court, and once you've experience some degree of freedom and personal relaxation, to adapt to a more controled enviroment is very much hard. And that was the second half of the 18th century also, the baroque era was fading, and the rococo era, mixing itself with the classical tendencies en vogue, wasn't too fond of the drama and grandiosity of the baroque period. Anyway, the point is, while Louis Auguste, her husband, would eat normally and a lot during lunch, Marie, so is told, barely touched her food. Many critics rushed to say that was because she was rude and cold, but it's just because she wanted some privacy and wanted to eat at her own pace! It is told she would eat more happily on her private breakfast, where she liked coffee and some austrian breads shaped like the moon, so it's described, and those are probably the proto-croissants of her childhood country. The french nobles and even people at some point might've been skeptic of the austrian princess, but the fact is, whatever Marie did, it became trendy and fashionable afterwards, so this is how Croissants first started to gain popularity in the kingdom of France! There is more to the story of croissants, of course, but it's really cool to see french culture becoming what it is today, it's cool that many things french, like baroque stuff, classical stuff, and so on, were born somewhere else but afterwards made french! We had composers such as Lully, an italian, that chose france of Louis le Grande as his home, and french he became. We had the princess Antoine who went to France and became a national symbol, it's very nice to see this mix of different people making France their home and contributing to it in their own ways! History is awesome, anyway, at this point I'm just rambling in... I think it's time to close today's post! It's getting so long, lots of info, right? Let me know what you think on the comments, and I see you real soon!