Reflecting on Marie’s words Melanie picked up her pen and started to write.

Introduction - Slavery

Slavery has always and still is something that is too tragic for most of us to comprehend. When Marie Antoinette my friend and sister forever told me her story, I was aghast. How should she consider she was a slave?

I now know.

As Marie put it “slavery is the absence of choice to choose” She was indeed a slave to circumstance of birth and destiny.

I have never needed to consider what slavery is. I was born and have lived my life with freedom of choice. Freedom from poverty. Freedom of speech.

I have gone where I wanted to go, when I wanted to go there. Unrestricted and free.

As I sit down to write the first chapter of the biography of Marie Antoinette as someone who knew her. I have to ask myself to understand slavery as it has been and still is.

Can you do the same?

If as me you are free; can you imagine how it cripples those who aren’t?

Can you place yourself in a village in Africa with no way to break free of your birthplace and become all you are now?

Can you place yourself in the bondage of a war-torn country with no choice to choose who you have now become?

Or can you place yourself in abject poverty with no way out?

Can you put yourself in a place without access to education? Could you be all that you are now?

As you close your eyes to sleep, do you fear the night?

Marie was a slave to circumstance with ‘no choice to choose’ and all that she endured, is the story that we must tell.

Before Marie left me last night, she told me that when she received my letter in July 1789 warning her that she and Louis would be placed under house arrest on October 6th after the fall of the Bastille she said

“Mélanie, quand j'ai reçu votre lettre, je ne craignais pas d'être mise en résidence surveillée. Vous devez; comprendre que j'ai été assigné à résidence toute ma vie.”

{“Melanie when I received your letter, I was not concerned about being put under house arrest. I had; you must understand, been under house arrest all my life.”}

#Queen #MarieAntoinette

This is to be the story of slavery.

Slavery has many breakable links in the chains that bind so many.

Consider – your freedom of ‘a choice to choose’

To be continued in Melanie’s Biography with love for her sister by her side.

Transported into history

1 - It was a night to remember forever!

2 - Moving within elite circles.

3 - Melanie was transported to ‘Un jour à Versailles’

4 - James will never believe this!

5 - James called back, but Melanie was away in France!

6 - “Happy anniversary my love - See you tonight”