The Queen`s Confession

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It was said that I was born ‘with the vision of a throne and a French executioner’ over my cradle; but this was long after, and it is a habit to remember prophetic signs and symbols when time has shown the course of events. In fact my birth caused my mother little inconvenience, for it happened just as the Seven Years War was about to break out and she was more concerned with this threat than with her baby daughter. Almost as soon as I was born she was carrying on with state affairs, and I am sure scarcely gave me a thought. She was accustomed to bearing children; I was her fifteenth child.

She had wanted a boy, of course, although she had four, because rulers always want boys; and she had seven daughters left to her, three having died before I was born, either at birth or in infancy. I liked to hear how she had made a bet with the old Duke of Tarouka as to what my sex would be. She had wagered that the child would be a girl. So Tarouka had to pay up.

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