by Kate Quinn
In addition, a number of things are unclear or conflated in the history of this young woman. Images and stories often confuse Émilie and her mother, Jeanne-Louise-Françoise de Sainte-Amaranthe. Émilie’s birth year is reported alternately as 1773 and 1775—I chose to go with 1775, which better aligned with a number of sources that mentioned her age during the Revolution. Little information is available about Jeanne’s husband, and what exists is often contradictory. There are more than a few references to the fact that Émilie and her brother, Louis, might have been offspring from one of Jeanne’s apparently numerous affairs. Émilie’s husband, Charles de Sartine, shares some of these same research challenges—little English-language information was available about him and there appear to be some contradictory accounts of his father. All of this made researching Émilie more difficult.
Still, the sources that I was able to find provided a wealth of information on this specific four-month period of Émilie’s life, allowing me to hew closely to the available record. What I dramatized I often did in an effort to explain motivations. For example, both Lenotre and Lamartine mention that Émilie and Charles had lovers—in both cases people from the theater world. These historians go to great lengths to mention how devastated Émilie was to be forced to marry and give up Elleviou, and to explain Émilie’s supposedly surprising kindness to Charles’s mistress, Marie Grandmaison, on execution day. The more I tried to think through this situation, the clearer a possibility became to me—that perhaps Émilie and Charles, having likely known each other through the theater, might have been friends who came to an arrangement about their marriage and these earlier relationships. That belief made Émilie’s behavior more understandable, because on execution day, Charles embraced Marie and sought her forgiveness for the fact that her attachment to him had led to her arrest. Yet Émilie apparently reacted with kindness and without jealousy, which makes sense if she already knew about them.
Other dramatizations occurred with an eye toward simplifying conflicting evidence and complicated situations, such as when my sources about execution day recorded Émilie wearing a red shawl, whereas other sources recounted them as shirts. It appears that jealousy may have played even more of a role than I included in Émilie’s demise, because not only may there have been other powerful men who resented Émilie for rejecting them, but it appears that Elleviou may have had another mistress, an actress named Clothilde, who found letters from Émilie among the singer’s things and, in a jealous pique, denounced her to the Committee of General Security.
Finally, while Louise Audu was imprisoned toward the end of the Revolution, she was at Sainte-Pélagie, not the Anglaises, where I have her encounter Émilie. And though it seems entirely within Sophie de Condorcet’s character to have come out to view Émilie’s execution, there’s no evidence that she did so. But we all believed the importance of these scenes to the overall novel justified the dramatizations of these reunions.
Émilie’s legacy was in helping to turn popular support against the Reign of Terror and the Jacobins. The destruction of the oft-called most beautiful girl in Paris was more than some could bear. Within a month after her beheading, Robespierre met the same fate. But part of her legacy that we hinted at in the epilogue, but which was more difficult to show, was how the history of the French Revolution shaped fashion trends afterward—and how women used fashion to offer political commentary on how the Revolution had turned on women. Particularly the fashion trend of the red scarf, or nemesis, may have been inspired by Émilie’s execution and the message of beauty, sacrifice, and courage she bequeathed to all who saw her die. Short hairstyles that bared the throat, red ribbons or bead strings worn tight around the neck, and white muslin gowns of the kind Marie Antoinette and other women wore to the guillotine were other subversive fashion trends. There’s also some belief that Émilie may have inspired Madame Tussaud’s famous Sleeping Beauty wax work or that her head may have been used as a model for the face.
One more story to share: after I’d drafted my part of the novel, I made a stunning realization. I’d been to the burial place of Émilie and her family without realizing it at the time. In 2016, my family took a vacation to Paris. All of us were big fans of Hamilton: An American Musical, and we were intent on visiting the grave of the Marquis de Lafayette—our favorite fighting Frenchman! Lafayette was buried next to his wife outside of the city center, in the Picpus Cemetery at Notre-Dame-de-la-Paix. And, unexpectedly to us, so were 1,306 victims of the Reign of Terror, executed between June 14 and July 27, 1794. Émilie died on June 17, and she and her family were buried in an unmarked mass grave at Picpus immediately next to Lafayette. Knowing that I stood at her grave, sad and tearful over the terror that had been inflicted on so many, makes me feel like I’ve paid her the respect she wasn’t given by the leaders of her day and that I was destined to bring her story to life. I hope I’ve done both with the words in this book.
Reading Group Guide
Sophie de Grouchy and her husband, the Marquis de Condorcet, believed that an educated populace could govern France better than the king could. Do you think that turned out to be true in the short term? What about the long term?
Love is often dismissed by philosophers, politicians, and historians—and yet, history is filled with examples where love has made all the difference in crucial moments and movements. How does the relationship between the Condorcets illustrate that point?
Louise “Reine” Audu was a radical, a citizen who believed in bringing down the old world order by any means necessary to force that change, including violence. Do you think there were alternative ways to gain the king’s attention, to re-create the governmental structures, and to redefine the class system without violence? Some believe a radical point of view is what sets a revolution into motion in the first place and that it is paramount to change. How so?
If your family was starving, or if your government threatened to send its armies against you, what would you do? What price would you pay to protect your loved ones? Would you flee the country for safety, or would you gather, march, and fight with the future in mind as Louise did? Discuss how wealth—or the lack thereof—might influence this answer.
In Ribbons of Scarlet we see the ambitions and potential of the women at the novel’s center circumscribed by their gender. Tellingly, even the popular revolutionary cry of liberté, egalité was qualified by the third part of the chant: fraternité (brotherhood). In today’s climate of female political activism, are women still viewed more negatively than their male counterparts when they speak up for rights or political changes? What similarities do you see between the treatment of eighteenth-century revolutionary women and women activists today? What progress or differences do you perceive?
Princess Élisabeth believed deeply in duty, including her duty to Louis XVI as her brother and king. Motivated by these obligations, she gave up several opportunities to flee France—in contrast to her brothers who chose to escape. They went on to gain royal crowns, while Élisabeth lost her head. Was she a fool to surrender her life rather than abandon her brother? Might she have achieved more for her royal dynasty had she fled? Or was Élisabeth’s self-sacrifice for her moral principles laudable?
Manon Roland is a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. How does this experience affect her character and her choices as an adult? How is sexual abuse treated in the eighteenth century as opposed to today?
The idea of a woman’s proper place is discussed over and over in Ribbons of Scarlet, some women revolting against their assigned roles and some women upholding them. How has the notion of a woman’s role changed throughout the centuries? How have the women changed? What compromises did women of the eighteenth century make to live within those roles? How do they compare to the compromises women of the twenty-first century make?
At their core, Charlotte and Pauline, polar opposites in almost every way, wanted a better France; however, their beliefs on what “better” meant differed. Why do you think a woman who’d fought real batt
les would give up so easily, and a woman who’d never seen a day of violence in her life would so willingly die for her cause?
A theme that runs through the entire novel is the power of words and how they are presented to the world through word of mouth, speeches, political pamphlets, and newspapers. If you were alive during a time when powerful written words were used to manipulate public opinion, how would you be able to discern the truth from falsehoods?
Émilie de Sainte-Amaranthe seems to have been defined by her beauty. Was she more than just a pretty face? Was her beauty an advantage or a disadvantage? In what ways did Émilie manage to subvert that emphasis on her beauty? What did you think of the juxtaposition of “The Beauty” being set during the Revolution’s ugliest hour?
At a critical moment in her story, Émilie wonders if her fate would truly be determined by how her appearance made men react and by whom she’d chosen to have sex with. What did you think of her question and her ultimate answer and understanding? How do other women in the book think about sex in relation to their safety, status, and place in society? Did you see any relevance to how modern women deal with these issues today?
Recommended Reading
FICTION
For the King by Catherine Delors
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Becoming Marie Antoinette; Days of Splendor, Days of Sorrow; Confessions of Marie Antoinette by Juliet Grey
A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel
The Wardrobe Mistress by Meghan Masterson
Madame Tussaud by Michelle Moran
Where the Light Falls by Allison and Owen Pataki
City of Darkness, City of Light by Marge Piercy
Enchantée by Gita Trelease
Becoming Josephine by Heather Webb
NONFICTION
Ballard, Richard. A New Dictionary of the French Revolution.
Benard, Joseph A. The French Stage and the French People: Memoirs of M. Fleury, translated from French by Theodore E. Hook.
Cadbury, Deborah. The Lost King of France: A True Story of Revolution, Revenge, and DNA.
Dunn, Susan. Sister Revolutions: French Lightning, American Light.
Godineau, Dominique. The Women of Paris and their French Revolution.
Hufton, Olwen H. Women and the Limits of Citizenship in the French Revolution.
Kale, Steven D. French Salons: High Society and Political Stability.
Lamartine, Alphonse de. History of the Girondists: or, Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution.
Landes, Joan B. Women and the Public Sphere in the Age of the French Revolution.
Lenotre, G. A Gascon Royalist in Revolutionary Paris: The Baron de Batz, 1792–1795, translated from French by Mrs. Rodolph Stawell.
Life and Letters of Madame Élisabeth de France, Sister of Louis XVI.
Melzer, Sara E., and Leslie W. Rabine. Rebel Daughters: Women and the French Revolution.
The Memoirs of Madame Roland: A Heroine of the French Revolution, edited and translated by Evelyn Shuckburgh.
Moore, Lucy. Liberty: Women and the French Revolution.
Proctor, Candace. Women, Equality and the French Revolution.
Reynolds, Sian. Marriage and Revolution: Monsieur and Madame Roland.
Schama, Simon. Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution.
Tackett, Timothy. When the King Took Flight.
Towle, Sarah. Beware Madame la Guillotine.
Van Alstine, Jeanette. Charlotte Corday.
Yalom, Marilyn. Blood Sisters: The French Revolution in Women’s Memory.
Yalom, Marilyn. Compelled to Witness: Women’s Memoirs of the French Revolution.
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the authors’ imaginations and are not to be construed as real.
P.S.™ is a trademark of HarperCollins Publishers.
FOREWORD copyright © 2019 by Allison Pataki.
THE PHILOSOPHER copyright © 2019 by Stephanie Dray.
THE REVOLUTIONARY copyright © 2019 by Heather Webb.
THE PRINCESS copyright © 2019 by Sophie Perinot.
THE POLITICIAN copyright © 2019 by Kate Quinn.
THE ASSASSIN copyright © 2019 by E. Knight.
THE BEAUTY copyright © 2019 by Laura Kamoie.
EPILOGUE copyright © 2019 by Stephanie Dray.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Cover design by Elsie Lyons
Cover images: © Susan Fox / Trevillion Images (woman); © The Print Collector / Heritage Image / Agefotostock (marchers); and © Shutterstock
Title page brush stroke © Finevector / Shutterstock, Inc.
Title page smoke © LifestyleStudio / Shutterstock, Inc.
FIRST EDITION
Digital Edition OCTOBER 2019 ISBN: 978-0-06-291608-2
Version 08072019
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-291607-5 (paperback)
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-295219-6 (library edition)
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