On the one hand, speculation about the nature of the pair’s involvement was rife at Versailles, where scabrous rumor-mongering - especially about the ladies of the court - had flourished for more than a century.

The problem starts with the “selected genealogy” that opens the book, where Goldstone lists the two youngest of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI’s four children, Louis-Charles (later Louis XVII) and Sophie, as the illegitimate offspring of Count Axel von Fersen, a Swedish officer whom the queen undoubtedly loved, but with whom, as the scholar Susan Lanser wrote in 2003, “no one yet … has been able to establish whether she had a consummated relationship.” Indeed, historians and biographers generally agree that the evidentiary record cannot answer this question conclusively. In her new biography, “In the Shadow of the Empress,” Nancy Goldstone seeks to tell “the story of a family of immensely strong women, beginning with Marie Antoinette’s formidable mother, the empress Maria Theresa … and three of her daughters, of whom the notorious queen of France was but the youngest.” (The other two are Queen Maria Carolina of Naples and Marie Christine, Duchess of Techsen.) Goldstone, the author of books about Catherine de Medici and Mary, Queen of Scots, is drawn to female royals who defy “tradition and stereotype,” and on that count her new subjects have much to offer. IN THE SHADOW OF THE EMPRESS The Defiant Lives of Maria Theresa, Mother of Marie Antoinette, and Her Daughters By Nancy Goldstone

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