That Chamber of Horrors, tho. Oof.
Okay, so…in the eighties, my parents went to Europe a few times. I always stayed with Billie, the little old lady who raised me.
Squirrel note: my parents were older when they had me (born in 1938 and 1944), and they were gone a lot, so Billie (born in 1929) raised me.
Those birth years are important and will come into play many times, but the main thing is:
I was raised by older people and therefore enjoyed things that older people liked. Also, it was the South – so add that in there too.
Anyway, my Mom brought me a program from Madame Tussaud’s. Any other kid would have wanted a toy (which I got those too but anyway), but this was my favorite thing. I carried it to school, to my friends’ houses, I tried to take it to church and Billie was pretty much “NO MA’AM” on that.
There was a section in it called “The Chamber of Horrors.” This is where Madame Tussaud’s showcased different methods of execution, torture, I mean Jack the Ripper made an appearance….and of course…
The severed heads of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette post-guillotine appointment.
And the death masks of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.
Cast by Madame Tussaud herself.
Gross. Gross. Gross. GROSS.
And yet…
Morbidly intriguing.
Crash Course on Madame Tussaud- she was imprisoned and forced to make impressions and wax replicas of the king and queen’s heads during the Revolution and other beheaded nobles to prove her loyalty to the new republic.
Bro, I would have straight up been like, just…I’ll go to the guillotine because I’m not out here tryna touch tissues and possible maggotry and whatever else. No. Thx. I’m so serious I would have been Team House Bourbon in an instant if someone was like “yo, go cast that head over there.”
But I digress…
I ran straight to our world book encyclopedia set – which YES, we bought from a door to door salesman- and read everything I could about this subject. Then, I pestered my parents in any and every book store we went to for more books on this subject.
Remember – this was the NINETEEN EIGHTIES. No internet, no debit cards, no online shopping, you just had to go on a damn treasure hunt to find what you wanted.
It only got more obsessive from there, fam. my latest score has been, you already know, a few Madame Tussaud books. I haven’t been this excited since I found a published version of Mesdames Tantes’ journals. As in…Adelaide and Victoire of France – Louis XVI’s Aunts who never married, and who survived the Revolution by the way.
Anyway, all of this plays into my Ashspire universe in some way or another in regard to the bedlam that came during Revolution. Not that I think the French Revolution shouldn’t have happened…it needed to…but as we all know, shit got real super quick.
Still wondering how in the hell Versailles didn’t get razed to the ground, tho.
