The Tarot Reader of Versailles is inspired by the real historical figure Marie Anne Adelaide Lenormand who was a famous fortune-teller and cartomancer during the Napoleonic era. She was active in Paris as a Tarot reader for over forty years, and when she died in 1843 after a long and prosperous life, she left a fortune. She never married nor had children. Her nephew, who inherited her legacy, was a devout Catholic and destroyed her occult treasures. Lenormand was a close confidante of Empress Joséphine, whom she met while they were both imprisoned during the Terror. Lenormand also initiated a literary career in 1814 and wrote many texts. After her death, her name was given to a deck of thirty-six oracle cards called ‘Le Petit Lenormand’, but these were not the Tarot cards she would have used. It is more likely she would have worked with Etteilla’s deck of cards, and/or the Tarot de Marseille.
I was interested in Lenormand’s beginning and her early years during the French Revolution. How did she learn to read Tarot cards when she began life as a poor orphan girl in a convent? I was astonished to learn she was so young when she established her bookshop. Moreover, she read Tarot for revolutionaries such as Robespierre, Marat and Saint-Just and still survived, though she was a known royalist.
Many of the characters in this novel were real people, and many of the events really happened. It was my intention to focus on the women caught up in the French Revolution from Marie Antoinette to revolutionaries such as Olympe de Gouges, and radicals like Claire Lacombe. But I was also intrigued by the Irish involvement in the French Revolution and the growth of the United Irishmen in Paris which eventually led to the invasion of French troops in Ireland during the Great Rebellion of 1798. Caitlin is a fictional character, as are Reilly and Toby, but they express the thoughts and emotions of many Irish during this period. Other figures such as Wolfe Tone and Daniel O’Connell are real historical figures and hopefully provide context for the Irish struggle against their British rulers during the late eighteenth century.
While I have tried to be as authentic as possible, I am not a historian and I apologise for any inaccuracies. Researching the French Revolution has been fascinating, and intimidating, and I have been helped by a wealth of texts on the period. I found particularly helpful Evelyne Lever’s book, Marie Antoinette: The Last Queen of France and Grace Dalrymple Elliott’s Journal of my life during the French Revolution published posthumously in 1859.
I will admit I changed a couple of historical details in the name of storytelling: Zoe was adopted by Marie Antoinette in 1790 rather than 1789 as is depicted in the novel, and Princess Lamballe was killed on the second day of the September Massacres rather than the first. Etteilla’s house was also located in Le Marais rather than near rue de Tournon, but again I changed this so that Lenormand comes across the bookshop property after visiting him for the first time.
It might seem unbelievable that there was a rescue plan to bring Marie Antoinette to Ireland, but it is in fact true. The Irishman James Louis Rice organised a daring race from Paris to a ship which would bring her to his house in Dingle in County Kerry, but as in my novel, Marie Antoinette did not want to leave her son behind.
The fate of Louis Charles XVII has been the subject of conjecture for centuries. The official story is that he perished from a form of tuberculosis on 8th June 1795 at the age of ten while still in captivity in Le Temple. However, rumours spread that he had already escaped, and that the boy who died was not Louis Charles. The mythology of the ‘lost Dauphin’ grew, and when the Bourbon monarchy was restored in 1814 (as Lenormand had predicted), at least one hundred claimants came forward. However, recent evidence points to the fact that Louis Charles did die in 1795. During his autopsy, his heart was removed and kept safe by royalist sympathisers. In 2000, DNA tests were undertaken and the heart was proven to be almost 100 per cent the heart of Louis Charles. It is also documented that he was mistreated and left in terrible conditions in Le Temple, as well as refusing to speak after the deposition he made against his mother Marie Antoinette. Much as I hope Louis Charles might have made it to Ireland and lived a contented life as Charlie Molloy, my outcome is imagined.
Portrait of Marie Anne Lenormand, from The Court of Napoleon by Frank Boott Goodrich