Robespierre's voice was like a surgeon's scalpel, and he had just dissected the nobility's entire strategy in one clean, brutal cut, using my own authority as the blade.
The Hall of Mirrors exploded. It was a roar of sound, a tidal wave of a thousand voices shouting at once. The Third Estate was on its feet, cheering, banging their fists on the wooden benches. The nobles and the clergy were also standing, their faces contorted with pure, unadulterated rage, shouting insults and accusations.
In the middle of it all, Robespierre stood perfectly still, a small, calm island in a hurricane of his own making. He had outmaneuvered them all. And he had used me to do it.
I felt a terrifying thrill. A cold, sharp jolt of adrenaline. I was watching my plan work with devastating efficiency. But I was also watching a political star being born—a star I knew from the history books was destined to become a black hole that would swallow France whole.
I had to end this. I had to cement the victory before it dissolved into a riot.
I stood.
Slowly, like ripples in a pond, the room quieted. A king standing was still a command. The shouts died down to angry murmurs. A thousand pairs of eyes were on me.
I raised a hand for silence.
I looked directly at the Archbishop of Paris, whose face was a mask of thunderous, impotent fury.
"The representative from Arras speaks wisely," I said, my voice calm and regal, amplified by the vast hall's acoustics. "It is indeed my wish that this assembly proceed with all possible speed. We were summoned to solve the problems of France, not to dither."
I let my gaze sweep over the benches of the First and Second Estates. "We will meet as a single body. The verification of credentials will begin. Now."
Checkmate.
The Archbishop looked like he'd been slapped. He sank back into his ornate chair, his ceremonial mace trembling in his hand. He was beaten. They were all beaten.
Round one went to the revolution. My revolution. For now.
The victory in the assembly was a political earthquake, but it made Marie a lightning rod. The hatred of the court, once a collection of snide whispers and cold shoulders, now became a focused, venomous campaign. The illegal pamphlets attacking her grew even more vile, more personal. She was no longer just "Madame Déficit." She was "l'Autrichienne," the Austrian, the traitorous foreign queen who was whispering poison into her weak husband's ear, turning him against his own nobility.
She became the symbol of everything they hated about my new agenda.
I watched her endure it with a strength that humbled me. She absorbed the hatred, the lies, the isolation. But instead of retreating into her private world, as the historical Marie Antoinette had done, she doubled down.
She decided to champion a cause.
She had been deeply moved by the grievances we had read together, especially the ones from the women of Paris. She announced, without consulting me or any minister, the formation of a new Royal Commission. Its purpose: to investigate and propose reforms for the city's crumbling hospitals, the appalling conditions of women's healthcare, and the overflowing orphanages.
It was a brilliant move. It was her own cause, taken directly from the will of the people. And to fund its initial work, she announced she would be selling several of her non-essential royal properties, including a small, beloved summer cottage near Rambouillet.
Her favorite lady-in-waiting, the Princesse de Lamballe, was horrified. "Your Majesty, you are selling your cottage? But you love it there! It is your only private escape."
I was there when Marie answered, her voice quiet but unshakeable. "I love my country more," she said. "If the men of this assembly are to write a new future for France, then the women and children of France must not be forgotten or left behind."
She wasn't just supporting me anymore. She was leading. She was taking the fight to our enemies on her own terms, using her compassion as a weapon. She was becoming the People's Queen.
And that made her more of a target than ever before.
Late one night, I received a secret message. It wasn't from Orléans or one of my spies. It came from my most unlikely source: my brother, Provence. A loyal guard, one of my handpicked men, delivered it. He said a cloaked figure had slipped it to him in a dark corridor, with the simple instruction: "For the King's eyes only."
I broke the seal. The handwriting was his. Elegant. Familiar. The message was a single, chilling line.
They have lost the assembly. Do not think for a moment they have lost the war. They will no longer play by the rules of the court.
The note ended with six words that made my blood run cold.
Watch your back. And watch hers more.
'Hers.' He meant Marie.
I stared at the note, a jolt of confusion and alarm making my heart pound. Provence was my enemy. My rival. He was leading the noble opposition against me. Why would he warn me? Was it a trap? A trick to make me paranoid?
Or did even he, the master of courtly intrigue, believe his new, radicalized allies were about to go too far? He was a snake, a man who would do anything for the crown. But he wasn't a murderer. Not of his own family.
The threat had just shifted. It was no longer about political maneuvers and public speeches. My enemies were done playing by the rules. They were planning something else. Something violent.
And their target was Marie.
Before I could even begin to process this new threat, a different kind of crisis struck. A deeply, devastatingly personal one.
Our son, the Dauphin, fell ill.
Louis-Joseph had always been a frail, sickly child, but this was different. A fever took hold of him, a raging fire that the best royal doctors could not break. He grew weak, delirious.
In an instant, all the political maneuvering, all the stress of the revolution, all the fear of the future—it all faded into nothing. It was meaningless noise. The only thing in the world that mattered was the small, hot hand of my son, clutched in mine.
All that was left was the raw, primal terror of a parent watching their child fade away.
Marie and I didn't leave his bedside. We sat watch around the clock, in the vast, silent royal bedchamber. The greatest physicians in France came and went, shaking their heads, offering useless potions and whispered prayers.
My modern, if basic, knowledge of medicine was a curse. I felt utterly, completely helpless. But I recognized the symptoms. The terrifyingly high fever. The rigid, stiff neck. The pained cries whenever we opened the curtains to let in a sliver of light.
I knew, with a sickening certainty, what it was. Meningitis. And I knew, with that same certainty, what his prognosis was in this century. Grim. Hopeless.
"He feels so hot, Louis," Marie whispered, her voice raw from a combination of prayer and quiet weeping. She endlessly bathed his small, flushed forehead with a cool cloth. "Why won't the fever break?"
"He's strong," I said, the words feeling like lies in my mouth. I gripped his tiny hand, so limp in mine. "He'll fight it."
This was the real history. Not the dates and the battles and the grand speeches. This was the stuff they left out of the books. The quiet, agonizing pain. The suffocating helplessness.
He wasn't just the Dauphin, the heir to a throne I was trying to save. He was my son. This little boy, with his mother's blue eyes and a laugh that could light up a room. And I couldn't lose him.
Late on the third night, as I sat watch alone while Marie tried to get a few hours of exhausted sleep, it happened. The fever broke.
I felt it first in his hand. The dry, burning heat began to recede, replaced by a slight, welcome dampness. His breathing, which had been shallow and ragged, deepened. The restless tossing stopped. He fell into a deep, peaceful sleep.
Relief, so powerful and absolute it made me dizzy, washed over me. I buried my face in my hands, a shuddering, silent sob of gratitude shaking my whole body.
At that moment, the door creaked open. It was a junior physician, a young, nervous man named Dr. Gallard, coming to administer the next dose of medicine.
"Your Majesty," he whispered, startled to see me.
"The fever has broken," I said, my voice thick with emotion.
"Thank God," he breathed, a look of genuine relief on his own tired face. "I will administer the tonic anyway. To help his strength return."
He went to the small table where the medicines were kept. He took a small glass vial and a spoon. As he held the vial up to the candlelight to measure out a dose, my eyes, sharpened by exhaustion and adrenaline, caught something.
A tiny, almost invisible flaw in the glass. A hairline crack near the stopper, so fine it was barely there. And sealing it, a minuscule sliver of dark, reddish wax. It didn't match the clean, white wax of the royal apothecary's seal on the other vials.
It was a sign of tampering. Subtle. Expert. Almost perfect.
My blood turned to ice. My heart, which had just started beating normally again, seized in my chest.
That wasn't a tonic to help his strength return.
It was poison.