John Hardman

“Vermond did not consider his charge an obvious beauty – ‘one can find features more conventionally pretty’ – but she had poise and charm. He was most worried by her short stature, which he mentions three times, regarding it as the only obstacle to her appearing regal. The dauphin, on the other hand, had outgrown the strength he would later have, inherited from his Saxon grand-father Augustus the Strong, and was nearly six foot tall. So Vermond was pleased to report on 14 October 1769 that ‘between 13 February and 5 October she had grown 15 lignes in French measurements’. Marie-Antoinette had an oval face, a slight Habsburg jaw, brilliant blue eyes and a porcelain complexion. Opinion varies as to the colour of her hair. The historians Paul and Pierrette Girault de Coursac called it ‘ruddy brown with deep streaks of agate’,10 whereas later portraits show it to be blonde. Auburn is nearest.”
― John Hardman, Marie-Antoinette: The Making of a French Queen

“But somewhere deep inside him a glass tube clanked.”
― John Hardman, The Life of Louis XVI