Status Updates From The Fate of the Day: The Wa...

Benjamin Franklin in France, and how he won the hearts of the aristocracy by being his rustic Colonial self rather than trying to become an ersatz French nobleman. How he led the French king to provide covert aid to the Continental forces, even bending his own laws to do so.

The elaborate ceremonies of Versailles, intended to entrap a rebellious aristocracy, but now becoming a cage for the royals themselves, as protocol hardens into immutable law.

The palaces of the Bourbon King in Paris and its surrounds, the glittering life of the people who lived it. How they're fascinated by the American visitors, and how it would enable them to do England a bad turn. Still sore about the land they lost in the recent war (what we call the French and Indian War).

Who would name a baby Marmaduke?