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dreamer_easyRats! I'm still intrigued by how historically accurate it is for there to be Black men and women at Versailles in The Girl in the Fireplace, and for a moment I thought I'd come up with a super explanation for the chap visible in the panic at the ball - that he might be Le Chevalier de Saint-Georges, composer, fencer, and generally pretty amazing guy. Alas! He was born in 1745, and would only have been 13 years old when the clockwork robots arrived. But this does suggest that what we're seeing is not cheerful racial integration, which would be anachronistic, but the presence of a few remarkable individuals. (My other theories: the characters are visiting aristocrats; they are not aristocrats, but servants.)
(I haven't watched the story for a while. The Doctor is so smitten when he sees the grownup Reinette that he talks as though someone's hit him in the head with a shovel.)
ETA: I wonder if Reinette's friend Charlotte was inspired by Charles-André van Loo's Orientalist portrait of Madame de Pompadour?
(I haven't watched the story for a while. The Doctor is so smitten when he sees the grownup Reinette that he talks as though someone's hit him in the head with a shovel.)
ETA: I wonder if Reinette's friend Charlotte was inspired by Charles-André van Loo's Orientalist portrait of Madame de Pompadour?
