For school I had to research and write a paper on one part of the French Revolution using a unique perspective.

Marie Thérèse looked up at what she had engraved in the stone of her room in the tower prison:

“Marie-Thérèse Charlotte is the most unhappy person in the world. She can obtain no news of her mother; nor be reunited to her, though she has asked it a thousand times.Live, my good mother! whom I love well, but of whom I can hear no tidings. O my father! watch over me from heaven above, life was so cruel to her. O my God! forgive those who have made my parents suffer.”

At the sight of what she had written, she shook slightly before falling into a crumpled heap on the floor. The past six years had been a never ending nightmare. First was the storming of the Bastille, and then the arrest of her father, Louis XVI of France, which led to his execution and the disappearance of her mother. And then the disappearance of all French people who were loyal to the King.

She had been in this tower for two years. One by one the royal family had been taken away without ever coming back. Would she be next? She kept asking herself why. Why had that horrible guillotine been invented?

When that rope was untwisted…and the shouts of the crowd could be heard throughout Paris…and the King’s neck centered perfectly on the smoothed carved piece of poplar tree from the Bastille…and then the signal came, and the tensing of every soul in every person could be felt…and the shine of the sun against the sparkling blade…and then the rope was let go. Down it came. The hate. The loathing. The sorrow. The guilt. The pain. The anger. It all came down on my father, and with one stroke – it killed him. The shouts and cheers were even louder. They were uncontrollable. The crowd lunged forward towards the platform and then climbed. The men ripped and fought over the king’s clothes and the woman soaked up the king’s blood with their handkerchiefs.

Were those people? How could anyone act so inhumane? To walk away from any sense of moral rights…How? Is this the kind of kingdom they wanted? Is this the way they wanted my father to reign? Did they really want this reign of terror?