Maître Parfumeur & Gantier La Reine Margot (2007) {Perfume Review & Musings} {Historical Fragrance}
La Reine Margot (Queen Margot) by Maître Parfumeur et Gantier is a beautiful, even stupendous jasmine fragrance with a strong personality. The scent strikingly develops both a sophisticated and frank animalic character softened down and made to feel like warm embers on the skin thanks to rich amber-y and soft honeyed nuances.
The jasmine is narcotic, a bit leathery, never conjuring up the flower itself, but rather its quintessence. It is like the secret aphrodisiac weapon of a free-spirited woman, Marguerite de Valois (1553 - 1615), nicknamed la reine Margot, who was only too infamous for her unbridled sensuality and lack of conformism in her sexual life.
The historian Tallemant des Réaux (1619-1692) posthumously wrote in his Historiettes that apart from her amorous excesses, she was known to be a reasonable and very witty person. But he could not but fail to transmit to posterity her extravagant quirks (he is generally thought to be correct), the fact that she was for example in the habit of carrying the embalmed hearts of her dead lovers all around herself under her vertugadin in little boxes slipped into sewn pockets. She is also reported to have regularly shaved the heads of blond male lackeys kept for that purpose, to give her the hair she lacked since she had gone bald early in her life. Her less than saintly brother king Henri III could not take it anymore at one point and threw her out of the royal court on account of her promiscuous habits (she apparently was nevertheless selective) and eccentricities. The 1994 movie La Reine Margot by Patrice Chéreau amply elaborates upon this trait of hers. Prior to that she was popularized by Alexandre Dumas' novel La Reine Margot (1845), where she is portrayed as a femme fatale.
One of the first sentences in her Memoirs published in 1658 reveals her wit,
"I shall begin these Memoirs in the reign of Charles IX., and set out with the first remarkable event of my life which fell within my remembrance. Herein I follow the example of geographical writers, who, having described the places within their knowledge, tell you that all beyond them are sandy deserts, countries without inhabitants, or seas never navigated."
(you can download an English translation of her memoirs at Project Gutenberg)....
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