From Refinery 29, February 23, 2021:
Excerpted from Confident Women by Tori Telfer. Copyright 2021 by Tori Telfer. Published with permission from Harper Perennial and HarperCollins Publishers.Once upon a time, the king of France decided to buy his lover the most beautiful diamond necklace in the world. The year was 1772. The king was the shy, awkward Louis XV, and his lover was Madame du Barry, whose flushed cheeks and milky décolletage were the stuff of legends. She needed a necklace worthy of her beauty, and so the royal jewelers got to work, sourcing diamonds from countries as far away as Russia and Brazil. The resulting 647-diamond, 2,800-karat confection was stunning— and a bit ominous. It was designed to circle the wearer’s throat and creep toward her bosom, while strands of diamonds poured down the back of her neck. There were a couple of frothy little blue ribbons scattered about the necklace, but they failed to soften the overwhelming effect.It should have been the most coveted piece of jewelry in the world, but Madame du Barry never had a chance to try it on. Before Louis XV could shell out the 2,000,000 livres necessary to buy it—more than seventeen million dollars today—he died of smallpox, leaving his lover without her bauble and the panicked jewelers without a dime. For a while, the jewelers trudged around Europe, waving the necklace under various royal noses, but no one was charmed by its malicious twinkle, and even if they were, they couldn’t afford it anyway.So the jewelers returned home to try one last option. There was a new girl in town. A young queen from Austria, famous for her elegant neck. She was said to be a frivolous thing, obsessed with anything that sparkled. Maybe she’d be interested in the piece....
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