Happy Birthday. This the traditional greeting. Marie Therese, the future Queen of France (admittedly for less than an hour) was born on this day in 1778 to her mother Marie Antoinette and father Louis XVI. And on the face of it, she was born into great happiness at the Palace of Versailles.
It was not, however, a happy birth day. In point of fact, it was a matter of miraculous wonder that she lived to day two. For hours she struggled to live after a most traumatic birth - a birth so dreadful that from then on the king refused to allow people to be present when his children were born.
And as French politics turned out, it was also a matter of wonder that she lived a life that ended in a natural death, something that most of her family were denied. She was sentenced to death in the French Revolution, but this was moderated to permanent exile.
In this season when we remember a King born and placed in a manger it is worth remembering that birth into a palace is no guarantee of a happy life - as others have found.
