The Joys of Binge Reading

Today on The Joys Of Binge Reading, a real historical fiction treat. Diana Giovinazzo and Antoinette’s Sister, historical fiction bursting with intrigue, adventure, and romance.

Hi there. I’m your host, Jenny Wheeler, and on Binge Reading today, Diana Giovinazzo presents two historical feasts and two formidable women.

Antoinette’s Sister is a tale of power, love, and the entwined lives of two sisters, both queens during 18th century Europe’s most volatile period. One will keep her head, the other will lose it

This is historical fiction at its most entertaining and informative.

Historical Fiction Sales Specials

But before we get to that news of two special historical fiction sales, the first one on Kobo finishes February 28th, so don’t waste any time in getting in and having a look.

I’ve got the first three books of the Of Gold & Blood Series in this Kobo sale. The first three books, with 25% off Normal retail price. Take a look now

Kobo Sale here: https://kobo.com/p/february-boxset-sale !

KOBO SALE HERE

And then we are sharing in another great historical fiction sale on Book Funnel, with loads of other historical fiction books there. Great quality historical fiction.

I’ve got Book Five in the Of Gold & Blood series, Unbridled Vengeance, and Susannah’s Secret, Book One in Home At Last, on sale.

Great Historical Fiction Sale here: https://books.bookfunnel.com/greathistoricalfiction/ky7epqyx9f

GREAT HISTORICAL FICTION SALE

That’s where you’ll find them. Before we get on to Diana though, just let me say, if you enjoy this show, why not leave a comment online so others can find us too? But that’s enough of our housekeeping.

Links for this episode

The Kingdom Of The Two Sicilies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_the_Two_Sicilies

Caserta Palace: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Palace_of_Caserta

Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_I_of_the_Two_Sicilies

Where to find Diana Giovinazzo Online

Website: https://dianagiovinazzo.com/

Facebook @dianagauthor

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dianagauthor/

Twitter: TikTok: @dianagauthor

Wine Women and Words podcast: https://www.winewomenwordspodcast.com/

(Editor’s Note – Maria Carolina was called Charlotte by her family, and I refer to her by that name a few times in the podcast. Sorry if this is confusing – but it was one of the names she was known by to her family.)

Introducing Diana Giovinazzo, historical fiction author Diana Giovinazzo, historical fiction author.

Now, here’s Diana. Hello there, Diana, and welcome to the show. It’s great to have you with us

Diana Giovinazzo: Thank you so much for having me. It’s such a pleasure.,

Jenny Wheeler: You’ve written these two lovely books about forgotten women of history, Antoinette’s Sister, which is the latest one and the one we’ll be focusing on here today, but also The Women in Red, which got tremendous reviews when it was published.

Both of them are these forgotten women. You’ve said that getting into genealogy and your own family history is what drew you into writing fiction.

Tell us about how that happened.

Diana Giovinazzo: It was really interesting. I was having a conversation with my dad and we were discussing how my family ended up coming to the United States and the questions of how turned into, well, why. Why were they leaving Italy?

Why were they coming to California? Because there were a massive number of, Italians that left the country going to Australia, New Zealand, the United States and all throughout South America, and my father said well, you should look at Anita Garibaldi and check out her story. I think you’d really like it. That might give you some answers. And so, I did. I picked up a biography and I absolutely fell in love with her story and started digging into the Italian history and what was going on with unification and the country itself.

How Diana discovered twin passions

And I just realized, okay, my genre that I need to be writing is historical fiction, and I just have this love of Italian history in and of itself. So I combined the two and started writing.

Jenny Wheeler: What years did your family first go to the United States?

Diana Giovinazzo: The Calabrians came to United States in 1912, and then the Sicilians a little later.

Jenny Wheeler: Right. So Giuseppe Garibaldi was in the 1860s, wasn’t he? Is that right?

Diana Giovinazzo: It was after that, obviously, but there was still so much turmoil and the after effects of political unification, and what was going on in the south. So many were leaving the south after unification, that caused so much upset.

Jenny Wheeler: Just for people who aren’t familiar with their Italian history, Giuseppe Garibaldi was the charismatic leader who had the credit of unifying all of the different Italian states into one modern nation state, as we might describe it.

And you did a wonderful, fictional life The Woman In Red, of Anita Garibaldi, his wife, who had probably really been a lost person because Giuseppe was so prominent that she was left in his shadow, wasn’t she?

And in this one, the Antoinette of the title is another amazing woman, almost notorious in history. Marie Antoinette, the tragic queen of France. With what’s going on with the English Royal family at the moment. you realize how utterly amazing a bad press or just press sensationalism can be.

A sympathetic picture of a tragic queen

And one of the interesting things actually, as a little aside to talking to so many historical fiction authors, is how there has been a wonderful rewriting of history of some of the women who got a bad press in their lifetime from their husbands. I’m thinking particularly of Napoleon.

And that’s certainly the case with Marie Antoinette because you present a much more sympathetic face for that queen than the one we’ve been left with. Most people probably just think of “Let them eat cake.” as being her heartless response. So tell us a bit about these two sisters.

Diana Giovinazzo: The sisters, their relationship was so close. When they were children, they were raised as twins.

They were only a few years apart. I want to say it was like two or three years apart that they were born, but they were raised as twins and they looked so much alike even into their adulthood. where after Maria Antoinette’s death, there were courtiers from France who came to Italy, and when they saw Maria Carolina, there was one who actually fainted upon seeing her because she looked so much like her sister.

They were so close, and my main character Maria Carolina was a troublemaker, and she did something that caused their mother to separate them. But that friendship was still very close after the fact.

The sisters were always writing letters. Maria Carolina was always asking about her sister in letters back home for the family.

Marie Antoinette – and ‘German Melancholy’

And so when I started digging into Marie Antoinette’s life and her letters that she wrote to other people, I really got the sense of this depressed woman. and she even referred to herself as having the German Melancholy.

Being so picked apart by the media and being basically torn apart for things, whether she did it or not, I felt sorry for her and I created this sympathetic version of her that really only her sister would see and know.

Jenny Wheeler: Yeah. they were both the daughters of the formidable Empress of Austria. That lady bore 16 children. I think only about eight of them lived to adulthood, didn’t they? But she raised each of those ones that survived were more or less raised with an idea of monarchy in mind.

They were just trained as royal courtiers, right from tiny babies. And she already had her eyes on what kingdom or Dutchy or Baron they could marry even when they were tiny.

So they were not love matches. And this podcast is going out in next month and Valentine’s Month, I thought it would be particularly fun to focus on the romantic aspects.

Tell us about Maria Carolina’s marriage, for example.

An arranged marriage that birthed 17 children

Diana Giovinazzo: Oh, that marriage. That was such a fun relationship to write about. Ferdinand of Naples, of himself. I grew to love him as I continued to write him.

He was one of my absolute favorite characters to create and write about. and it wasn’t a love match to begin with. In fact, she wasn’t even meant to marry him.

There were two other sisters before her that were supposed to marry Ferdinand. And interestingly, and this is where one of those “what ifs” about history, if things had worked out in certain ways how things would have changed.

She was intended to be the Queen of France. Maria Teresa had Maria Carolina set to marry the French King, and she would’ve been the one who would have to deal with all of those rebellions and the French Revolution and all of that, that her sister had to deal with.

But you know, we also dealt with a pandemic here and over there in New Zealand as well, and she lost two sisters to smallpox and she ended up being the default sister who had to marry him.

It was a duty based relationship that she had to carry out. That was something that in Maria Teresa’s letters that I was able to glean with the history and everything where she wasn’t even sure about the match, because he had this reputation.

I don’t want to jump too much into the guns, but he had this reputation for being a nitwit and being childish, but she still had to place her daughter in a prominent royal family that was still very important to her.

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100%;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] [data-style="minimal"]{padding:40px;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"]{margin-left:-5px;margin-right:-5px;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"] .formkit-field,.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"] .formkit-submit{margin:0 5px 15px 5px;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"] .formkit-field{-webkit-flex:100 1 auto;-ms-flex:100 1 auto;flex:100 1 auto;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"] .formkit-submit{-webkit-flex:1 1 auto;-ms-flex:1 1 auto;flex:1 1 auto;} Marriage by proxy for 18th century royals

Jenny Wheeler: Yes, that’s right. So, the actual physical marriage took place with her brother as the proxy so that she got married in Austria at, I think 16, wasn’t it?

She was 16 with her brother as the proxy and I think her brother was a rather handsome young man and she’d already seen a miniature of Ferdinand of Sicily, and he had this big nose that was very prominent and he was known for it and took one look at the miniature and thought, oh no, I don’t like him.

And then she more or less had to get on a coach and go to Sicily and meet him for the first time when she was already legally married to him.

Diana Giovinazzo: Mm-hmm. it. It’s a such crazy, fraught idea. And it’s why sometimes with history there’s some things that you just can’t make up.

You really can’t. And she had to go through with this marriage, as vile as he was, and he wasn’t that much older than her. He was like maybe 17 or 18 at the time. And so she was, she still had to go through all of this.

She still had to perform her duties. One of the essential questions I explored in the book was, “What does it mean to have to live ‘for king and country’ when you’re a woman?

And what does that mean when you’re a queen? When you have to abide by the will of the king and you have this heir, you have to do these things for your country.

God, the ordained deity is saying, ‘Hey, you’ve gotta do this. This is, this is your job. This I picked you for it. .’ It’s a lot of burden to put on somebody regardless of their age.

Ferdinand has a ‘bad rap’ from historians

Jenny Wheeler: So Ferdinand was a flippant and almost fey, slightly odd character. but you present him as a maturing and much more sympathetic man as he develops.

And I think perhaps with Maria Carolina’s influence he develops into a rather more likable persona as they grow together, doesn’t he?

Diana Giovinazzo: Mm-hmm. I mean, you have to realize, she had 17 children on her own and she went beyond the ‘heir and spare’ mentality where she could have said, ‘I’ve had two boys, I’m done.’

But she continued going to bed with him and she didn’t let him just go off with his affairs, which he still had, but she still went to bed with him.

And so there had to be something to that relationship and I wanted to explore that. And as humans, even if we are immature, even as young adults, and we still carry some of that immaturity with us, but we’re gonna still, there’s going to be the people that are around us are still going to be influential on us.

And in a lot of ways, I think historically Ferdinand does get a bad rap by many historians they just write him off as being this idiot. But there’s so much more to him. As much as there’s so much more to people.

We’re not just this one set idea of what a person should be or can be. We are complex creatures and so is.

The real Ferdinand – fact better than fiction

Jenny Wheeler: The likable side of him was that he did have a real love of the common man,

Diana Giovinazzo: Mm-hmm.

Jenny Wheeler: And he did like to go and pretend to not be king, didn’t he?

Diana Giovinazzo: Yes, yes. Those were his, that was something that historically he absolutely adored and did, where none of his antics in the book, none of his, little traits like where he would go and play chess with the old men by the sea. All of that was actually based on true history. None of that was made up.

He did have that love of the common man and that, I think pulling from that, the fact that he had this love of the people was something that I really pulled into his charact.

Jenny Wheeler: Yeah. And the empress, she gave her daughters rather interesting advice, motherly advice about how to make their marriages work. And Carolina passed that on to her own daughter. could you tell us about that? It was rather wise, although very hard-headed advice.

Diana Giovinazzo: Yeah. if I can quote my own book properly, it was, ‘in everything that you do, you are going to be Sicilian, but in your heart, you’re still Austrian.’ It’s something along those lines. And that was something that she did actually write to Maria Carolina. That was a piece of advice that she had given to her.

An Empresses’ marriage advice to her daughters

She loved to do her letter writing, and that was a letter that she had actually given to her, on her wedding day that she read on her way to, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.

And I love that piece of advice. It was just such strong advice, and I wanted Maria Carolina to still bring that forward with her own children because when you have that advice that served you well when you were young, you want your daughters to succeed in these new roles that they end up having when they’re adults.

Jenny Wheeler: Yes. There was one that was a little bit more down to earth as well, where she said the most important thing was to get your husband to believe you loved him even if you didn’t.

Diana Giovinazzo: And, that was something else that she had said that she had told her daughter, is that men are fickle. Make sure you, you cater to his needs.

Jenny Wheeler: The letters that the sisters wrote to one another, the true letters have vanished, haven’t they?

Diana Giovinazzo: As far as I know. and the book has been out for a year, so if somebody came across a letter and said, oh, hey, there are letters, I would love, I would love to see that. But as far as I know I am pretty sure that the letters were burned, at least Maria Carolina’s were.

The sisterly correspondence between two Queens

She also has a Spanish courtier coming in. They’re trying to get to her letters. They think that she’s up to something no good, which may or may not be the case. And so she wants to hide those letters, especially because it’s her sister telling secrets to her and France is under this immense turmoil at the time as well.

Jenny Wheeler: Yes, sure. So the book each chapter pretty well is bracketed by their exchange of letters. So you had a great time recreating what the sisters might have said to one another. How did you approach that task?

Diana Giovinazzo: I tried to think of it. I have a sister as well. She is 12 years younger than me, and I wanted to frame it as how my sister and I would talk to each other.

How my sister and I, we will tell each other things that we won’t necessarily tell other people or even other members of in our own family. And so I wanted to go that route. This is how sisters would talk. These are the letters that sisters would share with each other. And that’s I how I attacked it.

Jenny Wheeler: Turning to The Woman In Red and Anita Garibaldi. Give us a thumbnail sketch of her life, how she came to marry Giuseppe Garibaldi and what her role in his career was.

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Diana Giovinazzo – World Changing Women