that is quite, quite charming!

Thank you! It's a thoroughly charming portrait (poor quality version of the full picture here (http://www.ladyreading.net/labille-guiard/big/robespierre.jpg)) - he just looks so *cheerful*!

I was worried that the stripey background would be a bit eyewatering, but it seems not to be too overwhelming in moderation.

Very, very refined. (I think history is fiction too, really; but one must not say so.)

I feel that if Robespierre's allowed to say it, then I certainly am :D (Letter to Petion, 1792: 'Notre révolution m'a fait sentir tout le sens de l'axiome qui dit que l'histoire est un roman; et je suis convaincu que la fortune et l'intrigue ont fait plus de héros, que le génie et la vertu.')

I used to appall some of my colleagues when I said I enjoyed the storytelling and mythmaking aspects of history, which I don't think can be avoided or stamped out, only understood for what they are.

Robespierre's sentiment is certainly more poetic than Lenin's "The revolution has no need of historians," delivered as he rejected objections to the execution of a scholarly Romanov grand duke.

Tha latter part of that is... a bit painfully true, too. Oh, poor Max.

Your layout is GLORIOUS -- his beautiful frill. <3

Quite. Max's general obsession in speeches etc. that he would be dead by 35 and killed because of his love of vertu and his country would be lolarious if it wasn't for the fact that history conspired to prove him right. :(

I am so in love with his hands and linens in this picture :D It's that wonderful 18th century boneless look which no hands have ever really attained, combined with the PERFECTLY LAUNDERED FRILLS.