Send Her Victorious

by Alexander Cordell

First published 1997

Amazon

2.5(1)

Europe is convulsed by revolution in 1848 as Louis-Philippe I flees France and unrest spreads across the continent. The French provisional government devises an extraordinary piece of political theatre: Alicia Bernard, who resembles Queen Victoria, is presented as the abducted British monarch and put on trial in Paris for supposed crimes against the poor.
Barrister André Pelon is appointed to defend Alicia before a hostile public, turning questions of identity and legitimacy into the centre of the plot. Cordell uses the fictional impersonation to satirise revolutionary propaganda while drawing on the genuine instability that followed the February Revolution. Louis-Philippe’s fall and the broader Revolutions of 1848 give the story a historical framework in which monarchy, republicanism and popular anger are all being renegotiated.