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The Times - Guillotine Grandeur
Frenchmen have found a new way to show they are a cut above the rest

Are you French? Did your ancestors get their heads chopped off around the end of the 18th century? They did? What a stroke of luck! Well, of sorts. For to have a relative whose twig on your family tree was cruelly snipped off by a sharp blade during the French Revolution is the latest bittersweet accessory from Montparnasse to Montpellier. Call it guillotine chic. The French are flocking to a website which asks: “Avez-vous eu un ancêtre decapité pendant la révolution?” before funnelling visitors to lists where they can check - with a mix of trepidation and pride - if their surnames match anyone’s on the rolls of those executed.

I checked. The name’s not there. Although, lord it took a lot of trawling through the L’s to find out. Although… I do see my grandmother’s maiden name in the M’s…

But the seeds of today’s rekindled pride in having a trace of blue blood in one’s veins were sown even as the corpses of the nobility were still warm. Napoleon, hoisted to power on the shoulders of liberté, egalité, fraternité, swiftly created more dubious counts than an election in Iran.

Heheh.