Monarchy collapsed once its style no longer signified as royal costume

Evidence

In those days, to seem it was to be it, but Louis XVI’s court, powdered and reeking of Fargeon’s chemical experiments, seems to exist in a different time frame from that of the sober black-clad deputies who met in Versailles in the spring of 1789 to represent the Third Estate, the common people of France. By 1789, the King’s power to regulate his subjects’ style and taste was in the past, though the King had not noticed. … If anyone can dress up as a queen, anyone can, at a casual glance, seem a queen. — Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self- A Life in…, 704

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘to seem is to be’ formulation connects to how Mantel handles royal/political theater in Wolf Hall. — connects to: Reverse impersonation shows style constituted the queen’s identity more than her person — Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self- A Life in…, 705; Elites lost a sustained battle to mark status through dress; Sacral monarchy’s legitimacy declined, forcing rulers to adopt standardized national forms — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on…, 79
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self- A Life in…, 704