The Queen is self-absorbed, but not self-possessed. It is the people who dress her who own her. … Rose Bertin made and dressed a life-sized doll to look like Antoinette, and so one wonders: Was she ever “me” or only a simulation of a person, a dressed doll wheeled along by other people, its outer surface decorated with mirrors to reflect her times?

Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self-…, loc. 698