The Star of the Seine

The series was originally planned as an anime adaptation of the then-popular manga The Rose of Versailles, but the project turned into an original creation instead.

The final work blended elements of The Rose of Versailles with elements from Osamu Tezuka's Princess Knight (Ribon no Kishi).

The show is credited as based on Alain Delon's 1964 film The Black Tulip, which itself only shares its title with Alexandre Dumas père's novel of the same name.

The series was the debut production of Emukei, the company founded by Mitsuru Kaneko, who is credited as the original creator.

Yoshiyuki Tomino took over as director for the final arc (episodes 27-39), while Masaaki Ōsumi, who had been chief director for the first 26 episodes, became supervising director for that stretch.

For the opening theme, Nihon Columbia staffer Hidetoshi Kimura proposed hiring an actual French singer; auditions were held in Paris with the cooperation of the French Embassy in Japan and the French Government Tourist Office, and singer Arlène was chosen from among eight applicants after three days of Japanese-language coaching.

Because Arlène's recording was not ready in time, singer Mitsuko Horie, who had been kept as a backup in case no suitable French singer was found, performed the opening and ending themes for episodes 1 and 2 only.

A month after the broadcast began, Arlène traveled to Japan and held promotional events at six locations centered around the Kanto region.

The character Danton, though sharing his name with the real revolutionary Georges Danton, is explicitly a different, unrelated character in the story.

The final episode alludes to the real historical letter known as Marie Antoinette's last letter, written in prison to Princess Élisabeth, which still exists and is preserved today.

On Fuji TV's original broadcast, the show was sponsored solely by the department store Isetan, whose logo appeared during part of the opening sequence.

The 2012 DVD-BOX release by Media Factory was the first time the complete series was released on home video in Japan, though it omitted the original Isetan-logo opening and the Horie-sung opening version, keeping only the Horie ending version.