John Lichfield: Does Marie Antoinette deserve her infamous reputation?
Why the sudden interest in France's last memorable queen?
Marie Antoinette, air-headed Austrian princess and then much traduced French queen, was born 250 years ago last year. The anniversary has generated aHollywood film starring Kirsten Dunst and several exhibitions.
From today, the Archives in Paris will be showing for the first time most of the personal and public documents related to Marie Antoinette held by the French state. They range from her marriage certificate (as thick as a telephone directory) to her death warrant and the last, moving and courageous letter she wrote just before she was sent to the guillotine on 16 October 1793.
Did she really say 'let them eat cake'?
Non. Or at least probably not. Marie Antoinette is reputed to have suggested that the starving, pre-revolutionary poor, if they were unable to afford bread, should develop a taste for "brioche", a form of cake. There is no historical record that she said any such thing. Her most celebrated words were almost certainly invented by a rumour-monger or pamphleteer.
That being said, the pre-revolutionary Marie Antoinette was probably capable of saying something just as insensitive. Her own early letters suggest an under-educated, gossipy, plump young queen, with a taste for plumed coiffures (the "big hair" of its era), young male friends, horse-riding, gambling and diamonds.
Why else is her reputation so lousy?
Long before the revolution began in 1789, Marie Antoinette was much detested and lied about in the snake-pit of late 18th century France. This was partly because she was foreign and partly because she was an independent-minded woman. She was known - to nobility and poor people alike - as l'Autrichienne, the Austrian, but emphasising the chienne, which means "bitch".
She failed for many years to produce an heir (through no fault of her own). She refused to tolerate the sillier traditions and people in the court at Versailles. She invented a parallel court at the Petit Trianon in the palace grounds where she dressed up as a milkmaid and cared for heavily perfumed sheep and goats. Aristocratic gossip, and the popular "gazettes" of the day, accused her of multiple affairs with young men, and women. She was decried, both by aristocrats and the bourgousie, as extravagant and immoral. Marie Antoinette was both - but no more so than the rest of royal and aristocratic society.
The new exhibition at the national Archives contains several letters in which Marie Antoinette defends herself to friends, or alleged friends, in strong, confident, rather modern-looking handwriting....
Read entire article at Independent (UK)
Marie Antoinette, air-headed Austrian princess and then much traduced French queen, was born 250 years ago last year. The anniversary has generated aHollywood film starring Kirsten Dunst and several exhibitions.
From today, the Archives in Paris will be showing for the first time most of the personal and public documents related to Marie Antoinette held by the French state. They range from her marriage certificate (as thick as a telephone directory) to her death warrant and the last, moving and courageous letter she wrote just before she was sent to the guillotine on 16 October 1793.
Did she really say 'let them eat cake'?
Non. Or at least probably not. Marie Antoinette is reputed to have suggested that the starving, pre-revolutionary poor, if they were unable to afford bread, should develop a taste for "brioche", a form of cake. There is no historical record that she said any such thing. Her most celebrated words were almost certainly invented by a rumour-monger or pamphleteer.
That being said, the pre-revolutionary Marie Antoinette was probably capable of saying something just as insensitive. Her own early letters suggest an under-educated, gossipy, plump young queen, with a taste for plumed coiffures (the "big hair" of its era), young male friends, horse-riding, gambling and diamonds.
Why else is her reputation so lousy?
Long before the revolution began in 1789, Marie Antoinette was much detested and lied about in the snake-pit of late 18th century France. This was partly because she was foreign and partly because she was an independent-minded woman. She was known - to nobility and poor people alike - as l'Autrichienne, the Austrian, but emphasising the chienne, which means "bitch".
She failed for many years to produce an heir (through no fault of her own). She refused to tolerate the sillier traditions and people in the court at Versailles. She invented a parallel court at the Petit Trianon in the palace grounds where she dressed up as a milkmaid and cared for heavily perfumed sheep and goats. Aristocratic gossip, and the popular "gazettes" of the day, accused her of multiple affairs with young men, and women. She was decried, both by aristocrats and the bourgousie, as extravagant and immoral. Marie Antoinette was both - but no more so than the rest of royal and aristocratic society.
The new exhibition at the national Archives contains several letters in which Marie Antoinette defends herself to friends, or alleged friends, in strong, confident, rather modern-looking handwriting....