KOA aside, Marie Antoinette is my other favourite person in history.  The poor woman was just a scapegoat and misunderstood.

I love her so much I have a tattoo of her down the back of my left calf

I feel so bad for poor Marie Antoinette! I personally see her as a scapegoat for all the problems in France. And she was just a young girl in a new country! I also don't think that she was as frivolous and promiscuous as she is portrayed. Sure she spent a lot of money on clothes and cooky hairstyles, but didn't a lot of women do that? Like Anne Boleyn, she is a fascinating women whose true story may never be found out. 

Just a misunderstood women who got the short end of the stick in the end. The guillotine seems like such an unpleasant way to die – well any form of beheading is, but this one is just plain creepy! And why did they execute her – it's not like she had many, if any, supporters and friends who were going to help her get her throne back! Her husband was executed, and she was a mother! I just wish people who signed the death warrants knew that these people had families! And Marie Antoinette having a bad reputation doesn't make it any different! But the logic of those people was probably distorted by the amount of blood they shed and the power they gained through the blood. 

TheAwesome-B-Necklace said:

 But the logic of those people was probably distorted by the amount of blood they shed and the power they gained through the blood. 

Many moons ago I read a book about the French revolution, can't remember the title and amongst the things the book claimed was

1) they executed a group of young women newly arrived in Paris looking for work

2) they rounded up all men called by a fairly common name ( for example Yves Desjardin) and executed them rather than work out which was the one they wanted

3) whole streets were stripped of adult men and executed

there were more but I started to think BS by this stage,

Anyanka said:

TheAwesome-B-Necklace said:

 But the logic of those people was probably distorted by the amount of blood they shed and the power they gained through the blood. 

---

Many moons ago I read a book about the French revolution, can’t remember the title and amongst the things the book claimed was

1) they executed a group of young women newly arrived in Paris looking for work

2) they rounded up all men called by a fairly common name ( for example Yves Desjardin) and executed them rather than work out which was the one they wanted

3) whole streets were stripped of adult men and executed

there were more but I started to think BS by this stage,

Wow I never heard of any of those! There's also a lot of fake stories about the French Revolution… Now, in truth there's even more terrible than this list…

What does “BS” mean?

I finished watching Coppola’s Marie-Antoinette yesterday and I feel a new obsession starting. I quite enjoyed the movie as an introduction to this famous historical figure. Of who the only information I really knew about her was that she got her head chopped off and that Wednesday Addams named a headless doll in her honour.

Because of the movie I now aim to purchase Fraser’s biography and the two books on her children Marie-Therese and the son that became Louis XVII. I’m also interested in getting a biography on her husband Louis XVI, hopefully there is a decent one out there.

Strangely I have no interest in learning about the French monarchy beyond this couple. The movie really made me want to know more about this family. Louis XVI seems like such a reserved character and what I’ve read about him on Wikipedia, if he was a little more forceful his ideals may have helped avoid the French revoultion if it weren’t for his power hungry advisors/parlimentarians.

Marie-Antoinette really is the scapegoat of the revolution. Watching the movie I gather that the main cause of the revolution was due to the excesses of Louis XV and it is just unfortunate that he died before the revolution causing Louis XVI to inherit the mess. Unfortunately, since the French only like the French (major generalising sorry), the people couldn’t outwardly blame their French King so chose to use his foreign wife as the reason for their unhappiness.

I really liked how the movie portrayed the young couple early in their marriage and the difficulties marrying someone you don’t know can be. I also liked that they did eventually grow to love and support one another, so much that Marie chose to stay with her husband while all the royal blood fled. It is a pity that the movie only breifly touched on the revolution but I suppose Copolla’s plan was to showcase the character and not let the revolution overshadow Marie.

For me, the story of Marie-Antoinette shares a lot of similarities with Anne Boleyn. Mainly they were both wrongly executed or didn’t need to be executed at all.

I look forward to learning more about Marie when I get around to purchasing those books. I just need to save after splurging on books about The Stuarts

I really enjoyed the beginning of Coppolla’s movie showing Marie Antoinette leaving her home to go to France. I think it really did a good job of showing just how scary that would be for a young girl. The other thing I really liked about it is that it piqued my curiosity about MA and after reading through this thread I have a few new books to get.

She is the favourite queen of the French, and hasn’t yet been dethroned. 🙂

DuchessofBrittany said

“I read Antonia Fraser’s biography on Marie Antoinette and I got a lot of insight into her life, and I finished the book with a greater appreciation for her and the situation she found herself in. I hated the movie version of this book and could not finish it: too pop culturish for me. But, I digress.
I feel Marie Antoinette found herself in a France on the brink of social change. It must have been terribly hard to be a foreigner in the French Court, to be ignored by many courtiers, and seen as a shallow, vain girl. She lacked the education and formal training necessary to be the future Queen of France. One cannot forget that when she came to France, she was a mere 14 years old, suffering from homesickness (something I can appreciate).
Rather, she was the scapegoat for everything wrong with France. Her husband was so out of touch with French society that Marie Antoinette paid the ultimate price. Yes, she was a pretty and rich women, who was in a loveless marriage, and took lovers. Hell, the majority of women at the French court were the same. But, the Queen in the face of her people and she took the brunt of the revolution’s hatred for the royal family.”
I found Marie Antoinette to be a women misunderstood in her time and through history. I hope more people can come to learn about this tragic, yet courageous woman. Frankly, I find her quite delightful.”

I read the very same book and agree completly with what you say about Marie Antoinette. For all her greatness, Maria Theresa made a mistake in not educating her daughter enough to get an accurate perception of the needs of the people over whom she would reign and in proved fatal. She was not vain, but I think lacked the tact and social skills to suceed within the French court.
The French court was incredibly lavish and more out of touch than many other monarchies, and Marie Antoinette embraced this, but it was what she had been used to from birth. The poor of France decided they could not bare it any more (a justifiable decision) right when she was on the throne, but she could have been any other princess. While she could be blamed for not being able to accurately weight public opinion, on balance her husband is more to blame than her for the frightful state of France.
This is not to dismiss her historical importance- she was the public face of the royal family once she married and was the daughter of one of the greatest monarchs, and matriarchs in history. Her personality and taste, translated (sometimes wrongly) into self indulgence, made her well known and she went down in history.