History UsefulNotes / MarieAntoinette

Queen Marie Antoinette (2 November 1755 – 16 October 1793), born Archduchess Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna von Habsburg-Lothringen, is known as the queen who led a tragic yet romantic life, who spent more time on her own pleasures than being a responsible royal, who was obsessed with fashion, pageantry and the ErmineCapeEffect; who was the subject of scathing cartoons and scandals and who eventually lost everything she held dear during UsefulNotes/TheFrenchRevolution, her life included. Today, she's best known for saying "let them eat cake," [[BeamMeUpScotty which she never actually said]].

Queen Marie Antoinette (2 November 1755 – 16 October 1793), born Archduchess Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna von Habsburg-Lothringen, is known as the queen who led a tragic yet romantic life, who spent more time on her own pleasures than being a responsible royal, who was obsessed with fashion, pageantry and the ErmineCapeEffect; who was the subject of scathing cartoons and scandals and who eventually lost everything she held dear during UsefulNotes/TheFrenchRevolution. Today, she's best known for saying "let them eat cake," [[BeamMeUpScotty which she never actually said]].

** In both the anime of ''Rose of Versailles'', and the 2006 ''Marie Antoinette'' film, she's put in a blue dress when she changes her clothes upon arriving in France.

* ''Marie Antoinette'', 1938 film starring Norma Shearer.
* Creator/JeanRenoir's ''La marseillaise'' presents her highly unsympathetically as a queen opposed to any devolution of authority. Louis XVI gets a HistoricalHeroUpgrade weirdly enough.
* ''The French Revolution'', where she is played by Jane Seymour. The film was produced in 1989 for the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution.
* The comedy ''Film/StartTheRevolutionWithoutMe'', where she is portrayed as a lustful schemer, but it's PlayedForLaughs.
* In the Disney channel original movie ''Film/HEDoubleHockeySticks'', her head works as a secretary in hell.
* Creator/SofiaCoppola's ''Film/MarieAntoinette2006'', where she's played by Creator/KirstenDunst. The biography ''Marie Antoinette: The Journey'' by Antonia Fraser provided the source for the film.

* ''Manga/TheRoseOfVersailles'' is a historical fiction that's part biography of Marie.
* ''Literature/TearmoonEmpire'' is a time travel comedy [[NoHistoricalFiguresWereHarmed that takes a lot of inspirations from Marie's life]] where the protagonist, Mia Luna Tearmoon, is granted a [[PeggySue redo to fix her past mistakes]] after getting executed during the revolution in her country.

* ''LightNovel/TearmoonEmpire'' is a time travel comedy [[NoHistoricalFiguresWereHarmed that takes a lot of inspirations from Marie's life]] where the protagonist, Mia Luna Tearmoon, is granted a [[PeggySue redo to fix her past mistakes]] after getting executed during the revolution in her country.

Partying till all hours, gambling, private theatricals, wildly extravagant jewels and clothes, ludicrous hairstyles... basically, whatever new fad came down the pike, Antoinette was up for it. Including, most unfortunately, the one for simplicity and rusticism. This sounds quite banal ''now'' -- and in fact, was no more then than an expression of a newly emerging general trend, and perhaps even a little less excessive than that of other noblewomen -- but in the moment, an ostentatiously realistic model of a peasant village (minus the starving, over-taxed peasantry), where the Queen and select noble friends could kick back and dress down every now and then, was just asking for trouble, especially in the late 1780s when a famine and a rapidly escalating financial crisis was about to clear the ground beneath the feet of the entire monarchy.

* ''LightNovel/TearmoonEmpire'' is a time travel comedy [[NoHistoricalFiguresWereHarmed that takes a lot of inspirations from Marie's life]] where the protagonist, Mia Luna Tearmoon, is granted a [[PeggySue redo to fix her past mistakes]] after getting executed during the revolution in her country..

Her childhood in the Habsburg (Austrian) empire was excessively pampered and free spirited. This did not prepare her for her eventual life in Versailles. As the fifteenth of sixteen children she was certainly not brought up as might befit a future occupant of the greatest European throne of its time, in regards to either education or life experience. On October 13, 1762, she met Music/WolfgangAmadeusMozart when he performed for her family. There was a long-standing rumor that after he tripped and she helped him up, he fell in love with her and begged her to marry him even though they were only children. She was sent to France only after a series of misfortunes took her older sisters out of the running. In the interim, many Austrian court customs had been discarded as too stuffy by her mother, the [[TheHighQueen Empress]] UsefulNotes/MariaTheresa. Antoinette (as she was known) tried to impose this same openness on Versailles, and brought with her an overall distrust of the intensely rigid formal etiquette which characterised the French court. Such youthful optimism is understandable to a modern audience, but she was seen as a legitimate threat to the prestige of many powerful courtiers in Versailles, many of whom were already uneasy about this representative of France's ancient enemy. France's governmental system may have glittered outwardly, but [[DecadentCourt its rapidly decaying core of greed and self-interest made for a complex maze]] that even the most astute princess might have had trouble negotiating. And astute Antoinette was not. It didn't help at all that she was stuck with a heavy, lumpish husband who openly preferred the company of the palace workmen over hers (told that he shouldn't eat so much at his wedding night banquet, the future UsefulNotes/LouisXVI responded, "Oh, I always sleep better after a good supper."). Lonely and neglected, trying to shut out the mockery over her nonexistent sex life, the teenage princess embarked on the whirl of gaiety that became her legend.

Ironically, Marie Antoinette, so marginal in the years before the Revolution, became a key figure of Royalist Opposition. The Queen was determined at all costs to preserve the ''Ancien Régime'' both in principle and for her young son. She was appalled at such flouting of Royal Authority as the Tennis Court Oath and was filled with fear during the Women's March to Versailles, where Parisian market women arrived at Versailles and demanded the Royal Family take residence at the long-abandoned Palais des Tuileries, and whose retinue comprised of members of the National Guard (drawn from Parisian Radicals). In addition to feeling imprisoned by the Revolution, she felt humiliated at seeing the King present himself at the National Assembly. The King was himself unhappy about these changes but he was weak-minded and vacillating. His Queen proved to be more strong willed. Marie Antoinette played a key role in planning the daring escape from the Tuileries. With the aid of her loyal favourites Count Axel von Fersen and the Baron de Breteuil, she organised a scheme in which the royal governess would be disguised as a Russian noblewoman simply travelling through the countryside, with the royal family in tow as her children and servants. They were in actuality headed north to a Royalist region where 10,000 of the remaining loyal soldiers were waiting. Unfortunately, everything fell apart about two-thirds of the way there, at Varennes, when a local official recognised the King from his likeness on a coin. This revelation of the King's Flight led to a humiliating return back to the Tuileries, and the French public who had liked the King for supporting the Revolution now saw him as a liar and a traitor. In this period between the Flight to Varennes and the Birth of the Republic, Marie Antoinette tried to ensure the family's survival by playing [[UsefulNotes/TheFrenchRevolutionClubsAndFactions Revolutionary factions such as the Feuillants]] (whose leader Antoine Barnave was manipulated by the Queen into excusing the Flight to Varennes and clamping down on anti-royal sentiment) and the Girondins. Antoinette was supportive of the drive to a war with Austria, her own native place, in the hope that a military defeat would restore the Absolute Monarchy. [[note]]Her brother Leopold II was actually opposed to the war and critical of his sister, but he died in early 1792[[/note]].

* ''LightNovel/TearmoonEmpire'' is a time travel comedy [[NoHistoricalFiguresWereHarmed that takes a lot of inspirations from Marie's life]] where the protagonist, Mia Luna Tearmoon, is granted a [[PeggySue redo to fix her past mistkes]] after getting executed during the revolution in her country..

* Creator/SofiaCoppola's ''Film/MarieAntoinette2006'', where she's played by Creator/KirstenDunst. The biography, ''Marie Antoinette: The Journey'' by Antonia Fraser provided the source for the book.

[[/folder]]
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* Creator/SofiaCoppola's ''Film/MarieAntoinette'', where she's played by Creator/KirstenDunst. The biography, ''Marie Antoinette: The Journey'' by Antonia Fraser provided the source for the book.

Queen Marie Antoinette (November 2, 1755-October 16, 1793), born Archduchess Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna von Habsburg-Lothringen, is known as the queen who led a tragic yet romantic life, who spent more time on her own pleasures than being a responsible royal, who was obsessed with fashion, pageantry and the ErmineCapeEffect; who was the subject of scathing cartoons and scandals and who eventually lost everything she held dear during UsefulNotes/TheFrenchRevolution. Today, she's best known for saying "let them eat cake," [[BeamMeUpScotty which she never actually said]].

Before the Revolution, and in the early years of that movement, Marie Antoinette's perceived vapidity and excesses made her a favorite target for satirists both in France and England. They were the tabloids of their day. Censorship prevented major newspapers from making open political criticism on the person of the King and the Church, but if tabloids reported on gossip and rumor of Marie Antoinette then it fell BeneathSuspicion, allowing them to use the Queen as scapegoat to give vent to all kinds of frustration and dissent. Naturally, some of the stuff they wrote were outright made up: If she organized an innocent ride into the country to watch the sunrise, it was construed as an orgy. If she indulged in close female friendships, they were naturally lesbian; if she showed favour to certain male courtiers, they were naturally her lovers. All France "knew" of the insane amounts she spent on frivolities, when she was really no more extravagant and much less promiscuous than other members of the family, and likewise, her marriage with the shy King improved -- she eventually gave the nation two heirs. Antoinette's political influence in the Ancien Regime, however, was close to nil because her husband's ministers distrusted her so much. Throughout her reign her mother criticized her for not representing the Empire well enough, while any attempts she did make ensured further scorn from the French, who soon dubbed her ''[[DoubleEntendre L'Autrichienne]]'' -- a multi-layered {{Pun}} which in French[[note]]French, unlike English has masculine and feminine forms for various nouns, so this pun is literally untranslatable[[/note]] combined the feminine form of "The Austrian" ("L'Autrichien"), the French word for Other or Foreigner (''autre'') and [[GettingCrapPastTheRadar the feminine form of "Dog"]] ("La chienne") and using it to refer to her by this nickname was a form of subversion.

Her childhood in the Habsburg (Austrian) empire was excessively pampered and free spirited. This did not prepare her for her eventual life in Versailles. As the fifteenth of sixteen children she was certainly not brought up as might befit a future occupant of the greatest European throne of its time, in regards to either education or life experience. On October 13, 1762, she met Music/WolfgangAmadeusMozart when he performed for her family. There was a long-standing rumor that after he tripped and she helped him up, he fell in love with her and begged her to marry him even though they were only children. She was sent to France only after a series of misfortunes took her older sisters out of the running. In the interim, many Austrian court customs had been discarded as too stuffy by her mother, the [[TheHighQueen Empress]] UsefulNotes/MariaTheresa. Antoinette (as she was known) tried to impose this same openness on Versailles, and brought with her an overall distrust of the intensely rigid formal etiquette which characterised the French court. Such youthful optimism is understandable to a modern audience, but she was seen as a legitimate threat to the prestige of many powerful courtiers in Versailles, many of whom were already uneasy about this representative of France's ancient enemy. France's governmental system may have glittered outwardly, but [[DeadlyDecadentCourt its rapidly decaying core of greed and self-interest made for a complex maze]] that even the most astute princess might have had trouble negotiating. And astute Antoinette was not. It didn't help at all that she was stuck with a heavy, lumpish husband who openly preferred the company of the palace workmen over hers (told that he shouldn't eat so much at his wedding night banquet, the future UsefulNotes/LouisXVI responded, "Oh, I always sleep better after a good supper."). Lonely and neglected, trying to shut out the mockery over her nonexistent sex life, the teenage princess embarked on the whirl of gaiety that became her legend.

Ironically, Marie Antoinette, so marginal in the years before the Revolution, became a key figure of Royalist Opposition. The Queen was determined at all costs to preserve the ''ancien regime'' both in principle and for her young son. She was appalled at such flouting of Royal Authority as the Tennis Court Oath and was filled with fear during the Women's March to Versailles, where Parisian market women arrived at Versailles and demanded the Royal Family take residence at the long-abandoned Palais de Tuileries, and whose retinue comprised of members of the National Guard (drawn from Parisian Radicals). In addition to feeling imprisoned by the Revolution, she felt humiliated at seeing the King present himself at the National Assembly. The King was himself unhappy about these changes but he was weak-minded and vacillating. His Queen proved to be more strong willed. Antoinette played a key role in planning the daring escape from the Tuileries. With the aid of her loyal favourites Count Axel von Fersen and the Baron de Breteuil, she organised a scheme in which the royal governess would be disguised as a Russian noblewoman simply travelling through the countryside, with the royal family in tow as her children and servants. They were in actuality headed north to a Royalist region where 10,000 of the remaining loyal soldiers were waiting. Unfortunately, everything fell apart about two-thirds of the way there, at Varennes, when a local official recognised the King from his likeness on a coin. This revelation of the King's Flight led to a humiliating return back to the Tuileries, and the French public who had liked the King for supporting the Revolution now saw him as a liar and a traitor. In this period between the Flight to Varennes and the Birth of the Republic, Marie Antoinette tried to ensure the family's survival by playing [[UsefulNotes/TheFrenchRevolutionClubsAndFactions Revolutionary factions such as the Feuillants]] (whose leader Antoine Barnave was manipulated by the Queen into excusing the Flight to Varennes and clamping down on anti-royal sentiment) and the Girondins. Antoinette was supportive of the drive to a war with Austria, her own native place, in the hope that a military defeat would restore the Absolute Monarchy. [[note]]Her brother Leopold II was actually opposed to the war and critical of his sister, but he died in early 1792[[/note]].

Marie Antoinette remains a highly popular and enduring historical figure, appearing in novels, manga, comics, music, plays and movies. Modern depictions tend to be more sympathetic of the Queen than usual.

Queen Marie Antoinette (November 2, 1755-October 16, 1793), born Archduchess Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna von Habsburg-Lothringen, is known as the queen who led a tragic yet romantic life, who spent more time on her own pleasures than being a responsible royal, who was obsessed with fashion, pageantry and the ErmineCapeEffect; who was the subject of scathing cartoons and scandals and who eventually lost everything she held dear during UsefulNotes/TheFrenchRevolution. Today, she's best known for saying "let them eat cake," which she never actually said.

* PrincessesPreferPink: In real life, the queen preferred "[[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puce puce]]", a color that ranges from brownish purple-reds to muted purple-pinks. But media will still give her pink when she's still a princess, because of this trope.

Her childhood in the Habsburg (Austrian) empire was excessively pampered and free spirited. This did not prepare her for her eventual life in Versailles. As the fifteenth of sixteen children she was certainly not brought up as might befit a future occupant of the greatest European throne of its time, in regards to either education or life experience. On October 13, 1762, she met Music/WolfgangAmadeusMozart when he performed for her family. There was a long-standing rumor that he fell in love with her and begged her to marry him even though they were only children. She was sent to France only after a series of misfortunes took her older sisters out of the running. In the interim, many Austrian court customs had been discarded as too stuffy by her mother, the [[TheHighQueen Empress]] UsefulNotes/MariaTheresa. Antoinette (as she was known) tried to impose this same openness on Versailles, and brought with her an overall distrust of the intensely rigid formal etiquette which characterised the French court. Such youthful optimism is understandable to a modern audience, but she was seen as a legitimate threat to the prestige of many powerful courtiers in Versailles, many of whom were already uneasy about this representative of France's ancient enemy. France's governmental system may have glittered outwardly, but [[DeadlyDecadentCourt its rapidly decaying core of greed and self-interest made for a complex maze]] that even the most astute princess might have had trouble negotiating. And astute Antoinette was not. It didn't help at all that she was stuck with a heavy, lumpish husband who openly preferred the company of the palace workmen over hers (told that he shouldn't eat so much at his wedding night banquet, the future UsefulNotes/LouisXVI responded, "Oh, I always sleep better after a good supper."). Lonely and neglected, trying to shut out the mockery over her nonexistent sex life, the teenage princess embarked on the whirl of gaiety that became her legend.

Her childhood in the Habsburg (Austrian) empire was excessively pampered and free spirited. This did not prepare her for her eventual life in Versailles. As the fifteenth of sixteen children she was certainly not brought up as might befit a future occupant of the greatest European throne of its time, in regards to either education or life experience. In fact, she was sent to France only after a series of misfortunes took her older sisters out of the running. In the interim, many Austrian court customs had been discarded as too stuffy by her mother, the [[TheHighQueen Empress]] [[UsefulNotes/MariaTheresa Maria Theresa]]. Antoinette (as she was known) tried to impose this same openness on Versailles, and brought with her an overall distrust of the intensely rigid formal etiquette which characterised the French court. Such youthful optimism is understandable to a modern audience, but she was seen as a legitimate threat to the prestige of many powerful courtiers in Versailles, many of whom were already uneasy about this representative of France's ancient enemy. France's governmental system may have glittered outwardly, but [[DeadlyDecadentCourt its rapidly decaying core of greed and self-interest made for a complex maze]] that even the most astute princess might have had trouble negotiating. And astute Antoinette was not. It didn't help at all that she was stuck with a heavy, lumpish husband who openly preferred the company of the palace workmen over hers (told that he shouldn't eat so much at his wedding night banquet, the future UsefulNotes/LouisXVI responded, "Oh, I always sleep better after a good supper."). Lonely and neglected, trying to shut out the mockery over her nonexistent sex life, the teenage princess embarked on the whirl of gaiety that became her legend.

Queen Marie Antoinette (1755-1793), born Archduchess Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna von Habsburg-Lothringen, is known as the queen who led a tragic yet romantic life, who spent more time on her own pleasures than being a responsible royal, who was obsessed with fashion, pageantry and the ErmineCapeEffect; who was the subject of scathing cartoons and scandals and who eventually lost everything she held dear during UsefulNotes/TheFrenchRevolution. Today, she's best known for saying "let them eat cake," which she never actually said.

Before the Revolution, and in the early years of that movement, Marie Antoinette's percieved vapidity and excesses made her a favorite target for satirists both in France and England. They were the tabloids of their day. Censorship prevented major newspapers from making open political criticism on the person of the King and the Church, but if tabloids reported on gossip and rumor of Marie Antoinette then it fell BeneathSuspicion, allowing them to use the Queen as scapegoat to give vent to all kinds of frustration and dissent. Naturally, some of the stuff they wrote were outright made up: If she organised an innocent ride into the country to watch the sunrise, it was construed as an orgy. If she indulged in close female friendships, they were naturally lesbian; if she showed favour to certain male courtiers, they were naturally her lovers. All France "knew" of the insane amounts she spent on frivolities, when she was really no more extravagant and much less promiscuous than other members of the family, and likewise, her marriage with the shy King improved -- she eventually gave the nation two heirs. Antoinette's political influence in the Ancien Regime, however, was close to nil because her husband's ministers distrusted her so much. Throughout her reign her mother criticized her for not representing the Empire well enough, while any attempts she did make ensured further scorn from the French, who soon dubbed her ''[[DoubleEntendre L'Autrichienne]]'' -- a multi-layered {{Pun}} which in French[[note]]French, unlike English has masculine and feminine forms for various nouns, so this pun is literally untranslatable[[/note]] combined the feminine form of "The Austrian" ("L'Autrichien"), the French word for Other or Foreigner (''autre'') and [[GettingCrapPastTheRadar the feminine form of "Dog"]] ("La chienne") and using it to refer to her by this nickname was a form of subversion.

* She's a servant in ''VideoGame/FateGrandOrder'' summoned in the Rider class. This version of her is portrayed closer to the InnocentlyInsensitive aspects of her real life counterpart, and even puts her alignment as LawfulGood. She's quite popular amongst the fandom especially after her attempt to be TotallyRadical [[Memes/{{Nasuverse}} ("Whassup, my homies?")]] She is an AllLovingHero who not only has ShipTease with Chevalier d'Eon and her childhood friend Music/WolfgangAmadeusMozart, but with Charles-Henri Sanson, ''the man who executed her''. [[note]]In real life, her executioner was Charles-Henri's son, but they are a CompositeCharacter here.[[/note]] There is also a Caster version of her donning a swimsuit as well as an enemy-exclusive Avenger version of herself during the collaboration with ''LightNovel/FateRequiem'' (although the battle against her takes form of fighting against a giant ghost), where she acts more nihilistic and gloomy based on her anger on how the French Revolution claimed not just her life but also her son Louis (detailed in the light novel without her making an appearance), instead of the more typical 'clueless but cruel RichBitch' portrayal.

* She's a servant in ''VideoGame/FateGrandOrder'' summoned in the Rider class. This version of her is portrayed closer to the InnocentlyInsensitive aspects of her real life counterpart, and even puts her alignment as LawfulGood. She's quite popular amongst the fandom especially after her attempt to be TotallyRadical [[Memes/{{Nasuverse}} ("Whassup, my homies?")]] There is also a Caster version of her donning a swimsuit as well as an enemy-exclusive Avenger version of herself during the collaboration with ''LightNovel/FateRequiem'' (although the battle against her takes form of fighting against a giant ghost), where she acts more nihilistic and gloomy based on her anger on how the French Revolution claimed not just her life but also her son Louis (detailed in the light novel without her making an appearance), instead of the more typical 'clueless but cruel RichBitch' portrayal.

* ''LightNovel/TearmoonEmpire'' a HowardHughesHomage where the protagonist, Mia Luna Tearmoon, is granted a [[PeggySue redo]] after getting executed after the revolution.

* ''LightNovel/TearmoonEmpire''a HowardHughesHomage where the protagonist, Mia Luna Tearmoon, is granted a [[PeggySue redo]] after getting executed after the revolution.

Ironically, Marie Antoinette, so marginal in the years before the Revolution, became a key figure of Royalist Opposition. The Queen was determined at all costs to preserve the ''ancien regime'' both in principle and for her young son. She was appalled at such flouting of Royal Authority as the Tennis Court Oath and was filled with fear during the Women's March to Versailles, where Parisian market women, arrived at Versailles, and convinced the Royal Family to take residence at the long-abandoned Palais de Tuileries, whose retinue comprised of members of the National Guard (drawn from Parisian Radicals). In addition to feeling imprisoned by the Revolution, she felt humiliated at seeing the King present himself at the National Assembly. The King was himself unhappy about these changes but he was weak-minded and vacillating. His Queen proved to be more strong willed. Antoinette played a key role in planning the daring escape from the Tuileries. With the aid of her loyal favourites Count Axel von Fersen and the Baron de Breteuil, she organised a scheme in which the royal governess would be disguised as a Russian noblewoman simply travelling through the countryside, with the royal family in tow as her children and servants. They were in actuality headed north to a Royalist region where 10,000 of the remaining loyal soldiers were waiting. Unfortunately, everything fell apart about two-thirds of the way there, at Varennes, when a local official recognised the King from his likeness on a coin. This revelation of the King's Flight led to a humiliating return back to the Tuileries, and the French public who had liked the King for supporting the Revolution now saw him as a liar and a traitor. In this period between the Flight to Varennes and the Birth of the Republic, Marie Antoinette tried to ensure the family's survival by playing [[UsefulNotes/TheFrenchRevolutionClubsAndFactions Revolutionary factions such as the Feuillants]] (whose leader Antoine Barnave was manipulated by the Queen into excusing the Flight to Varennes and clamping down on anti-royal sentiment) and the Girondins. Antoinette was supportive of the drive to a war with Austria, her own native place, in the hope that a military defeat would restore the Absolute Monarchy. [[note]]Her brother Leopold II was actually opposed to the war and critical of his sister, but he died in early 1792[[/note]].