History UsefulNotes / MarieAntoinette

This all ended with the 1792 Insurrection, the Storming of the Tuileries and [[UsefulNotes/FrenchPoliticalSystem the Declaration of the First Republic]]. The King and Queen took refuge at the National Assembly, now called National Convention and were imprisoned at the Temple Fortress. The King was brought to trial, [[TheKingslayer declared guilty and executed]], in January 1793. His widow was brought to La Force prison, separated from her children, the Dauphin ("Louis XVII" for Royalists) and Marie Thérèse, Madame Royale, and her sister-in-law, Madame Elisabeth. Initially, Danton and UsefulNotes/MaximilienRobespierre had hoped to ransom her to the Austrians in hope for a peace agreement, but all their overtures were rejected. Eventually, the Parisian Mob, who loudly clamored for the trials and executions of all traitors, got their wish. Marie Antoinette was brought to a trial, which was less a case of justice at her actual crimes (treason) and more a ritual of humiliation with wild misogynist allegations and insults flung at her by populist demagogues (including incest with her son, which caused her to beseech the mothers in the crowd that she would never do such a thing, winner her some sympathy and apparently enraging Robespierre). Eventually, she was guillotined in the month of October during the ReignOfTerror. Her son was left in the care of a cobbler and his wife, was raised poorly and shortly thereafter died of malnutrition, depression or the shock of the change in habit and lifestyles, nobody is quite sure. Her daughter survived and was eventually exchanged as a hostage and lived a long life. She would live to see the Bourbon Restoration and the return to honour of her parents. The Bourbon and Orleans Restoration led to a period of revisionism where writers who formerly criticized the Queen now looked at her with NostalgiaFilter and RoseTintedNarrative.

This all ended with the 1792 Insurrection, the Storming of the Tuileries and [[UsefulNotes/FrenchPoliticalSystem the Declaration of the First Republic]]. The King and Queen took refuge at the National Assembly, now called National Convention and were imprisoned at the Temple Fortress. The King was brought to trial, [[TheKingslayer declared guilty and executed]], in January 1793. His widow was brought to La Force prison, separated from her children, the Dauphin ("Louis XVII" for Royalists) and Marie Thérèse, Madame Royale, and her sister-in-law, Madame Elisabeth. Initially, Danton and Robespierre had hoped to ransom her to the Austrians in hope for a peace agreement, but all their overtures were rejected. Eventually, the Parisian Mob, who loudly clamored for the trials and executions of all traitors, got their wish. Marie Antoinette was brought to a trial, which was less a case of justice at her actual crimes (treason) and more a ritual of humiliation with wild misogynist allegations and insults flung at her by populist demagogues (including incest with her son, which caused her to beseech the mothers in the crowd that she would never do such a thing, winner her some sympathy and apparently enraging Robespierre). Eventually, she was guillotined in the month of October during the ReignOfTerror. Her son was left in the care of a cobbler and his wife, was raised poorly and shortly thereafter died of malnutrition, depression or the shock of the change in habit and lifestyles, nobody is quite sure. Her daughter survived and was eventually exchanged as a hostage and lived a long life. She would live to see the Bourbon Restoration and the return to honour of her parents. The Bourbon and Orleans Restoration led to a period of revisionism where writers who formerly criticized the Queen now looked at her with NostalgiaFilter and RoseTintedNarrative.

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. It is speculated that their ultimate destination may have been, of all places, Pennsylvania in what was becoming the United States. A settlement known as [[https://thefrenchazilum.com/ French Azilum]] had been established in the northern part of the commonwealth, meant to give escapees loyal to the French King a place to start a new life, and lodgings (''Le Grande Maison'') had been constructed for the royals if they could only manage to reach the location.

Some incidents damaged her reputation, including her supposed invocation of "let them eat cake" in a time when bread was scarce and expensive. There is no record of her giving utterance to such a phrase in the callous manner as this quotation implies.[[note]]The earliest written record of the phrase attributes to an anonymous "great princess", and dated to when Marie Antoinette was just 9 years old and had yet to set foot in France. Modern historians believe that if the quote was genuine at all it was likely spoken by UsefulNotes/LouisXIV's wife Maria Theresa of Spain, over 100 years before Marie Antoinette became Queen of France.[[/note]] Likewise, "The Diamond Necklace Affair," in which a prominent courtier was tricked by a conman into buying the priceless trinket under the impression he was doing the Queen a discreet favour, finally did in her waning public popularity. Even though there was no proof of her involvement, [[TheTysonZone her reputation was so bad that nobody doubted it]]. The nobility that might have been her natural allies were more than happy to use her as a figurehead to distract critics from their own follies.

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 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 [[UsefulNotes/TheSoundOfMartialMusic 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.

* BeamMeUpScotty: "Let them eat cake" was actually said 100 years earlier by Maria Theresa (not Marie's mother, but a distant cousin of the same name), and was made famous by Jean-Jacques Rousseau 22 years before Antoinette was even born. And supposedly Rousseau based it on an even earlier saying from a (unnamed) Chinese Emperor when told that the people have no rice to eat, "Then they should eat meat."[[note]]The Chinese emperor who said this was actually [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_Hui_of_Jin Hui of Jin]], most well-known in Chinese history for being obviously intellectually disabled.[[/note]]

* ''Film/TheAffairOfTheNecklace'': Creator/JoelyRichardson's sympathetic supporting performance a highlight of this legendary box office bomb.

* Cosplay: Before the term was even invented, Marie Antoinette was a hard-core cosplayer. On the one hand, the care and attention she put into her looks indicates that she was a talented and creative person who was not inclined to sit around doing nothing. On the other hand, her peasant getups were tone deaf and indicative of her absolutely cluelessness about the lives of the poor.

This all ended with the 1792 Insurrection, the Storming of the Tuileries and [[UsefulNotes/FrenchPoliticalSystem the Declaration of the First Republic]]. The King and Queen took refuge at the National Assembly, now called National Convention and were imprisoned at the Temple Fortress. The King was brought to trial, [[TheKingslayer declared guilty and executed]], in January 1793. His widow was brought to La Force prison, separated from her children, the Dauphin ("Louis XVII" for Royalists) and Marie Thérèse, Madame Royale, and her sister-in-law, Madame Elisabeth. Initially, Danton and Robespierre had hoped to ransom her to the Austrians in hope for a peace agreement, but all their overtures were rejected. Eventually, the Parisian Mob, who loudly clamored for the trials and executions of all traitors, got their wish. Marie Antoinette was brought to a trial, which was less a case of justice at her actual crimes (treason) and more a ritual of humiliation with wild misogynist allegations and insults flung at her by populist demagogues. Eventually, she was guillotined in the month of October during the ReignOfTerror. Her son was left in the care of a cobbler and his wife, was raised poorly and shortly thereafter died of malnutrition, depression or the shock of the change in habit and lifestyles, nobody is quite sure. Her daughter survived and was eventually exchanged as a hostage and lived a long life. She would live to see the Bourbon Restoration and the return to honour of her parents. The Bourbon and Orleans Restoration led to a period of revisionism where writers who formerly criticized the Queen now looked at her with NostalgiaFilter and RoseTintedNarrative.

* ''Marie Antoinette'', 1938 film starring Creator/NormaShearer.

* ''VideoGame/FateGrandOrder'': She's a Servant summoned in the Rider class. She's considered a candidate for the WorldsMostBeautifulWoman and is a talented singer. 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]] She was Mozart's MoralityChain, as in alternate universes where they don't meet, [[spoiler:he ends up succumbing to despair and allowing himself to be possessed by the Demon Pillar Amdusias]]. Sanson fell in love with her as he was executing her, and when they meet as Servants, he becomes a {{Yandere}} for her, until he is defeated and summoned by Chaldea. Then he tries to woo her conventionally and continuously fights with d'Eon and Mozart for her affections. 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. [[spoiler:However, the Avenger version turns out to be an imposter created from the spirits within Erice Utsumi's body and Erice's idea of what Marie was like, as the real Marie points out it is impossible for an Avenger of her to exist because she loves and forgives everybody, even the people who killed her and her son. She does give the imposter props for a pretty good imitation.]]

Queen Marie-Antoinette [[note]]There's a hyphen in French, it's a composite name[[/note]] (2 November 1755 – 16 October 1793), born Archduchess Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna von Habsburg-Lothringen, is known as the queen consort 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 [[note]]There's a hyphen in French, it's a composite name[[/note]] (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]].

* ''Marie Antoinette: Reine d'un seul amour'' (1989 MadeForTVMovie), played by Creator/EmmanuelleBeart.

* ''Film/Marie Antoinette2006'', where she's played by Creator/KirstenDunst. The biography ''Marie Antoinette: The Journey'' by Antonia Fraser provided the source for the film.

* Creator/SofiaCoppola's ''Film/{{Marie Antoinette|2006}}'', where she's played by Creator/KirstenDunst. The biography ''Marie Antoinette: The Journey'' by Antonia Fraser provided the source for the film.

* ''Marie Antoinette'', 1976 Frenc MiniSeries. Played by Geneviève Casile.

* * [[WebVideo/KarolinaZebrowska Karolina Żebrowska]] did a video titled [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZ_MIMMKuuo "Marie Antoinette Answers the Web's Most Searched Questions (And Gets Utterly Disappointed)"]]. The first set of questions are about her death and she looks despairingly at the camera rather than answer. As the "interview" goes on she seems to slowly realize that her inaction was an issue.

* ''The French Revolution'', where she is played by Creator/JaneSeymour. The film was produced for the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution, coming out in 1989.

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