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- Recent examinations of Marie Antoinette's personal letters dispel the myth of the callous and indifferent queen often portrayed in popular culture. Marie Antoinette faced numerous challenges as queen, including public opinion, gossip, and pressure to provide an heir for the French crown.
culture.org › history › the-real-marie-antoinette-uncovering-the-woman-behind-the-mythThe Real Marie Antoinette: Uncovering the Woman Behind the Myth
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Oct 11, 2023 · Post-French Revolution, Marie Antoinette's been the model of a bad aristocrat. But is it true? Here are some myths you probably believe about Marie Antoinette.
- Benito Cereno
- Overview
- HISTORY Vault: Napoleon
The execution ballads about the last queen of France spread myths about her that most people still believe.
Few women in history have inspired as many myths as Marie-Antoinette, the last queen of France, typically portrayed as the embodiment of excess and debauchery. Many of those myths are based on the vicious and often pornographic Revolutionary propaganda that poured from French printing presses in the last days of the 18th century. The effect of this propaganda has meant that for centuries she was falsely blamed for the downfall of the monarchy.
Antoinette’s supposed crimes against both France and nature itself often took the form of songs, and her beheading on October 16, 1793 inspired a slew of execution ballads, known in French as complaintes. Execution ballads were a popular genre of news song throughout early modern Europe, cheaply printed songs set to a familiar tune. They all recounted the crimes of the condemned, with some in the first-person voice of the criminal, singing of their remorse at their evil actions, and their fear of execution.
Coroner's Report: Guillotine
Often execution ballads showed compassion for the criminal who was presented as repentant, but for the despised queen these ballads reveled in delight at her beheading for high treason. Ballads were sold on busy streets, marketplaces and bridges by ballad sellers, and then re-performed in taverns, cafés, theaters and at home by all classes of society. Thus, all could participate in the communal tarnishing of her reputation.
The songs are often brutal in their attacks on her: she is ‘Antoinette the tigress’, ‘the monster escaped from Germany’, ‘cursed creature’, ‘the scourge of the French’, ‘cruel’, ‘detestable’ and ‘hussy’. They attack her gross pride and her unnatural ambition: ‘I, who believed myself divine’, she sings in The Pride of Marie-Antoinette. In another, The Complainte of Marie Antoinette widow of L[ouis] Capet, she admits ‘From my most tender childhood/My hard and perverse heart/ Burned with impatience / To destroy the universe’.
Explore the extraordinary life and times of Napoleon Bonaparte, the great military genius who took France to unprecedented heights of power, and then brought it to its knees when his ego spun out of control.
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- Una Mcilvenna
- 3 min
May 2, 2023 · Marie Antoinette, known for her infamous and apocryphal quote, “Let them eat cake,” has been the subject of many myths and legends over the years. However, recent examinations of her personal letters reveal a woman who was far from the callous and indifferent queen portrayed in popular culture.
Oct 25, 2015 · Marie Antoinette: infamous throughout history as a Queen with a never-ending sexual appetite; a Queen blamed for the poor conditions of the peasantry; a Queen often blamed for the failure of the French monarchy.
“Let them eat cake” is the most famous quote attributed to Marie-Antoinette, the queen of France during the French Revolution. As the story goes, it was the queen’s response upon being told that her starving peasant subjects had no bread.
Sep 18, 2006 · Searching for the real Marie, her most recent biographer, Lady Antonia Fraser, destroys one myth. The 18th century queen never said let them eat cake.
Marie Antoinette, full name Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna, was born on 2 November 1755 at the Hofburg Palace in Vienna, Archduchy of Austria, at 20:30. [3] She was the youngest daughter of Empress Maria Theresa, ruler of the Habsburg monarchy, and her husband Francis I, Holy Roman Emperor. [4]
