The Smear Campaign against Marie Antoinette
She wasn’t perfect, but she wasn’t the spoiled, heartless queen history painted her to be
History has not been kind to Marie Antoinette, the last queen of France before the French Revolution.
Marie Antoinette is famously misquoted as saying, “Let them eat cake,” in response to learning that the French people could not afford bread.
Mind you, she never actually said this. But it didn’t matter. She was the queen everyone loved to hate.
In today’s culture, she simply would have been canceled (of course, she also would have had an army of publicists doing damage control). Instead, she met a bloody death by guillotine in 1793, her reputation in tatters.
She’s not one of us
Marie Antoinette was born an archduchess of Austria. Her marriage to Louis XVI at age fourteen was a political one designed to secure peace between Austria and France.
But despite being the queen of France, her subjects seemed to be suspicious of her true allegiance. They weren’t totally off-base. During Marie Antoinette’s reign, Austria benefitted financially on at least two occasions due to the queen’s influence.
But I can’t help but think there was a bit of xenophobia at play here. The French people were growing…
