Marie Antoinette
Marie Antoinette became the symbol of everything the French Revolution destroyed, largely for things she did not do. Born in Vienna in 1755, the fifteenth child of the Empress Maria Theresa, she was married at fourteen to the future Louis XVI to seal an alliance between the Habsburgs and the Bourbons that most of France disliked. She was called l'Autrichienne — the Austrian woman, with a pun on chienne, bitch — from the beginning. The marriage was unconsummated for seven years, a matter of European diplomatic correspondence, and she was blamed. She turned to the private world of the Petit Trianon, to gambling, dress and a small circle, and the cost was noticed as the treasury emptied — though her spending was a rounding error beside the American war. The Diamond Necklace Affair of 1785 destroyed her. A confidence trickster obtained a necklace worth a fortune by forging her signature and using an impersonator; the queen was entirely innocent and the public concluded she was guilty, which told her husband's ministers what her reputation was worth. She never said that the people should eat cake; the line predates her. After 1789 she urged resistance and corresponded with her brother in Vienna seeking foreign intervention, which was treason by the standards of the new state and which the flight to Varennes in 1791 confirmed. She was tried in October 1793 on charges including sexual abuse of her son, a claim she answered by appealing to every mother in the room. She was guillotined that month.
- Lived: 1755 CE – 1793 CE
- Nationality: Austrian
- Roles: royalty
