Marie Antoinette: her worst moments (other than getting her head chopped off)

Marie Antoinette, the last queen before the French revolution, has a pretty bad rap. Falsely accused of the infamous “let them eat cake” quote, she was given to the French king in a political deal, stripped naked in front of the king’s advisors at 14 before her wedding, and massively attacked by both pro-royalists and revolutionaries before facing the guillotine at 37.  Lots of riches, but not an easy life. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right, I know she's gotten a lot of hate
over the years, not to mention getting her head chopped off. Well,
we're talking about Marie Antoinette. Turns out losing her head
was only one item on the long list of adversities
she faced in her thirty seven years. I'm Patty Steele.
Marie Antoinette before the guillotine. Next on the backstory. We're

(00:26):
back with a backstory. This isn't about Marie Antoinette losing
her head a little less bloody, but really fascinating, and
you may feel a little bit of empathy for her.
It's about where she came from and how as a
child she was a political pawn, forced to marry a
total stranger, a foreign king. And listen to this, she

(00:46):
was only approved by the king's advisors after a fully
nude physical exam in front of dozens of those folks
when she was just fourteen years old. Of course, Marie
Antoinette was the last of the French queen's leading up
to the seventeen eighty nine French Revolution. But how in
the heck did she get there? Okay, imagine you're the

(01:08):
child of the Empress of Austria. What would life be
like maybe like being Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos' kid,
incredibly fancy, wildly rich, anything you want. Well, that's where
the comparison stops. Royal kids had very little choice about anything.
They were frequently used as marriage ponds to set up

(01:30):
political alliances with other countries. Buri's dad was Holy Roman
Emperor Francis the First, and she was the youngest daughter
of the Emperor and Empress. They had sixteen children. She
was a social little girl. When she was seven years old,
she was pals with six year old music prodigy Wolfgang Mozart.
He told her he wanted to marry her when they

(01:51):
grew up. Probably would have allowed her to keep her
head right. Well, anyway, her father died when she was nine,
and at twelve, her mother, wanting alliance with France, promised
Marie as a wife for Louis Auguste, the future king.
Well that's when the fun stopped. The French court wanted
her teeth straightened, pretty painful in those days. They wanted

(02:13):
her curly hair tamed, and for her to learn to
speak and write in French. She had to dress, walk,
dance like a queen and become ridiculously charming. Imagine being
pushed around by tutors, stylists, doctors, mentors who want to
completely remake you, starting at the age of twelve. At fourteen,
she's actually married to Louis August by proxy, with her

(02:37):
brother standing in for the groom, months before she ever
met her husband in person. Next, she has to leave
her home in Vienna. She never saw any of her
family again, except one brother briefly years later. The French
royal carriage sent to fetch her was like this enormous
jewel box, tons of glass, solid gold roof, red velvet

(02:57):
seats embroidered with gold, pulled by eight one horses with
gold harnesses, and followed by sixty carriages holding two hundred
and fifty handlers. But it was three weeks of being
in a fish bowl, stared at by locals along the way.
She's dressed exquisitely but uncomfortably. Imagine being laced into whalebone
corsets and dresses so tight you can't breathe, bouncing over

(03:20):
cobblestone and dirt roads well. Finally, she arrives at an
island on the Rhine River between Germany and France for
the official handover. It's a rainy night. She's brought into
a leaky wooden building built just for the handover. She's
immediately stripped naked as dozens of palace insiders check out

(03:43):
her fourteen year old body to see if it's good enough.
Everything she brought with her is taken away, clothing, jewelry,
even her little dog. Quickly dressed in French gowns, she
travels several days, briefly meeting Prince Louis along the way
away from the palace so he can get a peek
before the wedding. Two days later, Marie finally arrives at

(04:05):
Versailles at ten in the morning. By one pm, she
is dressed and signing marriage papers, then taken immediately to
the palace chapel for the ceremony. Now to get to
the chapel, she has to glide down the massive hall
of mirrors like a queen with no visible stepping in
front of five thousand judgmental members of the King's court

(04:25):
like you see on Bridgerton. Sort of terrifying for a
fourteen year old. Her dress was made of five hundred
yards of satin, covered with silver cloth, hundreds of diamonds
and pearls. It weighed about one hundred and eight pounds.
That's ten pounds more than Marie herself, but the dress
was based on measurements from a year earlier and she'd grown.
It was too small. It had two rows of diamonds

(04:48):
all the way down the back, but they couldn't cinch
the dress clothed, so there was a big gap with
her corset laces showing. But off she went. After the wedding,
lots of partying and then the going to bed ceremony.
They were led to Marie's bedroom where the bed was
blessed by the archbishop. Then, with the entire court watching,

(05:08):
they had to lay down to prove they shared the
same bed. Well fortunately nobody held their breath for the
deed to be done. Marie Antoinette and Louis didn't consummate
their marriage for seven years. She was interested, he not
so much. They eventually got busy since they had four
children pretty quickly. After getting the sexual hang of things.

(05:30):
During their twenty three years together, Marie Antoinette and Louis
actually became good friends, despite constant attacks on her over
everything from her expensive clothes and jewels to mostly false
claims of her affairs with both men and women. Those
attacks grew nastier over the years, even accusing her of
incest with her son. But she was loyal to the king,

(05:51):
so much so that when she had the chance to
escape from France early on, she refused to leave without Louis,
who wanted to stay and protect his throne. Of course,
as you know, it didn't end well for Marie Antoinette.
Her husband faced the guillotine, as did a ton of
her supporters, all but one of her children died in prison,

(06:12):
and ultimately, while staying amazingly calm, she lost her head
to the executioner October sixteenth, seventeen ninety three. Oh And,
for the record, when it came to the starving peasants
of Paris, historians agree Marie Antoinette never said let them
eat cake. That same quote had been used by revolutionaries

(06:33):
for over one hundred years before her, against numerous royals.
Another example of the victor's writing history. I'm Patty Steele.
The Backstory is a production of iHeartMedia and Steel Trap Productions.

(06:54):
Our producer is Doug Fraser. Our executive producer is Steve
Goldstein of Amplified Media. With new episodes twice a week,
Thanks for listening to the backstory, the pieces of history
you didn't know you needed to know.