Let them eat cake was the sentence that describes Marie Antoinette the Queen of France in so many people’s minds. Supposedly she said that during one of the famines in France while her husband was a king. It was not known during her life but surfaced much later as a symbol of how bad the aristocracy was suppressing the regular people.

It is almost certain that she never said such a thing. She did a lot of charity. The newspapers and pamphlets, at the time, smearing her were vitriolic.

Marie Antoinette was born in 1755 and was a daughter of Austro – Hungarian Empress Maria Theresia and a sister to the future Emperor Josef II. She was married off at the age of 14 to the crown prince, Dauphin of France, age 15, who did not consummate the marriage for 7 years. During those years she was frivolous and spending a lot of money on jewelry, clothes, shoes, and other things. When the marriage was finally consummated and she had her first child, a daughter, she changed. Her bills were one-third of what she was spending before. She had 1 more daughter and 2 more boys. The second daughter died as a baby, the older boy the Dauphin, her husband became King Louis XVI in 1774,  died when he was 8. She was an involved and loving mother and suffered a lot while her child was dying. She got involved in the government. When the revolution began King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were close together and would not separate from each other or the kids.

At first, the revolutionaries took them from Versailles Palace to Paris to Tullier Palace. The royal family took refuge in Assembly but were imprisoned In the Temple Prison. After a while, they separated the king from the family. They executed King Louis XVI by guillotine in January of 1793 and separated her from her son. Now she was imprisoned with her daughter and the king’s sister. In the end, they separated her from them and after the trial, they executed Marie Antoinette by guillotine in October of 1793. The biggest blow came from her son who witnessed that she and his aunt fondled him sexually. It did not happen and he was a poor witness but he broke her heart. He died in prison at the age of 14. After Marie Antoinette was executed the king’s sister was executed as well. The daughter was swapped for some French military men and went to Vienna. She got married but the marriage was bad and there were no children. She died in Austria. The whole ordeal of the King’s family that was humiliated and abused lasted about 4 years.

Marie Antoinette was unpopular among the people. All kinds of horrible things were attributed to her. The Affair of the Diamond Necklace damaged her, even more, no matter that it had nothing to do with her. She was accused of sexually gross things, sending huge amounts of money to Austria, and more. She did have a long lasting affair with Count Fersen, a Swedish aristocrat who tried to help her to the very end.

It is difficult to accuse her of being frivolous in renovating the Pettit Trianon (built by Louis XV), her escape from the rigid and exhausting daily program at Versailles Palace. It is difficult to accuse her of having a lover since her husband, a good and simple man, was not interested in her or any woman or man. In her 37 years of life, she was married for 23 years, 7 of those not consummated and 4 being enprisoned by the Revolutionaries. So maybe she had 12 good years.

I am a storyteller. True or not this is my story,

Nina Turek