Since the French Revolution, Marie Antoinette has stood as the ultimate example of a cold,
careless aristocrat, a depiction that's lived on for centuries in pop culture.
But how much of it is true?
Here are some myths you probably believe about Marie Antoinette.
Let's take a look at the most obvious myth about Marie Antoinette.
Even if you're barely aware of the last queen of France, chances are good that you've heard
at least one thing about her: that she said, "Let them eat cake."
"Let them eat cake!"
"Let them eat cake."
You might be unsure of what this phrase even means, devoid of context.
Well, as the story goes, someone informed the queen that the peasants of France were
starving because they had no bread.
The famous quote is supposed to have been her oblivious and privilege-clouded response.
However, as National Geographic points out, she never actually said this.
This specific anecdote of an uncaring queen not understanding common people's hardships
predates Marie Antoinette's time by decades and was attributed to a number of foreign
queens before her.
In fact, the original phrase comes from a probably fictional anecdote recounted by philosopher
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, though some believe he may have been referring to Maria Theresa,
the Spanish-born queen married to King Louis XIV.
As the story relates to Marie Antoinette, it was fabricated by one of her many political
enemies to worsen her reputation among the impoverished people of France.
The point of the famous "let them eat cake" story is to illustrate Marie Antoinette's
alleged disdain for the poor.
By all actual historical accounts, however, this couldn't be further from the truth.
Despite the fact that she did have something of a spendthrift nature, she was also exceedingly
kind and generous.
For example, she established a home for unwed mothers and gave food to the starving.
When a famine hit in 1787, she sold her own royal flatware to buy grain for those in need.
At another time, when a man was accidentally struck by her carriage, she paid for his medical
care and supported his family until he was in good health again.
Other accounts attest to her taking care of a peasant who had been wounded by a wild animal,
as well as taking in a young boy who had been orphaned.
The image of Marie Antoinette as disdainful and apathetic toward the suffering of the
poor is just part of a larger trend among the queen's enemies to portray her as an unfeeling
aristocrat.
This view was made particularly popular in the various pamphlets distributed in Antoinette's
lifetime.
However, The York Historian says this depiction of Marie Antoinette as a heartless ice queen
who exploits and then disposes of people for pleasure could not be further from the truth.
Antoinette's personal letters show a person who feels emotion very strongly and is in
fact incredibly concerned for the people around her.
Despite the fact that Antoinette was constantly accused of heinous crimes that she hadn't
committed, her final letter, smudged and stained with her own tears, is full of passionate
pleading for forgiveness, both for herself and for those who so falsely and vehemently
accused her.
While it is perhaps most common for modern portrayals of Marie Antoinette to show her
with her hair powdered white or wearing a white powdered wig, many popular depictions
of the queen tend to show her natural hair as being a golden blonde color.
This is probably most notable in her portrayal by Kirsten Dunst in the 2006 film Marie Antoinette,
but can also be seen in 2001's The Affair of the Necklace or numerous modern mass market
book covers.
But while the powdered hair and ludicrous wigs might be accurate to history, evidence
suggests the blonde part probably isn't.
Madame du Barry, the mistress of King Louis XV, was known to refer to Marie Antoinette
derisively as la petite rousse, "the little redhead."
Other evidence seems to support a redheaded (or at least strawberry blonde) Marie Antoinette,
including a locket-sized portrait of Antoinette by miniaturist Francois Dumont that depicts
the queen with unambiguously ginger locks.
While the deep redness in that portrait may have been exaggerated due to its tiny size,
other portraits of the queen also depict her with varying shades of gingery blonde hair.
If someone were to ask you who Marie Antoinette was, you might start by saying, "Well, she
was a French queen..." and you would be wrong already.
Yes, it's true she was the queen of France, but she wasn't French.
And there's a good chance that a major reason Marie Antoinette was executed was precisely
because she wasn't French.
Marie Antoinette was born under the much less French-sounding name of Maria Antonia Josepha
Johanna von Österreich-Lothringen in German-speaking Austria.
She was the youngest daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor Francis I and Empress Maria
Theresa of the Hapsburg Empire.
She was raised in Vienna until she was a teenager and was sent to marry the equally teenaged
future-Louis XVI to end the long-running hostilities between the Austrians and the French.
However, The York Historian explains that Antoinette's status as a foreigner, and as
an Austrian in particular, made her a convenient scapegoat for all of France's ills.
According to legend, American president Thomas Jefferson is alleged to have said that if
it weren't for Marie Antoinette, there would have been no French Revolution.
The implication is that the financial problems of the French monarchy were largely due to
the lavish spending of the queen, who was known for her expensive tastes in clothing
and upgrades to the palace of Versailles.
Her penchant for the extravagant led to her being nicknamed "Madame Deficit" by around
1786, and the idea that she spent France into the poorhouse has stuck since then.
However, as National Geographic points out, while Marie Antoinette may have had a taste
for excess, that was the way of life at Versailles long before she got there, and she was just
adopting the Versailles lifestyle.
Furthermore, the French treasury was empty before Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette even
took the throne, although Louis didn't make this situation any better when he decided
to send troops to the US to aid in the Revolutionary War against the British.
Sending military aid to the American colonies was an expensive choice that only dragged
the already bankrupt France deeper into debt.
"How does this work, Mac?"
"The money keeps moving in a circle."
"But we don't have any money."
There is no arguing that Marie Antoinette had a passion for fashion.
How Stuff Works records that the queen had some 300 dresses commissioned annually for
her various social engagements throughout the year, plus her trademark high-pouf hairstyle,
and a signature fragrance meant to evoke the scent of the gardens of her personal chateau.
All of which helped drain the national coffers and build up Marie Antoinette's reputation
among the revolutionaries as "Madame Deficit."
However, this kind of spending on wardrobe was another example of Marie Antoinette simply
adapting to the Versailles lifestyle.
Prior to coming to the French court, Marie Antoinette's personal style was tomboyish,
built around her hobbies of hunting and horseback riding.
She didn't like dressing up fancily and being put on display in every facet of her day-to-day
life, but such was the nature of a diplomatic marriage.
Most of the letters Marie Antoinette received from her mother were about tidying up her
slovenly appearance.
Even then, Marie Antoinette shocked the nation with her tendency to dress down.
She was criticized for wearing a simple white dress of her own design which made her not
look fancy enough.
Ironically, this white dress, simple and cheap to produce, would basically become the uniform
of the same revolutionary women who killed the queen for having expensive taste.
A more specific aspect of the reputation surrounding Marie Antoinette's extravagant spending on
wardrobe is an accusation many women find themselves on the receiving end of: namely,
that she was obsessed with shoes.
Presumably, the idea is that any woman with the sufficient means would spend all of her
money on shoes, so what happens when a woman's budget is limited only by a kingdom's treasury?
"I have my own mall!
Ooo, very nice shoes."
However, while it's true that the queen definitely had way more shoes than the average French
citizen at the time, she was actually on the lower end of shoe expenditures among the residents
of Versailles.
National Geographic explains that Versailles, as fancy as it was, was also extremely dirty,
with both animal and human waste all over the floors.
Residents, rather than cleaning the horse poo off their shoes, would simply replace
their shoes every few days.
By comparison, Marie Antoinette spent less than others in the royal court, including
the king's brother, who bought and discarded a new pair of shoes every day of the year.
So while Marie Antoinette's shoe consumption may have been ludicrously high by most standards,
it was part of the culture of extravagant waste she married into.
One of the most persistent and damning accusations against Marie Antoinette is the claim that
she was wildly promiscuous, taking uncountable lovers, both male and female, and disposing
of them after failing to quench her insatiable sexual appetite.
There's uncountable stories alleging that the queen engaged in all manner of debauchery
and hedonism before her death.
However, not a single one of these accusations has a lick of concrete evidence in their favor.
What we do know is both Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette remained virgins for the first
seven years of their marriage, until Marie Antoinette's mother sent one of her sons to
sort things out, likely by arranging for surgery regarding a situation in Louis's downstairs
that made him impotent.
While Marie Antoinette probably had an intimate relationship with handsome Swedish soldier
Axe­l von Fersen, Louis didn't seem particularly bothered by it.
While the most popular topic for slanderous songs and libelous pamphlets against Marie
Antoinette was her alleged sexual debauchery, a solid second place went to claims that she
was the secret puppet master of France.
As History explains, even though Marie Antoinette was married to Louis XVI in order to secure
an alliance between France and the Hapsburgs, the Austrian empire was seen as an enemy by
the French people, who believed their Austrian-born queen was intentionally tanking France in
order to help her homeland.
She was alleged to have betrayed French plans to the Austrians, and her spending was claimed
to be an intentional tactic to purposely bankrupt France.
Meanwhile, these same accounts depict Louis as powerless to stop her, as he was a stupid,
spineless man too charmed by his glamorous wife to see through her nefarious schemes.
The fact is that Marie Antoinette had little interest in politics and admitted to not having
much talent for it.
Furthermore, apart from allowing a small influence in choices for some ministerial positions,
King Louis did not care what his wife thought about political matters.
Most tellingly, Marie Antoinette's mother, in her letters, openly despairs of her daughter's
inability to do more to, quote, "control" her royal husband.
The enduring image of the French Revolution is that of hordes of starving peasants with
torches storming the Bastille, and then storming the palace and lining nobles up at the guillotine.
The idea of a king and queen shoved forcibly from their palace and onto a gibbet, heads
held unapologetically high even in the face of death, is a pretty tempting one to hold
on to.
But that's not quite how things happened in the case of Marie Antoinette.
In fact, there was a 10-month period between the king's execution and the queen's.
During that time, a plan was put into action to save Marie Antoinette from beheading.
A friend of the queen brought her flowers concealing a note to her prison cell.
This note outlined a plan to bribe the guards to effect her escape, communicated through
a series of surreptitiously passed notes.
Until basically the last minute, this so-called "Carnation Plot" seemed like it might work
and the former queen might make her way to freedom, but one of the guards was not as
easily bribed as the others.
He pocketed the money and gave up the game.
In the end, Marie Antoinette was charged with and executed for crimes of high treason and
supposed sexual perversity, with her last words being an apology to the executioner
for stepping on his foot.
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