Marie Antoinette (1755-1793) was born into Austrian royalty, the youngest daughter of Emperor Francis I and Maria Theresa. As a young teen, she married the grandson of Louis XV, and became Queen of France at the age of nineteen. As Queen, however, Marie Antoinette was extravagant, frivolous, and widely criticized by the people. She died on the guillotine during the French Revolution.
"Back in 1623, Louis XIII - father of Louis XIV - built a 'hunting lodge, a little gentleman's chateau' of brick, stone, and slate at Versailles." In 1682, after years of additional construction, Versailles became the official residence of the Louis XIV and the Court of France. In 1770 fourteen-year old Marie Antoinette arrived at Versailles from her native Vienna to marry the French Crown Prince. This single illustrated page tells the story of her life at Versailles, with links to many additional pages within the Versailles site.
Claudia Solacini is an Italian webmaster with a degree in Art History. I like her site because it shows a sympathetic side of Marie Antoinette, a woman "misunderstood in her time and in ours". Marie Antoinette's story is told with a biography, a timeline, and a portrait gallery. The discussion forum is entirely in Italian, but for those interested in more research, there are three public-domain books (in English) about Marie Antoinette available for free download. The Cinema section summarizes more than thirty films featuring the infamous French queen; the Book list is even longer.
Marie Antoinette "was the beautiful Queen of France who became a symbol for the wanton extravagance of the 18th century monarchy, and was stripped of her riches and finery, imprisoned and beheaded by her own subjects during the French Revolution that began in 1789." My favorite click at this bilingual site (English and Italian) is the story of the diamond necklace scandal. There is also a forum to visit (this one in English), a biography page, and a gallery that includes not only eighteenth-century portraits but also stills from the 2006 Marie Antoinette movie starring Kirsten Dunst.
This PBS site is my Marie Antoinette pick of the day. It has an exhaustive biography in timeline format, a multimedia Versailles tour (under Royal Life), and a Marie Antoinette interactive quiz. "What were Marie Antoinette's last words before she was beheaded?" My favorite click is the Global Revolution section which places two hundred years of revolutions on an interactive timeline/map, and compares the 1775 American Revolution with the French Revolution of 1789.
It is common folklore that when told of the poverty of the French people, who were so poor they could not afford bread, Queen Marie Antoinette flippantly replied "Let them eat cake!" But syndicated columnist Cecil Adams debunks this story with evidence that it was circulating years before Marie Antoinette took power. "While Marie Antoinette was certainly enough of a bubble head to have said the phrase in question, there is no evidence that she actually did so, and in any case she did not originate it."
Buy Marie Antoinette Printable for $2.00
or try a FREE trial of the Printables ClubThe following links are either new discoveries or sites that didn't make it into my newspaper column because of space constraints. Enjoy!
Eyewitness to History: Execution of Louis XVIMarie Antoinette Portraits | Royalty.nu: Marie AntoinetteSony Pictures: Marie Antoinette |
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