Marie antoinette biography pbs newshour

Marie Antoinette has its return date set. The next day the mob mainly of Parisian women marched thought the driving rain to Versailles to put an end to orgies and demand bread.

Her page Tilly said she walked better than any woman and as you’d offer a woman a chair, you’d offer her a throne.

The queen enjoyed her beauty style, but her fashion fame came at a price. Pamphlets known as libellesaccused the queen of seeking sexual gratification outside of her marriage, with everyone from her brother-in-law to her female favorites to her servants.

As Schüle told Variety last October, Marie Antoinette was a “rebel” who was “modern, emancipated, and fought for equality and for her personal freedom.”

In truth, says Melanie Clegg, author of Marie Antoinette: An Intimate History, the queen “absolutely wouldn’t have regarded herself” as a feminist, despite the fact that “she came from a place where a woman”—her mother, the Holy Roman Empress Maria Theresa—“was in charge.” Seth calls the label “anachronistic” and points out that it “doesn’t correspond to [Marie Antoinette’s] way of viewing things at all.”

The historian continues, “People have a tendency to try and make Marie Antoinette seem less complex than she actually was,” ignoring the changes in character she underwent over the course of her reign.

“Marie Antoinette” has sparked intense criticism in France, even leading Le Figaro to suggest that British and American filmmakers “should be banned from Versailles.” By portraying the queen as a “sort of militant feminist before her time” and including “an avalanche of scenes that are often vulgar, totally out of context and sometimes plain obscene,” the show insults her memory, the French newspaper argued.

At the same time, socially prominent Prince de Rohan, the Cardinal of France was unhappy over his years of exclusion from Marie Antoinette’s inner circle, and the jeweller Boehmer was unable to convince Marie Antoinette to buy a fabulously expensive diamond necklace originally made for Louis XV’s lover Madame du Barry.

Lamotte was a full-figured attractive woman who caught the attention of both men, and was able to convince them she was a lesbian lover of Marie Antoinette.

You shall be mine; you shall have my undivided care; you will share all my happinesses and you will alleviate my sufferings.”

If Marie Antoinette thought motherhood would stop the scurrilous gossip that had followed her since her arrival in France, she was sorely mistaken. Besides her miscarriages, this was the second child dead; their second daughter had died in 1786.

From then on, the king and queen would be under the close scrutiny of the common citizens of Paris and vulnerable to attack from them. Working with Fersen and other royalists, she hatched a plan to spirit her family to safety in Austria. After Louis’ coronation in June 1775, the queen wrote a heartfelt letter to her mother, saying, “It is quite certain that in seeing the people who treat us so well despite their own misfortune, we are more obliged than ever to work hard for their happiness.” Still, she had limited political influence, and it was her own position at court, rather than the well-being of the citizenry, that served as her main priority.

Five years in, Marie Antoinette’s marriage remained unconsummated.

Her own son was forced to testify that she abused him. Lawlessness had occurred and no royal action had been taken in response. “I am in the most essential happiness of my entire life,” Marie Antoinette wrote to her mother. Many brandished knives and swore to use them to “cut the pretty throat of the Austrian” who was the source of all their problems.

The second season of the historical drama will arrive on PBS in March.

Freya Mavor, Jack Archer, Jasmine Blackborow, Oscar Lesage, Crystal Shepherd-Cross, Roxane Duran, and Caroline Piette star in the period drama, which shows the life of Marie.

PBS shared the following about season two:

“MARIE ANTOINETTE Season 2 sees Antoinette and Louis facing unprecedented challenges at the height of their power.

Adding to these troubles was the Flour War, a series of riots that took place in spring 1775 in response to rising bread prices and poor grain harvests.

Though Marie Antoinette was later purported to have said “Let them eat cake” when told of the starving peasantry’s plight (a falsehood convincingly debunked by Fraser and other historians), her correspondence suggests she was sensitive to her subjects’ suffering.

In this dank prison, she lost much weight and her eyesight began to fail, but she did not have long to live.

On October 14, the poor pallid woman was awoken at night and faced the Revolutionary Tribunal.