Marie Antoinette: The Journey  by Antonia Fraser
Doubleday, 2001 (US edition)
Category: Biography

Yes, that’s right, it took me a long time to read this.  Mostly because my reading time has been taking up by writing, but also because, as interesting as it was, it was also very intense–too intense for long stretches.  (Right up until you get to 1789, and then I couldn’t stop.)

The first thing that occurred to me was that the rulers of Europe in the 18th century really did act like they were playing a life-size game of Risk with an entire continent.  Reading their correspondences and the history of shifting alliances, it sounds exactly like a bunch of wargamers negotiating for advantage, or a fantasy football league in the middle of draft picks ("I’ll take that Austrian Archduchess if her dowry includes that little chunk of Saxony you’ve been sitting on for three rounds, Bill.")  They didn’t seem to be aware that their countries were full of ordinary people who might be affected by their actions.  Which isn’t entirely true, because Marie Antoinette, for one, was very concerned about philanthropy; it was just that political policy was shaped by the concerns of maybe two hundred people.

The second thing was that the people of France went from adoring their Queen to turning on her like a pack of rabid hyenas in a matter of months.  The things that were written and said about her in the press were so vicious and so baseless that I started to wonder if there wasn’t an organized plot to discredit her. The libelles printed about her that were the basis of what the populace "knew" about Marie Antoinette read like imaginative porn with the right names pasted in.  What’s truly infuriating is that I’ve never seen so clear a proof that rational, scientific thinking still wasn’t widespread by the end of the 18th century.  Mob mentality is one thing, but Marie Antoinette’s "trial" consisted of 40 "witnesses" who made stuff up and were never countered, never had to prove their allegations, things that a modern court would have tossed out immediately.  My favorite bit was when one of the prosecutors said that they had written proof Marie Antoinette had committed treason and would present it in court–or at least would present the testimony of someone who’d seen it, because the documents had gone missing.

But that’s all irrelevant.  Marie Antoinette was doomed from the moment the royal family failed to escape France.  The revolutionaries needed a scapegoat, and the foreign Queen was perfect.  People who couldn’t quite feel comfortable condemning their King as a traitor were thrilled to be able to pin all of their anger on an easy target who, at the end, had been deserted by all her former allies.  She was an extremely unlucky woman, not well educated, not suited to politics, and as complicit in the financial excesses of the French court as anyone.  She was also determined, compassionate, devoted to her family, and willing to step outside her comfort zone to try to save the monarchy when Louis XVI collapsed emotionally.  Even knowing how it all would end, I mourned her death.  (Then I cheered, later, when that bastard the Duc d’Orleans was led to the guillotine.  That fake man of the people who threw his entire class under the bus, sided with the revolutionaries, and voted for the death of his cousin the King, was himself a victim of the Great Terror.  Hahahahaha.)

Marie Antoinette was the ultimate winner.  It was less than twenty years after her execution that her story began to be rewritten, thanks to the many memoirs written about her time by men and women who actually knew her.  Though the image of the vicious, uncaring, spendthrift queen still exists, it’s more than balanced by the records who paint her as she likely was: a sweet and well-meaning woman who was utterly unprepared for the challenges life handed her.  And I have to admit that I hope she *did* have an affair with Count Felsen, and that it gave her everything she couldn’t get from her husband.  (I will relate the story of why it took more than seven years for Louis and Antoinette’s marriage to be fully consummated, but only by private request, because it’s quite graphic.  And funny.)

Fabulous book.  Antonia Fraser is one of those writers who conveys her sympathy for her subject without ignoring historical fact.  She also paints a portrait of historical Europe and the French court that makes Marie Antoinette’s life come into excellent focus.  I’d recommend this book to anyone interested in either the subject or in 18th century history.