It's hardly surprising, therefore, that Marie Antoinette turned to friends like the Princesse de Lamballe and the Duchesse de Polignac and preferred to have fun gambling and attending parties, catching the disease of Versailles at an early age. Her husband, the future Louis XVI, was only one year older and not interested - or perhaps unable - to consummate the relationship, either through shyness or a medical condition.
Fourteen! And almost from the start, she faced abuse from the French court: Marie Antoinette was sneeringly baptized l’Autrichienne by Madame Adélaïde, eldest surviving daughter of Louis XV, years before it became a popular term of derision. I think the most shocking part of Marie Antoinette's life to remember is that she was only fourteen when her mother, the Habsburg Empress Maria Theresa, married her off to a stranger in another country. Her bluntness in appraising Louis XVI - 'What he lacked in confidence, the Dauphin certainly did not make up for in physical attraction' - and the Princesse Lamballe (who was 'not clever') among other made me laugh, however.
She is fair to Marie Antoinette, if not a little biased in opposition to Lever, concluding that the French queen was in a way 'a victim from birth'.
The author aims were 'to unravel the cruel myths and salacious distortions surrounding name' (from 'let them eat cake' to her alleged affairs with close female friends) and 'to exert common sense in an area which must remain forever speculative, as indeed it was in her own day' (Count Fersen).
Antonia Fraser's biography of Marie Antoinette is a vast improvement on Évelyne Lever's flowery and decidedly prejudiced account, at least in my opinion! Sofia Coppola also based her 2006 film on Fraser's account of the late queen's life.
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