I'm going to be blunt here, I don't find Marie Antoinette all that interesting. The films and books that focus on Louis XVI and the process of revolution are way more interesting to me than the films and books of herself. It seems the books about her seem ot keep trying to find something interesting to talk about her, be the possible affair with a dashing Swedish aristocrat (which I very much doubt it ever took place) or by putting her as a "fish out of water" in the etiquette of French court, the intrigues against her, etc.
Prior to revolution, I don't think MA suffered more or less than other Queens before her. She lived her life in frivolity and extravangancy, that's a fact. She did some charity work, but that was expected from Queens in Europe. By the way, her predecessor, Queen Marie Leczinska, seemed to have done a way better work than her in that (by the way, she was called "The Polac" by courtiers). She live off from the people of France in the Petit Trianon, with her parties there, or "playing peasant" in that cottage made for her in the palace grounds.
I don't understand this fascination about her. I understand Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette killings as a symbolic meaning, the end of the divine rights of kings, the end of the respect of people for these institutions, the end of a way of though, the end of a politic system. Not that I agree with the killings, by the way.
However, she became a Romantic Heroine of late (just like Madame de Pompadour, who deserves even less that title). People like to romantize because this is a young girl, married because of politics with what people regard as a fat, not-social king, not sexually satisfied, lives a life in frivolities until she meets the "love" of her life in the form a womanizer douchebag (but, hey, he is handsome) , until meeting her tragic end. Ok. Nice story, but she is not interesting then. The most interesting part of her life is after the revolution, when she apparently took reins of the government because Louis XVI seemed to be suffering with some form of depression. Or when she took the worst decision of her life and she and had her family and her husband to escape France. Or when she was imprisioned (thinking again the imprisioned time is also very discussed, it was then when she became a "martyr)". But that aspects of her life, such as when she takes the government, are the less focused in her biographies. People don't seem to like it. They keep talking how vilanized she was, how she suffered, etc. However nowadays she is almost ridiculously canonized, the martyr Queen etc.
People also say Louis XVI "inherited" the economic issues and the bad publicity from his grandfather, Louis XV. Well, he did, part of it. However Louis XV was in the right path by the time he died. He dissolved the Parlament of Paris (a judicial branch which kept in the way of important reforms, such as the dissolution of some privileges in the nobility), managed to tax the nobility, the economy was recovering, but when Louis XVI came to the throne one of the first things he did was to undo all that reforms. He was regarded as a virtuous king, and because of that he was very popular with people for many years. If he didn't use that. He had the chance to restore the prestige to monarchy, but didn't do that. He was very indecisive. He would have been a good scientist, but not a king.
