King Louis XVI (1754-1793) and Marie Antoinette of Austria (1755-1793)

[bad_barbarella]

has anyone seen that french movie about the affair of the neckace... is that movie true ?????

[queenanne]

Yes, I've seen it and hated it. It was a horrible movie. As far as I have been able to find out, its only partly true. There were men who had a necklace made in the name of the queen, but Marie Antoinette herself knew nothing of it. As for any other nobles being involved, I don't know.

[gogm]

Yahoo Groups has an Images of Marie Antoinette group with ongoing discussions about her and such things as her role in the monarchy, what she could have done differently, the diamond necklace affair, which biography is valid, etc. They also have two subsidiary groups and, between them, numerous portraits. :)

[hillary_nugent]

Originally Posted by gogm

Yahoo Groups has an Images of Marie Antoinette group with ongoing discussions about her and such things as her role in the monarchy, what she could have done differently, the diamond necklace affair, which biography is valid, etc. They also have two subsidiary groups and, between them, numerous portraits. :)

i'm curious...what is the diamond necklace affair? it sounds very interesting :)

[gogm]

In response to hillary_nugent's question, according to the Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed. (2001) the diamond neclace affair was:

"Scandal that took place at the court of King Louis XVI of France just before the French Revolution. An adventuress who called herself the comtesse de La Motte duped Cardinal de Rohan, the grand almoner, who was out of favor with Queen Marie Antoinette, into believing that she could regain the queen’s regard for him. Mme de La Motte and her accomplices then engineered a sham correspondence between the cardinal and the queen and even arranged an interview between him and a woman impersonating the queen. In the interview the cardinal was led to believe that the queen wished to acquire a diamond necklace of enormous value and that she had chosen him as her confidential agent. When Rohan obtained the necklace from the jewelers, he turned it over to the comtesse; her husband took it to London, where it was broken up for sale. The affair became public after Rohan failed to meet the payments to the jewelers. The cardinal was arrested and tried by the parlement; he was acquitted but lost his position in court. Mme de La Motte was punished and imprisoned, but she escaped to London, where she wrote her highly questionable memoirs. Alessandro Cagliostro, at first suspected of complicity, was acquitted. The queen, noted for her extravagance and frivolity, was unjustly implicated in the affair; her enemies hinted that she had schemed to ruin the cardinal or that she had used her favor to obtain the necklace and then refused to pay. The scandal added greatly to her unpopularity at a critical time. A vast literature has grown around the subject, notably Dumas’s romance The Queen's Necklace and Carlyle’s Diamond Necklace."

I recall reading that the King and Queen were embrassed by the acquittal where the defense exploited their unpopularity.

The actual necklace looked something like this:

[Harry's polo shirt]

Marie Antoinette was the Queen of France during the French Revolution. She was disliked because of her Austrian ancestry and because of her arrogance and extravagance during a time when peasants were starving.

You can read more about her here:
http://www2.lucidcafe.com/lucidcafe/...ntoinette.html

I think she was an interesting charactor during an interesting time in history. With the movie (I read the book) The Affair of the Necklace I began to have an interest in her story. Do You?

[susan alicia]

sofia coppola is making a movie about marie-antoinette (kirsten dunst plays her) and the movie is based on the biography written by antonia frasier

[Alicky]

I thought she was a despicable Queen. Kirsten Dunst as Marie? That will be interesting lol. I wonder what kind of accent she'll use. Probably British, ever notice how in films, no matter what country or century they're in, they all speak with British accents?

[queenanne]

Originally Posted by Alicky

I thought she was a despicable Queen.... Probably British, ever notice how in films, no matter what country or century they're in, they all speak with British accents?

She was not a despicable queen. Much of what has been written about her are lies or, when true, blown completely out of proportion. For example, she was actually quite charitable and often tried her best to help the poor, especially as she grew older. I mean, yes, she did tend to be a little frivolous in her youth, but aren't we all? She was married at a young age and sent to live in a foreign country, away from everyone and everything she'd ever known. I for one don't know how well I would handle that. I'd probably make more than my fair share of mistakes too. History has just taken to abusing Marie Antoinette's memory and I wish it would stop. A good book to read would be Antonia Fraser's Marie Antoinette. She gives her reader a good glimpse at the live of this infamous woman. On a lighter note, yes, I've noticed the accent thing too. Mom and I are always teasing each other when we watch movies set in France. "If they don't have British accents, they can't possibly be French!"

[ysbel]

When Marie Antoinette married at 14, she was pretty, charming, but totally undisciplined, her upbringing and education largely ignored until a few years before her marriage. By then it was too late. Maria Theresa of Austria held a court that was very strict in terms of morality but relaxed in terms of protocol. The French court observed very strict protocol and relaxed standards of morality. She was like a fish out of water.

Incidentally, when Diana first hit the world stage, royal insiders found similarities between her and Queen Alexandra, Princess of Wales a hundred years before her. When Alexandra was Princess of Wales, she was likened to Marie Antoinette who had been la Dauphine a hundred years before her.

[Alicky]

Marie may have been young and inexperienced, not the smartest apple on the tree, not the deliverer of the famous "Let them eat cake" line and obviously not meant to be a Queen period, but I don't think anyone can deny her extravagance. Yes, rumors swell and defamation runs rampant (I'm sure you've seen some of the lines from those pornographic pamplets!), but no one can say that she didn't like to spend some major money on her whims. Ask her mother lol.

[tiaraprin]

Marie Antoinette is an interesting figure from history. I have read extensively on her and have an A & E biography on her.

She was the 15th child of Empress Maria Theresa and her husband. Maria Theresa used her daughters as pawns for alliances thoroughout the monarchies of Europe. Close to the time of Maria Antonia's (as Marie Antoinette was in Vienna) birth, Maria Theresa had made peace with an old enemy--France. To cement the peace and alliance, she had to put one of her daughters there to keep everything politically strong for her.

Thus, Maria Antonia went to France in 1770 and transformed into Marie Antoinette. She never became wholly French. She said once in letter that the Habsburgs did things better and criticized Louis XV's Queen, Marie Leckzinka on her approach to protocol. When Marie Antoinette was told by someone that the former Queen did something a different way, Marie Antoinette is said to have replied: "I hope you are not comparing the former Queen who was a little Polish Princess to an Archduchess of the House of Austria."

[queenanne]

Lol. I'm sure she and her mother had "discussions'' as to her spending habits. But as I said, yes she was frivolous in her youth, but as she grew older, her priorities shifted. By the time of her death, she was well on her way to becoming an excellent wife and mother, something I doubt her own mother could boast of. We all make mistakes in our youth, do we not? The only difference is that the mistakes of people like Marie Antoinette are displayed for all of history to see, whereas ours tend to be more private. (Luckily for us! )

[Mapple]

Maria Teresa was in all likelihood an awful mother, but she had some adroitness as a stateswoman. Her children (except Leopold II, maybe) entirely lacked her skills, and they needed them in the closing years of the 18th Century--especially Marie Antoinette.

[Alicky]

Originally Posted by queenanne

Lol. I'm sure she and her mother had "discussions'' as to her spending habits.

I agree. If you read a book on Madame Deficit (lol!), from the beginning to the end it was almost like two different people. My favorite book on her was written by Evelyn Lever (a great biographer!), the title escapes me but it was something along the lines of "Marie Antoinette." :p :)

[Smilla]

Originally Posted by Mapple

Maria Teresa was in all likelihood an awful mother, but she had some adroitness as a stateswoman. Her children (except Leopold II, maybe) entirely lacked her skills, and they needed them in the closing years of the 18th Century--especially Marie Antoinette.

Actually, her daughter Maria Carolina (child number 13), wife of the king of Sicily, was as energetic as her mother. Her husband was not very intelligent, so she practically ran the court, and later fought against Napoleon in various diplomatic ways.

I think Marie Antoinette had a bad start when she came to France as a fourteen-year-old child, and a very inexperienced and immature child she was! The pressure on her to have a child was enormous, but she didn't get pregnant for a long time. This certainly added to her problems. Don't you think things would have turned out differently if she'd had 16 children like her mum? She wouldn't have had any time to be frivolous!

[semisquare]

i would like to think that things would be different if maria would have
not have been as high minded as she was
not have been so frivolous
care about her actions
started to have childeren as soon as possible
been kinder to every one at court
even after the revoltion(sorry if i spelled it worn) if she would have played her cards right, it could have saved her head

[queenanne]

Well, they do say that hindsight is 20/20. How do we know that she was "high minded"? Because the history books say she was? Again, we've seen the errors history books sometimes perpetuate. Frivolity? Yet again, she was young and somewhat clueless. And as Ysbel said, she was like a fish out of water at the French court. Would any of us have done differently? Perhaps, but we can't be 100% certain. Who's to say she didn't care about her actions? Maybe she didn't always think things through before acting, but I often find myself doing the same. Granted, its not a good thing, but its a common occurence, right? Started to have children as soon as possible? You're saying that she should have forced the hand of God somehow and become a mother at the tender age of fourteen? First of all, what kind of life would that child have had, seeing as his mother was so frivoulous and so out of place? She may have gone crazy with trying to care for her child in a country with which she was not familiar and a husband whom she didn't really know yet. Remember, she was really not much more than a child at the time of her wedding. Nor, at 16, was Louis. God knows best and gave them a child when He saw that they could handle it. Been kinder to everyone at court? How do we know she was mean or rude? Because those who hate her say she was? I find that hard to believe. And one last point, she was dead before the Revolution ended and there is no way they would have let her survive it, for three main reasons. She embodied everything they hated. She was:
1. foreign
2. nobility
3. Catholic
If you have concrete proof against anything I've pointed out, I would love to see it.:) (And btw, I don't mean this as a personal attack at all. I've just heard this stuff from too many people and I'm tired of having to defend Marie Antoinette. It would be nice if more people would try to walk a mile in her shoes. I doubt they would do any differently. )

[EmpressRouge]

Marie Antoinette had her faults but ultimately was the wrong person at the wrong place at the wrong time. Interestingly, the Empress Josephine (Napoleon's first wife) was far more extravagent M-A. Josephine's clothes, jewels and expenses would have made M-A seem like a farmer's wife, but Josephine managed to stay popular w/ the people throughout her life.

[semisquare]

its alright queenanne, i love to debate.
i dont have any author's names infront of me right now but give me a couple of days to come up with some name. but in the mean time i really like reading about women in power. from the time i saw an episode of fantasy island, one actress wanted to be a queen. in the end she found out that she was marie antoinette. at that point in my life i had never heard of her. so i begain to read about her life and i havent stop sense, 20+ yrs later.
i say that her life could have ended up differently because of how the times she receivedwarnings even from her older brother. who visited her and her country many years before the revolution. infact, he was the one that help her and her husband with the problem they hand in regards to having children.
there is a book with a collections of letters from maria to her mother and letters that were written from the austrian ambassador to maria's mother.
maria teresa knew was type of situation her daughter was in, so she had the austrian ambassador keep an eye on her daughter and report all of the goings on. while, she warn her daughter of her behavior and her duty as a queen.
also, i think if i was place in the same situation i would behavor better. i only say that because i am older and a firm beliver that history always repeats itself and we should learn from other peoples mistakes