Professor Katherine Astbury

I think the key to the answer to that question is that it's not initially the French people, it's those at court that she's alienating, because she doesn't want to be with any of the old guard, she wants to be with young people, and there's a very substantial group who are anti-Austrian people.

From the early 1770s onwards, she's accused of nighttime sexual encounters in the palace gardens from before she's even queen. They become increasingly pornographic throughout the 1780s. She's frequently depicted in lesbian relationships with her friends. She's often shown with Louis' brother, younger brother, the Comte d'Artois. They're trying to destroy her reputation and with it the reputation of the French monarchy.

This all happens now to women, doesn't it? I mean, the misogyny is off the scale. And how effective was it? Because, I mean, this sort of stuff works. It really works. The king tries to have copies seized and burnt, but it's very hard. You can't control all print outlets. You don't need many of them. You only need one to survive. But she was cheating on the king, we believe. What was the name of the real lover?

So the love of her life was a Swedish officer called Axel von Fersen. That is quite a hot name actually. It is a hot name, isn't it? Axel von Fersen. Immediately in my head I'm just seeing a kind of Swede in a kind of chemise shirt just being like, hello.

The state was left virtually bankrupt after supporting the American War of Independence. Louis XVI called a meeting of the estate general to ask for permission to raise emergency funds, but instead they declared themselves a national assembly, and the people of Paris, worried that the king will suppress this new assembly, stormed the state prison, the Bastille, on 14 July 1789, and that marks the beginning of what we now call the French Revolution. But the obvious upshot is...

The French Revolution comes to the palace. And what happens to Marie Antoinette and her family and her husband? In October 1789, a group of women march to Versailles demanding bread and the king. At this point, the people of Paris still think that the king can save them. They're starving. The king has been misled by his courtiers over in Versailles. Bring him back to Paris and all will be well.

They're relocated to the Tuileries Palace in Paris, and over the next two years face increasing demands for constitutional reform. So the revolutionaries are trying to make a constitutional monarchy along the lines of the British system. But Louis is reluctant to sacrifice any of the notion of kingship that he feels he's inherited from Louis XIV. And in the end, on the 20th of June 1791, the royal family try to flee France.

There is debate about what to do with her. They consider putting her on trial. They consider sending her into exile. They wonder about exchanging her for political prisoners. I think part of the background to the discussion on what to do with her is the years of propaganda that have made much of her sexual appetites.

So in the end, in October 1793, she's given a two-day show trial in effect. She's accused of planning a massacre of the National Guards, liaising with foreign enemies, Austria obviously. So writing to her brother to say help. Writing to her brother to say help. She hasn't behaved brilliantly. She's very spoiled and has literally done nothing for the people of France.

And her children, the two surviving children? The son became Louis XVII on his father's death. The king is dead long live the king. So child became king. He dies shortly afterwards in prison, having been looked after, looked after in inverted commas, by the revolutionaries. Not a well child, he dies. Marie-Thérèse will survive. She will become the Duchess of Angoulême and will help Louis.

Louis' younger brother become Louis XVIII. Napoleon famously said of her, she was the only one in the family to wear trousers. Marianne Toinette was executed 16th of October 1793. Her last words, rather extraordinarily, do you want to tell us what they were, Kate? Allegedly. Do we know how much truth there are in actually her words? Allegedly she said to the executioner, pardon me sir, I did not do it on purpose after she stepped on his foot.

It's time now for the nuance window. My stopwatch is ready. Kate, take it away. It can be tricky to untangle myth and reality with Marie Antoinette, because what we know largely comes from things others wrote about her rather than from her own words. Opinions then and now are contradictory. Was she a monster or a martyr? Was she thoughtless and frivolous or a scheming villain? Was she depraved or a devoted mother? Did she bring down the French monarchy with her extravagance? Or is she a proto-feminist influencer and role model?

Versailles was a palace of mirrors and multiple reflections. Marie-Antoinette reflects back at us our own biases, so to different people she will mean quite different things. It is important, though, to distinguish more clearly between the teenage Marie-Antoinette and the person she was 20 years later.

Ilprepared to become queen aged 19, she did end up taking on more political responsibilities when Louis was paralyzed by depression and indecision. But the task of modernizing the monarchy and solving the economic crisis without impinging on the privileges of the nobility was an impossible one. During the revolution she tried to save the monarchy, writing a huge number of letters to revolutionaries as well as her brother on the throne in Vienna to try to effect change.

She would have seen herself as acting in France's interests, when in fact it's the point in her life when she's most actively working against them, just another of the many contradictions that make up her life. Her most tangible legacy is the impact she had on interior design, one of her most enduring passions.

Furniture and objet d'art from this period are usually labelled Louis XVI, but it would be much more accurate to call them Marie Antoinette style, as her interest in fabrics and furniture very much marked the late 18th century. Her taste is now appreciated as elegant and refined, a marketable brand for everything from tea to tote bags. Our collective fascination with her riches to rags story shows no sign at all of fading.

And given that powerful women in society are still seen with suspicion, and that tensions between privacy and celebrity have taken on a new urgency in a social media age, Marie Antoinette's life will undoubtedly continue to be relevant and generate debate for years to come. Two minutes on the dot. Incredible timekeeping. Wow, look at that. That's impressive, because I've sped up, because I was about five seconds over when I practiced it yesterday. Well done, Kate. Thank you so much. That's fascinating, the idea of the mutability, the fact that she was all things to all people.