The 'Scandalous' Life of Marie Antoinette
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What was Marie Antoinette’s early life and family background?
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At one point, she was the most hated woman in France, the woman they blamed for it all. But did she deserve it? Marie Antoinette, she was a teenage archduchess, she was a princess from Vienna, sent across Europe as a political bargaining chip to secure an alliance between rival empires. In 1770, 14 years old. She entered the suffocating spectacle of Versailles, a court of ritual, a court of surveillance where every gesture was judged and every weakness exploited. As the French monarchy began to fracture under crises that were totally out of her control, the queen became a scapegoat. A scapegoat for the nation that was desperate for someone to blame. As we loved it on this show, we are going to be sorting out the truth from the myth.
There is no one better to do this. Than Professor Kate Williams, historian broadcaster, author of a new book called Regina, a new history of women and power. We're very lucky to have her on the pod once again. From the halls of Versailles to the prison cells of revolutionary Paris, right, in fact, to here our podcast studio in History HQ. This is the story of Marie Antoinette. Kate Williams, good to have you back on the poll.
Thrilled to be here. Thrilled to be here. I mean, what a start.
We're gonna talk about Marie Antoinette. The key thing is not French, Austrian. That's kind of essential to understanding her in many ways, right?
Not French. Austrian, the Austrian princess, and she was criticized for that at the time, so she's not French. I I'd say her spending didn't break Versailles, and she never said let them eat cake. So we're gonna there's some myths to overturn. We're
gonna puncture this left, right, and centre. But the Austrianess is fascinating. Her mum Maria Theresa, actually one of the great figures of the eighteenth century in her own right, like two seconds on Maria Theresa, uh held an empire together against Frederick the Great, who's pretty hardcore, whilst having ki children all over the place in a man's world, extraordinary woman.
Extraordinary woman and Marie Antoinette is her fifteenth child and she's last child, fifteen, and she's really up doing work on her papers while she's pretty much in labor with Marie Antoinette and game gives birth to this small but perfectly healthy Archduchess. And when her husband died, she's a pretty benign figure, when her husband dies, when Marie Antoinette is a young girl, really Maria Theresa then becomes the king. She then becomes the king. She rules with an iron fist. She rules for her son. I mean, she is one of the most powerful women really in history in Europe. Would Marie Antoinette have had much access to her mum, do you think, in those early years? Oh, Marie Antoinette's mother was A control woman, a helicopter mother.
We've got a helicopter parent there. There's none of this gentle parenting with with Maria Teresa. She was intent on Marie Antoinette. And there's a rather tragic moment. Well, uh the there's the series of moments when Smallpox sweeps the family. So what happens when you're the fifteenth Archduchess? You think you're probably a long way away from a major marriage chessboard. i i it's a moment. But in fact, you know, th two sisters get killed by smallpox. Another one survives, but her looks are deemed so bad that she has to go and be a nun, and becomes a very powerful abess.
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