Introduced to the French courtroom as a peace providing after years of hostility with Austria, Marie Antoinette had break up allegiances that mired her in suspicions − not all unfounded − that she shared navy secrets and techniques with Austria. She was deemed detached to the French individuals, and derogatory references to her as “L’Autri-chienne” (a wordplay on the French for each Austrian and bitch) exemplify the mistrust that fuelled public feeling.
Château de Versailles, Dist. Grand Palais RMN / Christophe FouinNot like a king, a queen had no official energy and was meant to stay within the background. Marie Antoinette was thought of too distinguished, too vivacious and too prepared to use her allure to meddle in political affairs, secretly lobbying ministers and opposing the constitutional reforms the nation cried out for. So far as her enemies had been involved, she wanted to be introduced down. Libellous pamphlets circulated, some pornographic, accusing her of promiscuity (Depend Axel von Fersen is, the truth is, her solely identified lover), orgies, lesbian relations and even incest.
The gossip was “all pushed by misogyny”, argues Grant, including that “a number of the myths that persevered… arose within the nineteenth Century when her biographies [were] written by males”. In accordance to Burrows, the queen was really fairly prudish. She not often drank, she says, engaged in solely “very delicate flirtation” and “hated to be seen bare even by her personal maids”. But these tropes persist. In Marie Antoinette’s World – Intrigue, Infidelity, and Adultery in Versailles (2020), Will Bashor speculates that her continual uterine bleeding was attributable to venereal illness. However he additionally argues that she was “emotionally abused”, “bored” and “uncared for”, and although he finds her responsible of searching for pleasure exterior her marriage, concludes that, for him not less than, she was “forgiven”.
In actuality, “she was a faithful mom,” Dr Laura O’Brien, Affiliate Professor of Trendy European Historical past at Northumbria College within the UK, tells the BBC, referencing the “gentler and extra emotional connection” the queen had along with her youngsters, in distinction to her personal upbringing. She was the primary French queen to breastfeed, and to gown – as seen within the rejected portrait – in a way suited to parenthood and life at her rural retreat.
