Doomed to Fail - BONUS: Queen of Hearts - Marie Antoinette

Episode Date: May 7, 2025

Grab your forks, friends - we're having cake! Today, we re-release Taylor's episode on our dear Marie Antoinette. Yes, we hold her dear - she was just a kid put in a ridiculous situation, YES, she cosplayed being poor, YES, she was addicted to gambling. BUT she was also a good mother.Bonus - there's a time slip in this episode that we LOVE. In the Moberly–Jourdain incident, two teachers in 1911 saw Marie at her cottage, where she shouldn't have been (since it was 1911).  Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

In the matter of the people of the state of California, first is Hortonthal James Simpson, case number B.A.019. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. And we are back on Wednesday. Hi, Taylor. Hello, Fires. How are you? I'm doing very, very well. It is a continuation of our Sunday, and we are going to just trotting on then. Welcome to Doom to Fail. Today, we are covering the historical side of our Doom to Fail. the fail relationship event slash thing and taylor is drinking an entire slice of chocolate cake mixed within and blended with milk and ice cream why do you think i why do you think i'd be doing that because you said you were doing that 20 minutes ago thing use your context clues who do you think i'm talking about oh god okay so we're talking about chicago

um who's oh we're not talking about chicago we're not talking about cake oh oh you really threw me there um oh i did oh so okay um so it's got to be either taft um oh let them eat cake is it marie antoinette yes wow really yeah good job well yeah i'm good job So, okay, we're going back to apparently my favorite time period, which is the Enlightenment, and we're talking Marie Antoinette and her husband, Louis XVIth. This is a long and a good one, and there's so much stuff. It's pretty fun. Awesome. Yeah, I'm excited.

So I, in 2020, I read a ton of books because I had nothing else to do, but I read Marie Antoinette, The Journey by Antonia Fraser then. And then this week, I read Marie Antoinette, The Last Queen of France by Evelyn LeVay. And then I also watched the Sophia Coppola movie from 2006. Have you watched that? 2006, no. With Kirsten Dunst? You know what's funny is whenever you mention it, I pictured Kirsten Duntz, but I think it was because I was picturing Romeo and Juliet, not Marie Antoinette.

She's not in that. That's Claire Dane's. Oh, my God. That is... Wait, who's Kristen Dundsen? Oh, okay, yeah, no, I, no, I don't know, Claire Daines, man. What happened to Claire Daines? She was in that show about the Middle East and stuff that everybody loved with. Yeah. Man, I hope she's, anyway.

I hope she's doing well. I think she's fine. She's married to the guy who, actually, she's married to the guy who played the cop in the TV show, Hannibal. No way. every story comes back together she has nothing to that's not true because she has nothing to do with this she just thought that she was getting done and yet again I've derailed another episode

but anyway I remember seeing it in the theater and I was it ended and I was like what I was like so mad and like I didn't love it but watching it again and knowing more about Maria internet as a person I like it a lot more. Kishna does did a great job, kind of showing her humanity and the things that she was really,

really good at in kind of her situation. So I'll talk a little bit more about what that means. But I also, people are other websites that if I told you about them right now, it would spoil. So I'll put them in the show notes.

So when I'm researching, like I've said before, and it's getting super into things. I want to, like, think like that person for the week when I'm doing my lifetime worth of research in a week. And do you, have you ever seen this? I've seen it on Instagram. He's like a Kurt Vonnegut quote about buying envelopes.

Tell me the quote and I might know it. So I might even look it up, but the idea is that like, he's like, oh, I need an envelope. And his wife is like, you can go buy an envelope online. And he's like, no, I want to go to the store. I want to see people. I want to like romanticize little things in my life, you know? Yeah, makes sense. So like making the small thing special.

And if you are Marie Antoinette, everything is special, including you, you know? Yeah. everything's a little bit magical, everything is special. So that's sort of the vibe that she gives off. So Maria Antonia was born on November 2nd, 1755 at the Hofberg Palace in Vienna, Austria. So for reference, Louis the 16th, he was born on August 23rd, 1754. So he's a year older than her. They're roughly similar in ages.

Marie Antonia, that was her name before she was French. she was the last daughter of Maria Teresa. So Maria Teresa was one of the last Habsburgs in like that line of hopsbergs who've talked about before. And she ruled over Austria in like a bunch of different ways. It's complicated. There was a war of Austrian secession.

All these things happening. As a dad isn't really in these stories because her mom is so prolific. She's just like someone who's trying to get her kids married off and she's doing all these deals. and she's really interested in, like, Austria and keeping that part of Europe strong. She had 16 children, three of them died in childhood, and Maria Antoinette was the 15th. Wow.

Which is a lot of fucking children. Maria Teresa said that if she was not always pregnant, she would have gone into battle herself, which is cool and fun. That's the kind of mom that she had. Yeah. So this is similar to Kathleen McGrath. I'll bring her up a little bit more, but Katha McGrath's mom was very similarly trying to get our daughter's married off and, you know, grow the line. And it's somehow the Holy Roman Empire and Austro-Hungary. And this is why, like, Napoleon could do things, like have a sister be queen of

Naples, because there's always a queen of Naples, which is fun. So Maria Teresa, Maria Trinette's mom, was married to Francis I, Holy Roman Emperor. Of all of their kids, there were several archduchesses, two Holy Roman emperors, an archduke. And then Maria Carolina, the queen of Naples and Sicily, there was a Duke of Berescau, and then there was Maria Antonet, who was the queen of France. So she did pretty well for someone trying to get her kids to have, like, good jobs. Yeah, she seems, uh, she doesn't like she had a plan for her kids. Yes, exactly. So a lot happens, and Maria Antonia is promised Loua the 16th when she is 14 and 1770. so her childhood was like obviously very nice she lived in these like palaces in vienna and she also met Mozart when she was a child which is cute they're both kids when they met she was hard to teach and didn't really want to learn but she could sing and dance so she was kind of like a spoiled rich kid for the most part but like not her fault so a little bit more about like why what happened to marie antoinette happened to marie antoinette and why what happened to katherine the great happened to katherine the great was a little bit older she was a little bit older she was

She was born in 1729, but it's the same idea. You send your European wife to another European, Russian, whatever place to marry the monarch or the next in line to hope to, like, preserve your line and move it on. Marie Antoinette was like very, very young. And she didn't really have that like political acumen that Catherine the Great had. Catherine the Great went in and she was like, I want to be Russian. I want to learn the language. I want to upgrade the society. I want to help the people.

She was smarter than her husband, and she was ready to roll. Catherine McGrath? She did. She did. She did. No, they didn't. Catherine Great died when she was old. Wait.

Who was our Nicholas's wife? No, no, no. That's way, way, way, way, way later. Oh, okay. All right. I also don't know history. Yeah. Keep yelling. Sorry.

Oh, my God. It's our first episode. Re-Listen to our episodes as far as. So, I'm just kidding. So, Marina, Rientonet has none of the qualities that Catherine the Great had. that Catherine the Great had, which is fine. Like, people, if, I feel like, 99.9% of people in the situation would be like, fine, I'll, like, live in this palace forever and kind of be sad, but not worry about it.

When Catherine the Great was like, I'm going to be the ruler. You know, she has something special that Marie Internet did not have. So there's a bunch of people in this story. I'm going to bring them up. This is not in order, but I'm just going to pull out some of the interesting parts. I think the doomed to fail part is that arranged marriages during revolutions can go either way. So either you're Catherine McRae and you get your husband killed so you can rule or you're reinitimate and you both die.

This is like the time when people were like just sick of monarchies, you know? Yeah. Yeah. It seems like you just have to pick the right husband, either the guy that you can steamroll and take over or the idiot who gets you and your kids killed. Yeah. Yeah. Or you're just like living a boring life at court forever, which I don't know.

I'm kind of down with that. I'd like to lay around and read all day. Yeah. So in 1770, Maria Antoinette is on her way to France. So she's still Maria Antonia. When she steps into France, she's Maria Antoinette. She has a little portrait of Louis the 16th. And he's a little one of her.

So they haven't met, obviously. They have these little pictures of each other, a little paintings of each other. Louis is the next in line because his dad died and his grandfather is the king. His grandfather is like, this guy who has like this, like, flamboyant mistress, and he, like, loves women, and that's, like, a big thing, and everyone knows it, which is important. That's just the grandpa. So, Maria Tonight has taken through the woods into a literal, like, a tent in the woods between Austria and France. It's on the border. So she walks in as an Austrian and leaves French. While she's in the tent, they change her, they get rid of everything Austrian that she had on her and change her into all French clothes. And then she walks through and she is French. you know yeah it's very um like you yeah it's very ceremonial it sounds like yeah and everything is in the story so when she walks out the tent the king and louis are there they say hello for the first time she is very formal in doing the right thing she's

like i'm so happy to be here like thank you everyone i'm so happy this is amazing and she's 14 you know she's being told to say these things he's a little bit indifferent probably a little scared but that's when they meet for the first time and they're married really quickly afterwards so when after they get married they live at Versailles have you been to Versailles no no my cousin literally just came back from France and went to Versailles and said it was like it was stunning but I think you just had to say that it's like when everybody goes to the Louvre and says oh my God the Mona Lisa was life changing it's like was it or is it just like another thing that you have to

say socially to be cool I don't know I think Versailles actually stunning so I haven't been there either, but we should go. We talked about this a little bit with Lizzie Borden. I think I brought it up because Lizzie Borden at her house, there were no hallways. There are no hallways of Versailles just like room after room after room. Yeah.

When I was just in Seattle, I visited a co-worker's house. And it was interesting because like his, he was doing a tour. And like, his bedroom had like a door to another room. they had a door to the stairs and i was like when was this thing built because i remember that

they built houses that didn't have hallways it looked like it was designed like that it looked like it was like two rooms that were supposed to be separate that you had to walk through to get from one side of the next and then the house built like the 1960s i was like i didn't know it was like that weird of a concept to have hallways back then but maybe it was i don't think so yeah that's weird but yeah but that's what that's what's like in versailles if everything is very public you have to walk through everyone's stuff so it's a it's it used to be a hunting lodge which is like in air quotes it was always like very beautiful palace and then um kings as they as they were living there they built more things on it and it got bigger it's 11 miles from paris so it's not

very far from paris it's kind of close and it has 2,300 rooms and it's 6779,000 184 square feet. It's very big. Yeah. So, and it has to be big because like a shit ton of people live there. There's courtiers who have small apartments that are like worse than their apartments in Paris, but they're like grateful to have them. There's dukes and such that have a larger set of rooms. Then there's an infrastructure to keep that.

So if I'm like, Fars, Duke of Austin, come stay with me at Versailles. You're like, totally, that sounds great. Here are my 10 people I'm bringing with me, you know, like the dude who dresses me. the dude who shines my shoes, the dude who does this. You know, so there's so many people involved, and you have to feed everyone and there's kids everywhere. So it's very crowded in there. It's like, it's like a city. It's so wasteful. In Versailles. Yeah. Well, yes, exactly. So it's not like there isn't any pomp and ceremony

in Austria. There totally is. It's also very beautiful. She also lived in a palace. But France is something different. It's like really like high, high, high pomp and ceremony. So one of the people that she meets almost immediately is Ann De Noy. And listen, I'm going to try my best with these. I listen to the book, so I have a kind of idea how they pronounce them. But Denoy is Dene, N-O-A-I-L-E-S. So she's the Comtest de Noi. Comtesse Denoy. There we go. She's a first lady waiting for the queen. So she knows all the rules. So in the morning, when Maria Internet wakes up, there's like this crazy dressing ceremony where there's like 20 women. in the room and they hand her each piece of clothing one by one because it's like an honor to do that like oh it's an honor to hand you your sock you know things like that so there was no privacy in versa i everyone was there um the comtestinoy was kind of like hovering over over everything marian internet called her madam etiquette because she knew all the rules and like

really really stood by all the rules um just to mention later um she will be guillotined This place, this place, like, it reminds me of, like, the warmth and comfort you'd experience at the Beast Mansion and Beauty and the Beast. Like, it is... It's exactly that. Yeah. Stupid over the top. Like, yes. Not cozy at all.

No, it's not cozy. Absolutely. I feel like you're pretty uncomfortable because your clothes are uncomfortable. There's people everywhere. There's no privacy. It probably smells like shit everywhere, too. It definitely smells terrible. terrible. There is, I didn't write this down, but there is one thing that one dude goes to America and he comes back and he's like, hey, do you guys know that the women in America wash themselves with soap? He's like, they smell pretty good. What on earth are you talking about? Which are we? There's like horses everywhere, you know, yeah. So, Versailles crazy on their wedding night, after the wedding, like, ceremony party itself, everyone's in the bedroom with them. So like,

tons of people, dukes, duchesses, courtiers, everyone's there. The ceremony is the king gives a pair of pajamas to Louis, the 16th. And then, I guess he's not the 16th yet, but to Louis. And then the top lady in the, in the monarchy, gives pajamas to Marie Antoinette. They get to change in private. Then they get to sit in the bed together in their PJs and everybody sees them. And the king's like, good luck and everybody cheers. And then they have to see them together in bed.

Like that's a huge part of it. And then they close the curtains. And everybody leaves and continues to have a party. And now they're left alone, these two, like, a 14-year-old and a 15-year-old in bed together. Were they supposed to, like, do it? Yes, they're supposed to have kids, like, immediately. And they do not. They do not have sex on that first night.

They don't have sex for a while. It's weird with guys like this, like with Peter III, with Catherine McGrath's husband, like they also didn't have sex for a while. And it sounds like everyone around them was having sex. Like, maybe not in front of them, but, like, his friends all knew what was going to going on, but maybe they were, like, pretending. Maybe they embarrassed these guys and, like, they didn't ask the right questions because they just, like,

don't necessarily know what to do, you know? Yeah, they're 14. Yeah, they're kids. They just, like, assume that they would know how. So it sounds like there might have been, I think this is the same for Peter the third that it is for Louis, that like an operation might have helped, like a little bit of like a four-skinned operation that would have made them be able to like, excuse me, like actually have sex.

But either way, they just, like, don't know what they're doing. So, Louie, he, like, loves locks and keys. He does all this, like, nerdy stuff. He doesn't really talk to her, but he's nice to her. And he could be worse. He could be Peter III, who's, like, actively the worst. Remember, he was a wet noodle from a long time ago? Yeah.

So while she's waiting to be useful, meaning have a baby, she wants to go to Paris. So she sneaks out and goes to, like, masked balls in the city. she loves the theater she does little performances so she like will put on a play she put on um the marriage of figaro sometime later in in her life so she sings and she dances she loves to party she loves to gamble so maria and twinette will play cards until dawn um so she'll gamble and she has all this money and she just has like jewels and stuff and louis okay with that he like he like loves her in his way he's like this is my wife it's not like he's sleeping with anybody else he gives her gifts he's just like not really into her

or maybe anyone that way. She buys things like, she buys diamond bracelets that cost the same as like a mansion in Paris. There's a lot of diamonds in this story. So crazy.

This is also, it's so stupid. And this is also when she meets Leonardo Atoui, who's the hair guy. He's the guy who, with her together, they invented the big hair,

big hair, big hair thing, which is great. So like the higher and higher hair stuff that's like obviously that you think of when you think of her. She did it with this hairdresser guy. It's called the beehive, right? no it's like way more than a beehive like a beehive is something you can do with like your own hair in the 60s but her thing it's like you know three feet above your head it's like and everyone's hair was like powdered and white you know because it's still the um you know like how like the same time as like george was powdered you know like big wigs yeah do what i'm talking about yeah i'm looking at her picture she's really pretty if these pictures do her justice i think they're close i'll tell you

how I know that later. But she, another thing with the hair that I was thinking as an aside is like, have you ever done like a exfoliating face mask on your face? What do you think the answer to that? What do you think the answer to that is? Just out of curiosity. Every night, every night. So if you do ones, I've done them before.

Like, some of different colors, you know, depending on what's in it. You know what I mean? But when you put on like a white clay mask and you smile, your teeth look terrible. Because you're like, my teeth. your teeth against actual pure white like they're not white you know and I'm just imagining that like they don't talk about this but like everyone's teeth

which is just looked yellow and terrible because they have like powdered white skin and powdered right here and these beautiful dresses but they're like teeth must have been like gross yeah I can imagine for the most part that I'm imagining so

eventually Louis and Marie Antoinette do you have sex and it is getting awkward because his brother has a baby with his wife, the Countess de Provence, and that's her sister-in-law. So that baby is next in line. So everyone's really, really mad at Marie Antoinette. And she's like, I don't know what to do. I'm in bed with this man. Like, nothing's happening. And he does tell someone that he does have, he does manage

to get hard and then like be with her for like two minutes, but then he like pulls out and doesn't ejaculate. That's not how babies are made. Yeah, well, it sounds like you just didn't know what he's not going to cut it. Yeah, it's not going to cut it. So whatever happens, guess how long it took them after they got married to finally have sex? A week. Seven years. That's not a happy marriage.

No, it's a long time. So she's finally, she's super happy. She's like writing to her mother because her mom was like, you have to have a baby, you know? So she's like, we finally had sex and she gets pregnant. She has a baby. It's a girl. baby which you know is a bummer but another like ridiculous pump and and ceremony thing is when she has a baby everyone is there because they need to see the umbilical cord attached to the baby attached to the

mom to prove that he's like there you know so crazy and like when i had my babies i was like i would like the nurse and the doctor and my husband please like nobody else i know but if you're like want to have their families there which is fine but like 50 people crowding in the room that's bad But if flow was the air to like California, you know? You'd have to then, I guess. I guess you'd have to. Also, I could take a DNA test and be like, she's mine. Oh, yeah, that's right.

That's right. That's right. You know, yeah, physically see it. She does, she, Brianneut passes out and they make everybody leave the room. And then later, Louie changes it where you don't have to have that many people in the room, which is very nice because you don't 850 people in the room to do that. Her life seems fun. but also a nightmare yes exactly so other stuff is happening but eventually she does have four children so marie theres is her first daughter she's born in 1778 she actually lives until 1851 so she lives

to be to be a little bit older then there is she has a son named louis joseph xavier francois he dies in childhood childhood he dies when he's about eight years old he was a very sickly. And then she has another son who's Louis the 17th. And he also died when he was young. He died when he was about 10. And she had another daughter who was born in 1786 who died after a year. So two of her boys live into childhood. One infant dies. And then her first daughter does live for a long time. So a lot of babies died during this time. The French Revolution definitely had a part of this as well. So in the Marie Antoinette movie, it was like wrong about the number of kids she had, which is weird because it's like a difference of three and four. And the ending was also like

oversimplified it. But still like one thing that the movie with Kirsten Duntz, I think does that like I didn't appreciate the first time I saw is like Marie Antoinette was a really good mother. She really wanted to be with her kids. She wanted to, you know, feed them herself and spend time with them usually in this time like you just didn't do that so she really was a good mom so before and during this time is like 10 years which is having kids here is a non sequential list of interesting shit that happened during this time so the current king was a grandfather to louis the 16th he has a mistress named madame du berry and there's an interesting tension between madame du barry and mariontwinette du barry was from a poor family she was a sex worker but the king liked her

so much that he had her marry someone at court so that she could be around. Wow. Which is ridiculous. Her husband was like, you need to be nicer to the king so that we can have more stuff. So it was definitely like she would be with the king and then the husband, yeah, all the things. So eventually she was presented at court as a king's mistress. And the first time they tried to present her, she was so nervous. She broke her ankle running away.

But eventually she lived in apartments with a secret tunnel to the king, which happens a lot in Versailles. there's like secret tunnels to different people's apartments, different people's rooms. So she's living in apartments with tunnels to the king. She ends up living a really fancy life. She's friends with Voltaire. She's sort of just like at court having a blast. And Marie Antoinette, when she gets there, she's like, I don't want to talk to her. Like she's like a harlot.

She's not someone that I want to associate with. And the king is like, you have to talk to her. She's my girlfriend. And it's like creating a lot of tension in the palace. So eventually on New Year's Day, 17, 72, Marie Antoinette goes up to Madame DuBerry and says, there are many people at Versailles today and then walks away, but that was enough to make her happy. Right. So she wouldn't be like as exiled.

So the king, he dies in 1774. He died of smallpox. He didn't think he had smallpox because he thought he had it when he was young. So they thought that like he was immune to it. And then also later like Louis XVI gets inoculated to smallpox. They're doing that now. and he gets like the vaccine quote quote but the king is like gosh if i don't know any better i think i had smallpox but like no one tells him he a smallpox because they're like embarrassed because

he thought that he had had when he was a kid and he eventually dies of that and marie antoinette becomes the king of france and louis becomes louis the 16th the king of france so you just said marie antoinette marie becomes the queen of france okay yep got it got it yeah so king louis has some meddlesome ants in the movie they're like it's molly shannon and then another lady who played um moaning myrtle and harry potter and they're just like always gossiping and you know it's tons of gossip they're cute but they um one of the ants dies having her tenth child and they described it as like there was just blood everywhere which is gross and terrifying so politically and socially france is falling apart so you might remember there have been this is a the revolutionary time. France gives aid to the Americans. People are starting to say things like, maybe we should share the wealth. The way the king spent money is crazy. Like Marie Antoinette had a coffer of money that was like her allowance, but she overspent it constantly. And it was like, you know, having like a million dollars a month. It's like when you see the celebrities get

divorced and the alimony is like $600,000 a month. And you're like, crazy what yeah yeah that's wife just did that i think yeah that's that's bananas you shouldn't name that much but that's how much money she's she's spending just so much money there's also a weird thing which or surprise surprise rich people are not taxed so that makes poor people really mad because it should um the french people are starving so they're in 1775 there's a flower war flower like F-L-O-U-R war and people like they can't price of bread is going up they are just like literally starving in the streets this is where they say that she said let them eat cake and the idea of being like them being like you know your majesty the people of France of France are starving they don't have any bread and she looked around and her room is like full of cakes and she's like well let them have cake you know but she didn't really yeah okay I was going to say I heard that was a rumor yeah she didn't really say that but that's the idea that she's like so just drowning in food you know while people are starving and like doesn't really understand so people are starving and pissed um also just as an aside she's very catholic and just still going to mass all the time she's really like stays really religious her family from her brother's a holy roman emperor they're in austria they are trying to keep their power and grow their power so there's some people that are like kind of scheming to have Maria Antoinette have more of a political leaning, kind of like

Catherine McGrath, but she just doesn't have that, like, bone in her body. This entire time, there is a man named Compton Mercy, and he has been by Marie Antoinette's side the whole time. He came from Austria. He whispers things to her. She confides in him, and he is in constant contact with her mother. And so sometimes she'll, like, tell him a secret and he'll tell her mom. So there's this person who always has Austria on his, you know, on his brain trying to do stuff for Maria Trace. And she just trusts people because she doesn't understand these political deals and this thing that she's a part of. Like she doesn't understand what's going on in Europe.

She doesn't really like, she doesn't really think about it, you know? Right. She's just kind of being used by a lot of people. Her brother, Emperor Joseph II is the Holy Roman Emperor. He's very involved in like her and Louis not having sex. He's like, you have to do this. You have to have a baby. And he needs to do things for Austria.

There's a war of Austrian secession in this time. But he visits Maria and Tornet at Versailles. She's always really happy to see him. So he's like the sibling that she sees like again after this. I don't think she sees maybe any of her others. She also has a couple girlfriends, like her ladies in waiting. So there is the Princess Dalylun Ball, who's her best lady in waiting. She's always around.

They're partying together. They're gambling. They're going to Paris. They're creating their plays and musicals. They're like always together. She also has a friend named the Duchess of Polignac. And so she's a little bit sassier. People don't really love her being with her, but she's like, no, she's so fun.

I like love to be around her. So she's one of her favorite friends as well. So she has these friends. She has her family kind of meddling in her business. She does really, really love her kids. I think I said this before. I jumped my gun, but she wants to be with her kids more. A lot of the tradition in this time was like, you'd have a child and you kind of like give it to tutors until it was like

10, you know, and then you would like take it and get to know it. But she really wanted to be with them. She also adopted some kids to be with her kids, adopted in air quotes as well. So like she stole a poor person's child, basically. A hundred percent. She had like a poor girl follow her daughter around and they would do all the same things. They would like wear the same clothes and learn the same things to keep her humble, which is weird. She also had an enslaved child named Jean Amalcar and she really he was from Senegal

and she sent him to boarding school and paid for him to go to boarding school until when she died then they couldn't pay for that anymore and he ended up like on the streets and he became an artist

and he died pretty young but so she had like a bunch of kids around her daughter did not like her she's like very very haughty and like not very nice to her so there's like a story

where someone was like oh your mother like she's you know could be something could happen and she could die and the daughter was like I wouldn't care you know and they were like what do you know what death is and she's like yeah it means you don't see them again I wouldn't care my dad loves me more than my mom so even though yeah I think that she you know really I truly believe she wanted to be a good mother so but her daughter was kind of a brat so her first son he died when he was like five or no he was eight but when he was eight he weighed 16

pounds which is huge no big oh when he was eight years old no yes bad bad bad wow yeah yeah my eight year old was 50 pounds and she's small you know like he was super sick like super wasting away and he passed away when he was young um so she's you know she has another son who who's going to be her son for who's going to be around until he's 10 but he dies like later so she's still spending money at one point this is fun ambassadors from india come to visit and so they never really seen like they've never seen people just like this the people at versailles have never like smelled indian food cooking before and like no one will try it they're scared which is makes sense and fun yeah and so she really really like loves the way these

ambassadors from india look and so she has madame tousseau like of the wax museum make um like wax mannequins of them so she can keep that versa and always see them It's pretty cool. It's like the real Madame Tussot is in this story. I know she was that old. Yeah. So it seems like everything was pretty hectic. She gets at one point, I mean, people in France are starving, and Louis buys a chateau for her, which is like, you know, a bigger house than like you've ever seen.

So she can, like, go somewhere and be calm and get away from Versailles with her kids. She also, on the grounds of Versailles, makes a fake French village in 1777. it's part of the gardens yeah they built houses and had farms there were real gardeners um real animals she would wear simple dresses and kind of like walk around her little town there's like defense that she wasn't like pretending to be poor but she was like trying to have like the simplicity of it i don't know and like it definitely wasn't real like there was a barn but inside the barn it was a ballroom you know and she would like be like oh let's get some goats let's have them all be brown with one dot you know she could like pick

things that like a farmer can't pick you know what i mean i thought the reason why she did that was because that was her only way to try and experience what normal life was like i don't know if she was trying to like experience a life of normal person i think she was trying to simplify her life but maybe that's the same thing yeah maybe i don't know so she spent a lot of time there and i'll have a side quest for us this is one of my favorite side stories did you say boo to a side quest no i said ooh let's see oh okay the opposite of a boo so okay okay perfect so i'm going to tell you about the time skip of the mobrily jordan incident have you ever heard of this probably not uh it sounds like a haunting but i doubt it is

Kind of. So on August 10th, 1901, two British teachers, Charlotte and Moberly and Eleanor Jordan, went to Versailles. They were living in, they were British school teachers. One of them was living in Paris. And they were like, you should get to know each other because you're going to work together. So she went to visit. They went to Versailles itself. And it was, they were like, like you said, like, yeah, yeah, yeah. We get it. It's pretty. They didn't love it. And they decided to go to another building, but it was closed. So they're kind of wandering, around the gardens of Versailles. And then one of them said, quote, everything suddenly looked unnatural, therefore unpleasant. Even the trees seemed to become flat and lifeless, like woodworks and a tapestry. There were no effects of light and shade and no wind stirred the trees. So they're walking and things are like kind of feeling weird.

Then they see a little cottage and a woman is in the window waving a handkerchief at them. They see two men dressed like really, really nicely. And they told them to like, oh, continue on. walked down this path. They ended up in a part of the garden and there was a bench and on the bench was a man and he had like a face that was pockmarked from smallpox and he looked at them and they felt like crazy terror like he was evil. And then they kept walking past him and they walked over a bridge and there was another man with another fancy hat and he showed them the way to the house they were looking for. On their way over the bridge, one of them saw a woman with like big blonde

hair and a white dress sketching in the garden. So when they got back, they like kind of talked about it. Like that was weird. You know, like what was all that? What did we see? And they went back to Versailles again and they couldn't find the bench and they couldn't find the bridge. So they wrote a book about it called Ed Adventure and they published it like under pseudonyms. But they said that like they saw ghosts. Like that was Maria Antoinette. And that was like people from the 18th century, like, being there. And so obviously people, like, critiqued them and things that they're lying or they accidentally walked into a costume party or something. But I think it's fun to think that maybe they, like, accidentally walked into Maria Antoinette, like, in her little village. One of the critiques called it a lesbian folio do, which made me laugh, because, like, I don't even know, who knows if they're lesbians, but, like, a lesbian folly do is hilarious. And I'm going to call everything that two of them and do together that. I was like, where the lesbian part come from? it's just like they're two like spinsters living together so maybe they were you know like they were

roommates that means they were lesbians but either way that's not the point the point is that it's funny to call people that it could have been a fancy dress party but anyway i hope it's true that's that would be fun that'll be really cool yeah i love it anyway so that's that time skip so the french people are getting mad they're seeing all this money that she's spending there's an affair with a diamond necklace where there's this really really really expensive necklace it has like 600 diamonds on it. It's, like, more expensive than anything ever. Madame Dewberry had wanted it at one point.

But someone dressed like a fancy person, goes to these jewelers and says, Marie Antoinette wants this necklace, but it has to be a secret. So she can pay you in installments, but she definitely wants it, but don't tell anyone because everyone's mad. And then that woman also gets a cardinal from the church, who Marie Antoinette does not like, to help her with that. So the woman is like, Cardinal, let's go meet. the queen in the garden he meets this woman who says she's maria antoinette in the garden and says

please get this necklace for me i promise i'll like help i'll pay for it um but it's not her it's all like a scam these people don't know what anybody looks like really yeah and it's like dark and like whatever it could have anyone you know so everyone loses money the jewelers are like what do we do like we have to be paid for this you know and they like go to the queen and she's like i don't know what you're talking about and there's a trial and she's really mad because she's like going to ruin her reputation and it totally does people like think that she did this thing to like try to discredit this cardinal and all these things it's not good yeah turns out terribly so sentiment is bad because of that because of the

village because of the chateau because of all these things um another thing that's happening is is she does have an affair with a swedish um dude or dude but he's like a military guy named axel von ferson the younger aka fount ferson count ferson so i'm called ferson he had been to America to help in the Revolutionary War. In 1774, he went to Versailles and at a party, he and Maria Antoinette talked for a while, and he didn't know who she was. So that's like, he was like, this woman's great. And like they just like, he didn't realize that she was the queen. And he came back four years later. And she saw him and she said, oh, you're an old friend. Like she remembered meeting him, you know, because he was cute and like he made her feel sexy.

And he would be in and out of her life forever for the rest of her life. Some people think that her last two kids are actually Ferson's kids and not Louis the 16th. Some people are like, oh, yeah. Some people are like, oh, they were just really good friends, which is so stupid because, like, who cares? Like, it's been 300 years, you know? So, but, like, he had rooms below hers that were connected. So tons of tunnels connecting him to her. In the 1800s, his family had a bunch of his letters and he sold them, but they were heavily edited.

Like, people had crossed out, like, big paragraphs. them which you don't do if it's not a love letter you know right and um he tried to save her a few times there's letters from first end to his sister that are like oh i just love this woman so much i don't know what to do he also was like a real pro monarchy guy he thought that like kings were appointed by god so just like being around her was like magical for him as well you know yeah um the king knew or whatever but i don't but he you know i don't think he like particularly like cared too much he just was like content to like do his do his own thing and he was also sleeping with other people no he wasn't but he just i wasn't into it okay yeah he was asexual

he just like it just wasn't wasn't his jam which is fine he didn't so he was like okay i know my wife needs this so after the revolution people found his rooms under his bed and they They were like under her bed, under her rooms, like the secrets and stuff. And they were like, oh, interesting. You know, like it was very clear that they were like, he was sneaking around. Other things that happened, Lafayette is there. So Lafayette, who was, you know, the French guy who came to America to help George Washington. He goes back to help with the French Revolution.

But he wants to compromise. He's like, you know, the French, France is like, we want to totally abolish the monarchy. Lafayette is like, we think we can make a compromise, have a constitutional monarchy like Britain. like let's try to figure this out in 1789 in july the best deal is stormed so a yad yada a lot of that but there's like a ton of unrest a ton of riots this is an insurrection they stormed the best deal which is a jail in paris and they let everybody out so this is like the regular folks who are who are having the revolution starting the bestial and in that like they're killing people and putting their heads on sticks so it's like very brutal

day. In October 1789, they come and they storm Versailles. So this sounds like very, very scary. Like, so it's the middle of the night and they do this in the film, I think, well, because it gives a feeling like it's the middle of the night. She doesn't know where her kids are. She doesn't know where Louie is. Everyone's in separate bedrooms. There's all these corridors. There's all these secret passages. And people are starting, like, running up to Versailles. They even have a hard time closing the doors because the Versailles had never been closed. People would just kind of welcome to come in and out. you know. So they're like, try to lock the doors. It's chaos. Everyone's crying. Lafayette comes and tries to help them. But they get, end up getting taken to Paris. So, but while they're still at Versaia, kind of the last time that she's there, the crowd yells that they want to see the queen. She goes out in the balcony with her children and they say, no children. We just want to see you. So she sends the kids back in and she does a bow to them. And a couple people are like, bring her to Paris. And some people are like, long leave the queen because they kind of like that like bow that

cheated to them, but... Bringing to Paris to kill her, though. Yes, but not for a few years. She's essentially under arrest for treason and conspiracy and for spending all of the country's money. She definitely spent a lot of money.

She contributed a lot for that. Yes. So they have a few chances to escape, but they like don't, they don't want to leave France. That would be seen as like terrible. nobody trusts her because of her Austria connection. So I don't know how much she actually knew that she was like passing information

to Austria, but she was constantly doing that because the people around her were like kind of betraying her and sent telling stuff to other countries in Europe. They have a plot to escape where they at one point they like dressed like their peasants and get into a carriage and they ride

for a couple days out into the countryside and then they eventually get caught and have to go back. But before they left, Louis XVIth wrote a letter on his desk that was and then his desk that said like fuck you i never would have compromised with you i hate you all or something really hilarious and then when he got caught and brought back he was like i didn't i didn't mean that letter takes you back which is so funny um this whole time person is like helping her trying to help her um get out of it um he thinks that she dies a couple times she sends him a letter

that just says i exist and i love you you know just trying to do it they try to escape a couple times, definitely they're prisoners. They have to, you know, things are starting to change. Like, she does have, obviously she has her ladies in waiting there with her. Louis 6th sister is there with them. So they're not alone yet. But things are like drastically different. So at one point, Maria Antoinette is in like her room in this prison, which is probably like more beautiful than any room I'd ever be in. But one of the guards is talking to her and he kind of gets tired and he sits on the edge of her bed to talk to her and she's just like, what is happening? You know, that's just something that would be like, you would get your head.

cut off for doing that at Versailles so it's just things are trying to change it goes on for years and the people taunt her whenever she's out like they like bring her from building to building to like question her people will like run past the carriage with like little tiny guillotine and like wave them in the air at her well wow that is don't because dark dark the king won't succeed they're like he's like no I can't like he can't do it he had opportunity to he could have saved his family but he like did it because he wanted to save the monarchy so while they're still living together as a family in this prison, Madame Lombal, which is her first lady in waiting,

she was like Maria Antoinette's best friend, is taken and guillotined. So here's what they do to her. They take her head and they put it on a stick and they bring it to the jail to show Marie Antoinette the head of her friend. So some people say that... Insane.

So they say that they heard a scream from the window, but it was actually the jailer's wife and Marie Antoinette never actually saw the head. Some say that the head had like her, her hair was just like matted and covered in blood and you couldn't really tell it was her. So there's a rumor that they took the head to a hairdresser and had her hair fixed so that Maria Antoinette could know, could recognize her. Somehow that's even more of her test. No, it's gross. And then her body, they ripped off all of her clothes, left her naked body on the street and ripped her heart out.

Jesus. Like, Jesus. Okay. so like when we talk about like people in like the ancient past being brutal like this was not too long ago you know if it is to her so other people that where they were with died other people who were guillotined madame duberry was the past king's mistress the comtesse denoui was she was the one that was the bad of etiquette marionette's sister-in-law elizabeth de france she was guillotined as well so a lot of people are dying they get sent to a dungeon. There's no servants. She wants to be with her children. She tries to teach some things. Eventually, the king knows that it's over. So, you know, lots of reasons where they get to it, but the king is going to be killed. Obviously, Robes Pierre is there. He's the guy who, like, loves the guillotine and was like responsible for tons of beheadings. And he spends an,

the king spends an evening with his family. He says he'll come back in the morning, but he doesn't. He changes his mind because someone tells him it would be too hard for him to go back and see them again. so he doesn't. He leaves her a ring and he is a lock of her hair. And by 10 a.m. on September 21st, 1792, he is killed by guilletine. Yeah. When she heard the, when Marie Antoinette from jail heard the bells announcing that he had been killed, she bowed to her son, who was technically the new king, but he was never officially king.

It's like, you don't want that rule now, son. Yeah, no, it's bad. Things are bad. So then they took her kids, which is so sad because she really loved her kids. They took her son and she could hear him, but she couldn't see him. So she would spend all day trying to like peek through the bars of her prison just to like see her son. She just like missed him so much. Her daughter was eventually sent away after all the deaths and she was exiled and then back and then exiled again.

Like I said, she lived to be like 60. But this son, for fuck's sake, is what I wrote. So this second son of her is the one who was Louis. technically Louis the 17th of France but he was never actually king he was 10 years old when they're in this prison and he gets this tutor who's this like they called him an alcoholic cobbler which is not the kind of person you want to be teaching your child and he sort of told the the boy to like say bad things about his mom so he wanted to say like he was like say horrible things about your mother.

And I guess the jailers caught the boy, like touching himself because he's like a 10-year-old boy. And they made him say and like made him believe essentially that his mom and his aunt would like watch him masturbate and like lay in bed with him when he did that, which is not true. So Marie Antimet was like, that's not true. Like you can make a kid say anything, you know, and they were like telling him these terrible things about his mother. But they made, they kind of spread that rumor, which also made one of her charges in. obsessed. Jeez. Yeah, he did her dirty. And yeah. So maybe he believed that it happened, but like he was a kid. And like they asked his sister, did it happen? And she was like, it absolutely didn't happen. But then she also like, is part of this like real world. So she's like, if my brother said it happened, maybe it did because he was more than me because he's a boy. You know, like stuff like that. So it was like, believe, believe children, of course, but also they beat him do this. And also like in a situation where. the entire country and now everybody in power is saying that like you and your family are the bad ones you're going to align yourself with power right yeah yeah exactly so in her last letter she did she forgave her son she was like they can he's just a child you know she loved him so much um now she's alone in a dudgeon for a while um she has a girl named rosalie who is her like only servant she's servant she reads books She prays. She cries. She doesn't eat. She loses like a bunch of weight. She is 37, but they say that she looks like she's like 60. You know, her hair turns gray. She's kind of wasting away in there. Count Ferson tries to help her, but he can't. He just cannot help her. There's a thing that happens where she's accused of sending messages via flower pedal that she was writing like messages in a flower to someone else that's called the carnation affair. She was like being, you know, told about other things or kind of accused of other things in the interim. So eventually, the

The three big things that Marie Antoinette is tried on are conspiring with foreign powers, the depletion of the state treasury, and of committing high treason by acting against the security of the French state. So she was kind of trying to incest, but not really. She said, I'm a mom. I would never do that. And then all the women who happened to be there were like, oh, my God, totally. So they threw it out because it actually got her some sympathy because she was like, look what they're trying to do to my son, you know. Right. Trying to do that.

she might have committed she might have actually committed treason so like one book says that she did it's kind of complicated so like she was they were trying to save their version of france so they were like trying to get help from foreign powers to save the monarchy so that's treason against the revolution technically you know you would expect them to do because if they're not successful to get beheaded yes exactly so she had no no chance in this. So on October 17th, 1793, she's convicted and sentenced to death. She writes a letter to her sister-in-law, who isn't dead yet, asks for forgiveness. She's wearing a simple white dress and a bonnet when they come to get her. They cut off her hair all the way to the neck, so the cut her hair really short, which makes sense, because I feel like hair were getting the way of guiantying someone and it'd be gross. So they cut her hair. They put the bonnet back on and they take her to the scaffolds where this is going to happen. The executioner, his name is Charles Henri Sanson.

He's someone who is an executioner. I think he also guillotined the king. And on the way up the steps, she accidentally steps on his foot. And she looks at him and she says, pardon me, sir. I didn't mean to. And those are her last words. Aw.

She was taken to the scaffold at 12.15. She was beheaded, beheld up her head and yelled, long live the Republic. She was buried in a poor section of Paris. But before she was buried, the people who worked at the cemetery were on lunch break and Madame Tousseau snuck in and took her death mask.

So we do technically know what she looked like because we have the death mask of Marie Antoinette that Madame Tussau herself made. That's pretty cool. It's super cool. I know you asked me about this is what she really looked like. So if you compare the death mask to the paintings, there's a little bit of, obviously,

styleization in the paintings. Her nose is a little more like hooked than it is in the paintings, but it's pretty close. And there's a website called Royalty Now that takes like death masks and paintings and descriptions into account and tries to say like what people really did look like.

So I think that the paintings are pretty close. Yeah, I would say so. Looking at the death mask. Yeah. After the revolution, Louis's brother becomes king and he moves her body, which is just bones.

and a little bit of hair and clothes to the Basilical Cathedral of St. Denis in St. Denis, France. And it is 18 miles from Versailles, and that's where she is buried today with Louie. So is she a tragic figure or? I think she's tragic in that she was just a little girl put into a, she didn't know any better, you know. And then you can say, like, sure, she should have known better, but also everyone's telling you that you're super special. everyone is confiding you with things everyone's kind of keeping her in a i don't know they're kind of keeping her in her perpetual state of like do this oh just oh you just eat you just drink you just have fun you just do these things nobody deal with that kind of scheming around her to do

other things and things are happening that she doesn't understand and she doesn't take interest in them so like that's her fault she could have taken more interest in them but also like you know what you know yeah you'd be like super you feel like super dialed in i think to even know what's pay attention yeah you have to be yeah you have to be katherine the great and she wasn't kathen the great but like no one is so yeah yeah i don't blame yeah you know yeah i've always uh kind of looked at it as kind of like a probably an unfair telling it is a story of excess that it is nice to look at and say, oh, well, the rich ones are the shitty, evil, horrible people. And that's true in a lot of cases, but there's people who are kind of born into things and

circumstances. And they're no more at fault for their ignorance than someone who is born into poverty is for their poverty. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. She's not, she's not that, let's a meatcake villain, for sure. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Awesome. yeah let's uh that was a really well research well done episode and i'm going to also call out the maria antoinette piece of it so there again that other show that i always harp on um you're wrong about also did like a three-part series on maria antoinette as well and that's outside of this episode that's the only other place i've like learned about her in her history um so that's also a good good listen to for more historical context in case folks were yeah and that

Totally. And the books I read are actually great. Like the Marie Antoinette, The Journey by Antonia Fischer, is so good. It's like a minute by minute, you're terrified when she's in the jail. You know she's going to die the next day and you're so sad for her and you're so worried and like all these things. So it really is, it really is great. Would you link to that and have a- Would you go by guillotine? I actually think, yes, it sounds kind of nice because it happens so fast. I think much rather a guillotine than like a dude with an axe.

You don't see it, right? Because your head down. Yeah, your heads down. I think both cases your heads down, but your head's down and it happens like in half a second. And your head falls into a basket, you know? But like the axe guy can like buck up and like cut your shoulder or like maybe it takes six times. You know what I mean? If you get a bad axe guy.

So I think having a guillotine, I mean, that's. what it was made for, right? To like speed up that process. Right. I think Robs Pier ended up being guillotined himself. Good. I'm not sad about that. He's the guy who, yeah, Maximilian Robespierre,

the man who loved being guillotined or guillotined. Well, he didn't love people. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, he loved guillotines. I think he gets guantined. Anyway, he's someone we could talk about later at Linkinian. this well because he is crazy yes yes the french luckily has a rich history of crazy crazy people well taylor thanks for thanks for sharing do we have any listener or mail um no i have a

couple people have reached out and said they've been listening which is super fun and i sent some stuff about our email list so hopefully people can join that that, you know, if you don't get the push notifications, if you just want to, like, know what we're up to and kind of pick what you're listening to, you can do that. And that's all going to be in the show notes and on our website and everything. So, yeah, please continue to listen, give us ideas. We love them. And thank you so much. We're at Doom DeFell Pod on all of the socials and YouTube. And our email is DoobdeFellPod at gmail.com. Sweet. Awesome. Thanks, everyone. Thanks, Taylor.

Have a safe trip to San Diego. Oh, thank you. Thank you. I'll now just shut this down and.