You're Wrong About - Marie Antoinette

Episode Date: April 13, 2020

“What’s sad about her has nothing to do with the content of her character.” Special guest Dana Schwartz tells Mike and Sarah how an Austrian princess became a French scapegoat. Digressions include Rubik’s Cubes, Taylor Swift and Tom Stoppard. The use of the word “bawdy” exceeds all previous episodes combined.Here's where to find DanaSupport us:Subscribe on PatreonDonate on PaypalBuy cute merchWhere else to find us: Sarah's other show, Why Are Dads Mike's other show, Maintenance PhaseContinue reading →Support the show

Mike and I are your two lead sled dogs and Mike's the good dog on the team and I'm the terrible dog He's like look the trails this way, and I'm like look at this mushroom Welcome to you're wrong about the podcast where we let the women of history eat as much cake as they want Oh It's problematic I thought it was tongue-in-cheek and self-aware. Okay. All right I'm just gonna support Dana's approach to this because she's our expert today because I know that quote is wrong But I don't know in what way it's wrong. Okay good. See I'm the guest so I'm just gonna suck up to Michael no matter what

Well, this has already become an autocratic society with only three people in it Worrying welcome to you're wrong about we already did that part you can say your name I'm Sarah Marshall, and I'm working on a book about the satanic panic, and I'm Michael Hobbs I'm a reporter for the Huffington Post. I'm Dana Schwartz. I'm the guest this episode, and what do you do when you're not a guest? Oh, I Am a TV writer and I also host the podcast noble blood about Historical stories about the lives of nobles and royals. Thank you for coming on. Thank you so much for having me I was gushing before we started recording, but I'm a huge fan. Oh, we are a huge fan of your show This is so sweet. This is so fun

Although I've actually been avoiding certain topics of your show because I don't want to be spoiled for this episode Which is about Marie Antoinette. Yes, I Spoiler alert love Marie Antoinette. She was the first very first episode I did and then I literally just like couldn't resist that like I Think 15 episodes in I was like, but there's another Marie Antoinette story I want to tell Because I wanted to because it's your show. Yeah, and having your own show is about Doing maligned woman stories. I mean Marie Antoinette is one of the first maligned women I ever studied and learning how to write about her taught me how to write about Tonya Harding and

You know, she's she's part of that galaxy for me. So I'm so excited So I'm I have knowledge, but it's a rusty knowledge and I have none Do you have like scraped together? Whatever you think you have I did see the Sophia Coppola movie, which I There you go Don't remember very well because I think I had the flu when I was watching it So I was kind of in and out of consciousness That's a good way to watch it because you're like look at all the colors

But so I mean isn't the myth of her basically that she is basically a monarch and a tyrant and The let them eat cake thing the story is that the peasants of France are starving And she says this completely bone-headedly clueless thing well Well, they can just dip into their giant reserves of cake that they have sitting around right? Yeah And so the idea was that she was this rich lady who was totally out of touch with real issues of poverty and disaffection among her populist Yeah, and she was like Ivanka Trump like tweeting a picture of like why not make a blanket fort with your rich little children Yeah, but so where should we where should we start in busting the myth?

I think first I think the myth like why Marie Antoinette Fascinates us is like an important question because out of every like historical figure people know Marie Antoinette And like she's a every young celebrity in Hollywood every young female celebrity has been like styled like Marie Antoinette and Magazine photo spread like she's just like bigger than herself She has come to represent this incredibly evocative thing of being glamorous and being out of touch In a way that like people use Marie Antoinette and they don't talk about Louie the 16th as much her husband It's interesting and I think the two reasons that people are fascinated by her is one because she was Glamorous and beautiful which she was which people love and also she had a really gruesome tragic ending

It's like a little like Marilyn Monroe in this sense like people do love in spite of themselves like the true crime fascination We love a bloody beheading someone at the top of the food chain getting their comeuppance I'm gonna try and remember something that Joyce Maynard said in a documentary about Pam smart I think the quote is that people love the story of a beautiful woman brought down Yeah, it's like envy and then her comeuppance So I think that she yeah as a figure has come to represent something outside of herself in a in a way that then has Exaggerated her character, but also it's important to realize like during her life span a lot of figures Only become caricatures like later in life like looking back at them as historians, but like Marie Antoinette during her life

There are contemporary articles and caricatures and cartoons like she was a Representative figure in her own lifetime much in the same way. I feel like like a Tanya Harding was so she also had a sweatshirt That said no comment She would have well she did I mean Mike you're right because she did express herself Through fashion because that was one of the only avenues of expression that she had and through portraiture It's very interesting if you trace the portraits like the official royal portraits the symbolism of like now She's holding her children now. There's a globe now There's a book like the way she communicated with the outside world was very deliberate and she did try to do her

Best to spin things. It's like I'm a mother of four. I'm I'm eternal. I'm a good wholesome woman There was that sort of propaganda from her side and then we get the reaction from the other side But that's interesting. So basically the myth of Marie Antoinette began to form during her life This wasn't something that happened a hundred years later. Mm-hmm. Yes, absolutely Okay, she was a very heavily mythologized figure and when you think about it Mike Do you know about how she ended up in the French royal family? Do you have a read like a no dear America like royal diaries, whatever they were called book I didn't even know she was at one point not in the French royal family. Yeah

So should we dive in with like a little biographical information? Yeah, give me the bio So she was born in 1755 November 2nd and she was the I think the the youngest daughter of 15 of Maria Teresa of Austria Yeah, so Maria Teresa of Austria Absolutely killed the Queen game which is have as many babies as possible and then spread them out over Europe to forge your alliances I bet her mom was in a bad mood all the time because she had prolapse, right like good odds on prolapse Yeah, and also not all those children survived This woman was in a perpetual state of having and rearing and mourning children Wow, and yet was one of the most preeminent

Diplomatic figures in Europe at the time so her mother incredibly powerful Maria to Annette as the youngest daughter wasn't actually ever expected to make a marriage as good as the one to France one Because there was a war going on between Austria and France at the time You know they were sort of general enemies, but also because she had a bunch of older sisters So Maria to Annette's education when she was younger wasn't one anticipating that she was going to be the Queen of a nation Yes, smallpox happened as it does and so one of her older sisters was About to marry a man Ferdinand the fourth of Naples and her sister died of smallpox But because the Naples delegation didn't want that alliance with Austria to die

They were like to send one of your other sisters So Marie Antoinette's next older sister the one who probably would have gone to France went to Naples Leaving their youngest daughter Marie Antoinette unmarried and so after the seven years war when France and Austria ended Hostilities they were like great. Here's our youngest daughter. She's 13. Let's marry her to your prince How old was the prince? He was actually about the same age. He was maybe a few years older Yeah, but they were both very very young teens Marie Antoinette while she's still in Austria has a proxy marriage with her brother Which was a super common thing at the time what because you don't want to risk it You don't want to risk waiting until they get there for the marriage to take place

So they're like, okay There's a boy nearby and so he'll pretend to be your fiancee and you'll get married Oh for like the party for like the ceremony for like an official Religious ceremony, okay, and then they like swap in the real boy when they get to France so when she's 13 she's sort of fake Marys her own brother and then they they sent her to France to marry the Dauphine who is the grandson of the current king? Yeah, and this is actually a depiction of her coming to France is actually very accurate in the Sophia couple a version Where they ride her into the forest between France and Austria. Oh, yeah change out of every single thing

She's wearing that's Austrian send back her Austrian maids and ladies her friends make her give up her dog Mops, you know was her little companion at this time mops and mops was a pug So I guess picture that she has you know a pug is like a dog that you can hold on to yeah Like in your arms. This is a 13 year old girl leaving behind Everyone she has ever known and loved Presumably I mean with the assumption that she is never going to see them again because for most of them with the exception of her Brother, she won't yeah, she's not gonna see her mom again. She's not gonna see her sister again You are giving up your entire life. Wait, but why though? Why can't they come visit?

I don't get it I guess because travel was really dangerous and hard at that time and people would be busy Yeah, I mean, I don't know it's not like that anything else to do, but yes Yeah, I know and then also I do feel like there is this pack-and-tree being carried out That does really express this idea of like she is French now And it almost feels like she's not even supposed to go back to her home country because that would contaminate her Because the symbolism of it is like they have to go to this island That is exactly between Austria and France and like she has to take off all her original clothes and be put in all-new

All French clothes and she has to give up mops and what really gets me about all this is that like there is no way to explain to mops that this has to be done because the little boy in France is descended from God and His wife needs to be made French now so that he can rule his people as God told him to Mops doesn't understand that because it's bullshit

You're dead right on like the symbolism of it one because France and Austria had just ended hostilities But to most of the French people Austria was still an enemy, you know, like this was a Diplomatic maneuver that was happening up at the top but for most common people they were not fans of Austrian people and so The idea that their queen would be Austrian was something that they were trying to hide as much as possible I mean, she literally they change her name. She's a you know, Maria Antonia and it becomes Maria Antoinette Which is like the French version of that Okay, and again like at this point we have to remember like she's 13 years old She has not really been educated

Super well even I mean because women's education like you're not learning like literature and philosophy and politics You're learning how to entertain and how to host an etiquette and even because she was sort of late to the game When it came to French etiquette, she wasn't super well educated in that either. It's like Wellesley and Mona Lisa's smile And she didn't have Julia Roberts One of the young Antoinette stories that I really love is the story that is told in Amadeus By Emperor Joseph who's played by the principal from Ferris Bueller Who's her brother and which is apparently true that the young Mozart gave a concert for the Austrian royal family and at some point he tripped and fell and Marie helped him up and

He said will you marry me? Yes or no and My personal like fanfiction about all this is like what if they did have this like long-standing affair Over time and where it had like a correspondence with like fart chokes in it my understanding of this wasn't she like seven And he was like five during this also. Yes, which makes it adorable. So you're imagine just these two children He's a prodigy and she's a little little princess a little lonely princess and a lonely prodigy. Yeah with like overbearing parents And then you could like Brett Conn and stuff about certain Mozart pieces. You're like, ah, it's about the Marie Antoinette feel Like it's kind of historically irresponsible, but we need to have fun. No more than ever So what happens after she gets to France and marries this young Joffrey? So she comes to

This incredibly opulent court, you know Versailles is the context of Versailles was it was originally a hunting lodge Like the size of the Pentagon and it's a hunting lodge You know like how people who have these massive mansions in Newport Rhode Island say that they're cottages But the thing about Versailles that I think people need to the context of it is like Louis the 14th turned Versailles into this massive like opulent residence not only for the royal but for the entire court Because in his mind, he's like, I don't want people scheming to usurp me out there. I want everyone here Oh my god, did he invent reality shows? He's like, let's get all the crazy Flamboy and power hungry people together so we can all betray each other in a closed and very gossipy system

100% and also amazing his genius insight really was he's like if I institute a rigorous set of arbitrary rules like the ranking Member of the home as they walk in you have to bow this way and like only this person can give the king his shirt And this person can put on the king's shirt and this person, you know brings the king to the toilet like yeah That's like the bachelor. It's because it's the bachelor These ridiculous set of rules and he's like if people have focused on these rules, they're not going to be focused on overthrowing me. Uh-huh Oh my goodness brilliant. It's an elaborate barbie game to distract the powerful people from

Doing anything that might actually matter I love that he was able to to understand and manipulate the fact that like he was like, you know what people will always choose drama Pressure yeah very selfish myopic drama. So does she yeah physically move into Versailles? Yeah, everyone lives in Versailles. It's like it's it is the real world house Wow, okay So she she starts living there with her 13 year old Husband who she presumably has never met before No, they they meet for the first time at like the edge of the forest when she arrives

She changes her name officially to Marie Antoinette And then I think she's 14 when they actually get married at Versailles And after their wedding, of course, there is the ritual bedding ceremony where the two of them are Put to bed and everyone watches. No, I forgot about this part. This is so weird Wait, they actually literally watch them have sex No, no, no they they pull the curtains of like the four poster bed They put them to bed everyone like laughs and makes body jokes And then they pull the curtains

This wasn't the case as we'll get to with Marie Antoinette and her husband in some Braille families Then the next morning they would need to like show the bloody sheets prove that it happened Oh, it's so gross because if a marriage isn't consummated chaos happens as we uh saw in England You know, you get an Anne Boleyn Catherine of Aragon situation where you can overthrow Dynasties based on whether or not people had sex. Right. I also just love because I've been reading 1491 lately I just love that when Europeans come in contact with the quote-unquote new world They're going to be like, oh these indigenous societies are like so uncivilized

And then you look at what they're actually doing and it's like, oh no Everybody needs to like put them in bed so the 13 year olds can have sex and check the blood the next day to make sure they had sex We're cool make the teenagers have sex That's our system of governance But these Moslems believe that God appeared to a man named Muhammad. I mean But critically she and her husband do not have sex because he's a very shy boy He's a very shy boy He is a wells for boys as I would call it if you're familiar with that SNL sketch

No, what is that it's an SNL sketch about like Fisher price Wells for boys like a plastic well for like sensitive boys who want to gaze into the water They're so playing with regular toys. Yes. He's so is And do you think that like it's fair to say that that little doufan louis likes trains The really sad joke is he loves locks. That's like his hobby Locks locks the salmon or the padlock padlock I Jews had not come to france yet

They had but uh not for that joke but not to Versailles Yeah, and as it gradually became obvious that he and Marie Antoinette had not had sex That becomes the base of a lot of body jokes because the key doesn't go into the lock Yeah, and so the thing that we need to remember about Marie Antoinette as being a queen is the role of queen Is not a role of governance. It's not a role. She's not, you know, doing the books. She's not manning the economy Her job truly is to be an alliance between the nation She came from and the nation she arrived at check and then to make heirs young new And if she doesn't have sex

That marriage is not valid. It's an annulled marriage. So her entire purpose in france Is right null and void. They could just send her back to austria whenever they want like a an amazon return So it's like you have one job like your job is to breed and to like make nice and go to parties and keep everything happy and fun Yeah, and also like your your fundamental job is is this marriage to secure this alliance between france and austria And if you have not had sex you have not made that marriage. Okay. So the thing is she really tries She's a very pretty girl everyone says she dresses really well. She's really nice everyone else seems to like her But louis fundamentally does not seem interested and this goes on for years A full seven years. They're not having sex. She's not getting pregnant

And at this point the word sort of spreads outside versi like this is the first time we're getting like caricatures of Marie Antoinette in like Popular media and paper where they're making fun of her for you know, being a bad lock like this is fully Blaming the woman. I mean, they're making fun of louis too, but it's it's a failure on it's an embarrassment on his part and a failure Yeah, do you have a theory for why he didn't want to sleep with her? Yeah, so there's there's two theories You know, you don't want to medically diagnose anyone in history because you just you don't know But there are two sort of stories that people Tell to sort of neatly summarize this one is that like seven years into the marriage Marie Antoinette's brother comes to visit France

But only to give louis like a stern talking to like no one had given in louis like a birds and the bees talk So he just like did not know what he was doing. Okay as someone who has been a 13 year old boy That does not sound convincing to me But so that so some people say that then Marie Antoinette's brother came they walked around the gardens He was like, this is how things work and you have to picture the principal from Ferris Bueller's day off doing this for maximum enjoyment But the thing that's sort of more likely that people say is that louis sort of had a slight medical issue and I don't mean to get too graphic on a podcast

But that his foreskin didn't retract completely. Oh, so he like physically couldn't have sex That's what people say or it was sort of painful for him to to reach interesting states arousal But he had a little rudimentary surgery I guess like a little adult circumcision And then they started having sex which is great the letters between Marie Antoinette and her mother during this like seven year period where she's not having sex with her husband Are truly heartbreaking because the mom is like, what are you doing wrong? Why aren't you pleasing your husband? This is your one job

We thought you were pretty we thought you were likable. You're doing something wrong. Get on it, right? Of course, she takes all the blame. Yeah, and it's it's it's just sort of heartbreaking that this is a massive failure on her part But seven years in I guess they're probably like 2021 at this point They do have sex and she gives birth to a little baby girl the first of four Yay So they end up having kids and she has two sons and two daughters and Fulfills her duty and she's a real instagram mom of the time. I would say the most instagram mom Getting portraits with her babies

And they're all wearing like linen or like what are they wearing? So like sort of muslinny cotton when she's in her shepherdess phase Yeah, oh my god Like the the exact type of instagram mom who'd like put her little kids in overalls to go to a pumpkin patch Yes, wait, can I can I look up a picture? Which what what picture should I look up? I want to see the instagram So you'll see one if you google Marie Antoinette family portrait You'll see one of her Michael if you're looking of her in a red dress like a big red dress

That's what I'm looking at. Yeah, interestingly if you look in like the bassinet, it's empty Yeah, it wasn't empty when it was painted. It's because her her child died and they repainted They like photoshopped out the baby. They photoshopped out the dead baby, which is the saddest thing in the world That was her her fourth kid. Yeah, wow Yeah, but I mean it's it's like she she doesn't look happy I guess but it's not exactly like a candid portrait because these things take like hundreds of hours to make But also you don't that's like you I don't think the style at the time was like a grin You want to look like serene, right? Her skin is like alabaster white and so are all the kids. It's like they look porcelain

Yeah, they're so milky white. I mean that was the the fashion at the time was yeah powder on the face And if you can sort of picture like the french like Beauty marks like those like black molds that people would put on their skin in certain places on purpose It was to show off how white your skin was I didn't know that was a thing that people did. Yeah, people would do like fake You know, Marilyn Monroe's and here's the whole thing like I feel like it just embodies every Nonsense thing about Versailles. It's like you put it in a different spot on your face to mean a different thing It's like you put it by your eye and you're feeling flirty. You put it by your chin. You're feeling

shy It's like one of those parties where you wear like red green or yellow depending on how like up for it You are yes 100% like you have like a heart shaped, you know beauty marker the star shaped beauty mark It's like without tv and the internet people were so bored So also Dana at Versailles like how would you say that people were sort of communicating each other the way that we are communicating on twitter now Like how was the gossip traveling and stuff like that? I mean in person I think that part of like Versailles like everyone is living there and gossip is crazy. There's like an entire They're in like a Marie Antoinette book. There'll be an entire chapter about her relationship with Madame Dubury

Which was her relationship with the mistress the official mistress of the king at the time Which was a job with like a government salary, right? Oh an official role. You're appointed to mistress You have a job. You have a salary. You have chambers. It's like congratulations. Here's your 401k People thought that Madame Dubury was you know tacky. She was very mean She like made fun of Marie Antoinette sometimes and her mom at like parties and salons But the thing about Madame Dubury is Marie Antoinette is sort of persuaded by other catty girls Not to acknowledge the mistress formally because you know, she's sort of tacky and this becomes a legitimate scandal Which then is only assuaged by Marie Antoinette going up to

Madame Dubury in public and saying There are a lot of people in Versailles today and like scan crisis averted. The scandal is over. She publicly acknowledged Madame Dubury Oh, wow Diplomacy is always about coded language, but back then it's like even more subtle Like what people are actually saying with these like benign seeming actions I mean, this is how social media drama works today completely It's like the equivalent of like a friend of me than like liking a friend's someone's instagram post and then they'll be like Buzzfeed article. It's like and then Marie Antoinette watched Madame Dubury's instagram story

Did this gossip Make it down to like the people because there obviously weren't tabloids at the time But information did travel throughout France I guess were there tabloids at the time it was like the late 18th century. There were broad shades I feel like we're the tabloids. Oh my god, Mike. You have no idea the publishing industry was probably more robust than that It is now. Yeah, which is very but I don't know if like the detail like those specific Versailles details But the big headlines that the people got about Marie Antoinette is she's Austrian

We don't like that. Okay, and also she's not having babies. She was the Meghan Markle of her time. Oh, no She really was so like the the population was watching this or like was aware of this on some level Yes, absolutely. The population was was fully aware of Marie Antoinette and her husband They were drawing caricatures of them. This will only then become more and more exaggerated as The crisis in in France takes a turn for the worst because the thing about building an entire system of governance around gossip and entertaining nobles is it's not then incredibly Competent when it comes to dealing with national crises. Oh my god, it's like there are themes in this story

but the things The things that uh, sort of are important to remember about Marie Antoinette at the time is this is when her, you know She's a 18 year old girl She becomes the height of fashion And that's the real story and that's sort of why I think the version of Marie Antoinette that's synonymous with you know, the idea of Marie Antoinette and popular culture is She does she spends a ton of money on dresses and Elaborate hairdos that are then drawn up her hairdos are even crazier than whatever you're imagining

She would she had a personal style. This was sort of the birth of the personal stylist So she had a personal hair stylist who would put ships in her hair and put like like her her hair would include like You know fabrics and it they were like works of art that she would be doing and she loved to gamble and like to flirt and she was very pretty and so uh, any Flirtations she had would be noted and how much she was spending on clothing The thing that like I think out of context that people need to remember Is that was what a queen was supposed to do Oh, I mean a queen was supposed to be the most beautiful and the most fashionable and she's supposed to be driving all these economies

Yeah, she she would elevate artists or artisans. That was like a thing You know like certain makeup lines They weren't lines, but you know like certain products and certain apothecaries and Again, like the hairstylist who was like a person that she brought up to her level like She was not taught that her role as a queen was to do anything other than Exist in this sphere of fashion and gambling and champagne because she's not the head of government She's the head of state. So it's not as if this is distracting her from coming up with like a fiscal budget that year This is the central role that she plays in society at the time. Like she's a ceremonial monarch

This is what she's supposed to be doing. Well, there's also like a A scandal when she starts wearing lots of like light cotton and muslin and stuff during her shepherdess period And the manufacturers of luxury fabric if I'm remembering correctly Get really upset and they're like people aren't going to buy luxury fabric anymore and it's your fault Yeah, she is a a punching bag for absolutely whatever you want at this point I think that we could talk about the shepherd phase, which is just very very funny to me That's like one of my favorite parts of the mariantoinette story. So after Her husband's grandfather the king dies. Uh, louis becomes the king and mariantoinette officially becomes the queen

And how old is she? Eighteen and almost 19. Wow teen queen teen queen And her husband then gives her the petitrinane which had been built for madame du pompadour Who was an early mistress of louis the 15th But mariantoinette does this thing at the time that's very popular Which is to create basically like a poor person playground for herself where she builds a little village

in which she can play Like play like a little shepherdess. Oh, no. I know no the the aesthetics are really bad It's bad The thing also is like she built it like disneyland where like they had a servant who was hired to bake bread Only so that I constantly smelled like baking bread And also the best part is she liked like the chickens would lay eggs And like she loved like bringing her friends and showing her the eggs But a servant would take the eggs

Wipe them down and then put them back. Of course she did Oh, that's on my my apocalypse bingo. We're gonna see instagrammers doing that in One month Right, but it's basically like whatever tiny whim Your mind can come up with your wealth is such that there is going to be someone you can hire to deliver that And yeah, and you're like I want barnyard animals, but queen. Yeah, and you're like, okay So like I it's such an interesting thing to be confronted with and you're like I could mock that And I will for a minute, but also like you're a child

You were like even more of a child when you entered into this terrible stupid world Which you were really born into so like yeah, why don't you have like a perfumed little lamb? Why not people also don't realize like this was a pretty common thing at the time among the wealthy Yeah, it's not like she's crazy. It's because that her society was crazy. But yeah, people loved playing farmer It's like also like there was this like sort of collective fixation on the rural like Michael Do you know like rikoko arts? Can you like picture that in your head? Yeah, my boyfriend went to art school I know all the schools now. Are you imagining is a slipper being thrown at you by a girl on a swing because I am rikoko maybe began a little bit before maria entoinette was born

But like this period was one very much in which like the idea of like the perfect rural You know little picnic was sort of this this heightened ideal of like let's just get away from it all It is like instagram mom aesthetic because it's like the whole world is reduced to like sunlit babies Have either of you read the play arcadia? No, which I'm obsessed with which is a wonderful play by uh tom stoppard But it focuses and has like a subplot about this very real thing that people did In like 1800 where they would have hermitages and they would at their on their property They sort of would build their backyard so it looked like this romantic like ruin

And then they would hire a human being to pretend to be a hermit I guess not pretend to actually be a hermit in their backyard and live in a little cottage because they thought it was like Cute and adorable like mike. Who does that remind you of wait? What who mark suckerberg hunting people? No, kato kailyn Oh You're like, he's a simple soul. Just look at him Yeah, and the idea is like that person would be there for like folksy advice Yeah, I don't know if this is just a sign of inequality that this is Inevitable but there is a thing of how the rich take on the trappings of the poor as a kind of aesthetic

Yeah, I remember in the late 90s We had a wave of fashion designers that made sort of hobo chic Outfits where like people looked like homeless people But it was like high fashion tens of thousands of dollars for these outfits And it was the same kind of thing where it's like you're taking this aesthetic of authenticity And you're appropriating it for like complicated probably Freudian reasons But it just seems like that's a weird through line of the wealthy 100 percent Although I do think it's also important to remember like Marie Antoinette lived at Versailles and was in this bubble of Versailles

24 7 and the thing about Versailles that you need to remember is when you're a queen You are woken up by people you are dressed by people When you eat breakfast people are watching you and like every tiny little step that you do is like With ceremony and like with pomp and circumstance like literally putting on a shirt in the morning Took like six people and the only the highest ranked person in the room could actually touch the shirt Right. So like on some level I bet like going to a little rustic hamlet and like just like living her little life Was like a nice escape for her. Yeah, sounds appealing Away from all the gossip too because if you put your shirt on in like a weird way that morning

It probably becomes like a story that runs through the entire palace for a month. Yes. She's the the Primary source of gossip. Yeah, I think around this time also we were talking about like Tabloids and the equivalent of tabloids would be like these like pamphlets and around this time would be very very popular pamphlets about the queen in terms of like that she was a sexual deviant Oh, did they imply that she was a lesbian? They absolutely did because you know, she was austrian first of all she's austrian and uh Lesbianism is as we all know quote the german vice So, uh, there would be these pamphlets at the time really really explicit pamphlets

Not only of her in like lesbian orgies with her friends But also that she was having affairs with uh, if you are familiar with the critically acclaimed Broadway musical Hamilton, there's the the character Lafayette who's french who was a figure of french court And there's this great cartoon that I love where I think he is riding a penis like an ostrich What like it's a giant penis and he's sitting astride it I want you to google Marie Antoinette Lafayette cartoon. Oh dear. My heart is in my throat Lafayette Oh

Okay, wait Here's my question. Is he some sort of pegasus? And the penis is part of his body or is it because because it's a penis That has the back legs of a horse coming out. It's a it's a penis and testicles I should say that has the back legs of a horse coming out of the testicles And that's how it's walking around and is he like hey, Marie have sex with my horse or is he like hey This is my new horse. This is how I got here It's his new horse because they're sexual deviants and so sexual deviants are uh, right around on their penis horses

And that's how you spot them So that's just sort of an example and then some of them have giant there's some like giant vagina Propaganda to of course, but the idea that really is disseminated broadly Like you're talking like how what is like the the average person's relationship to this and like the average person is hearing that she is A sexual deviant who is you know having affairs and is a lesbian and she she wants to touch the penis Giant penises. You know lesbians loving giant penises Anything characterizes lesbians. Listen, haven't you watched Fox News? It's not about consistency But throwing a bank of spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks

She is the biggest celebrity in france at this time. And so uh, yeah, she sort of becomes this object of Derision, do you think that hating her is a way of being patriotic in a way? Yeah I mean for sure like you were talking earlier. We were talking earlier about like why don't her family visit more It's like when her brother visited that then prompted like a whole wave of rumors that she is an austrian spy But this idea really is that she is Manipulative that because she's austrian she is absolutely an austrian spy Even though she is really I mean not to you know, derive her intelligence But she's not she wasn't educated in political affairs. That's not her sphere at all

She is not a spy for anyone. She is a 19 year old girl trying her best Right. And of course, it's the same thing we see now. I think where rather than just sort of keeping the dislike within Normal confines of like i'm not wild about this person, but the fact is like she was raised in court She's kind of a doofus. I'm not wild about her and sort of leaving it there No, it has to be like, oh, she's cheating on him. She's a traitor. She's a lesbian It's like just every bad thing that we can think of it all sounds plausible He's a lesbian who craves penis horse

And this is about the time where because that becomes her popular image That she is just a sex crazed maniac where she starts painting official portraits of her With her I think probably at this time just two children That she you know thinks like all right my official portraits now are going to start portraying me as a mother In a very like pr move. Yeah, it's like when tom cruise stopped giving interviews after he talked to met lour This is about when I would talk about my favorite scandal of all time something called the affair of the diamond necklace Is that something that you know about michael not remotely? So there's two pieces of important context to start the story and one in like

1772 or whatever when uh king louis the 15th was still king. So this is you know, the marianchonette's husband's grandfather He was like i'm going to give my mistress madame du berry an amazing necklace I'm going to make it the most expensive diamond necklace ever like the equivalent of like 15 million dollars But between the time that he commissioned it and it was actually completed He died which meant that the jewelers had now made this enormous Expensive necklace for no one They come to the new queen marianchonette who would be the only person who could afford this necklace And they were like do you want this diamond necklace?

And marianchonette for one was like I hated madame du berry. I don't want her sloppy seconds And also right now the entire country sees me as this frivolous Ridiculous woman who spends too much money. So no i'm not going to spend you know 15 million dollars on a necklace Apocryphally, she said france should use that money for warships But the idea is that even if she said it she probably was secretly thinking like i don't want madame du berry's necklace another piece of context is there is a cardinal named cardinal derohan and Cardinal derohan when before he was a cardinal had maybe after he was a cardinal I don't know how being a cardinal works, but he had gone to austria

As like an envoy or ambassador and he was just like a piece of shit there He like was flirting with ladies and he was drinking and he was he snuck a bunch of friends in under like the diplomatic Passport that he wasn't supposed to next and when he came back to france Was bad-talking marianchonette's mom There used to be like a totally vicious like entourage like show just said at first night That's just like people being awful at first side. Yeah, he was just like he is truly just like a douche who failed his way to the top And now our story begins with a young trickster named uh, john de la moat And she hears about this necklace and decides it's the perfect opportunity for a scam

She becomes a depending on who you talk to either a mistress of cardinal derohan because cardinals Of course had mistresses or a friend and she says, you know, i'm actually a close personal friend of marianchonette and he's like That's super important. It's really important. She hates me but for me to get ahead in my political career She really needs to forgive me now that she's queen Like this is really screwing me like she you know, marianchonette was stymieing his political career because he sucked And he was upset about that and he's like i really need marianchonette to forgive me So john de la moat is like great I will deliver a letter to my close personal friend

Marie Antoinette to to try to persuade her to forgive you Unbeknownst to the cardinal the letter of course never gets delivered to marianchonette But is answered by none other than john de la moat herself pretending to be the queen And so they start giving letters back and forth with john de la moat just pretending to be the intermediary but really just And uh lo and behold these letters become kind of intimate Oh, so it's like phone sex. It's like phone sex. It's catfishing Cardinal de rowan becomes convinced that he's having like a really intimate affair via The letter with the queen of france marianchonette a person who dislikes him. It's you've got mail

That's what it is So as these letters become more like warm and intimate the cardinal is like i have to we have to meet in person He's convinced that marianchonette is in love with him So this is like it truly becomes like a farce like an 80s comedy where john de la moat is like, what are we gonna do? They hire a prostitute who in paris was sort of famous for her resemblance to marianchonette amazing And they found her by watching like 18th century french jerry springer like look there and so They find this prostitute who I guess bears a passing resemblance to the queen And I guess at this time like there's no photographs like people don't

Know super well what people look like. It's true. I bet when like daguerreotypes came out all the scammers were like, oh crap Yeah, this is no good And so they have a secret midnight meeting by the light of the moon in the gardens of versailles The cardinal offers the prostitute who he thinks is marianchonette arose and she accepts it And at that point john de la moat comes out and he's like, oh no, someone's coming. Someone will discover you. We have to run. Bye I'm just here to help just help and you get And throughout all of this she's been like extorting money from him saying it's like for the queen's charities Then of course she decides to turn her focus to this necklace

But she basically as marianchonette comes to the cardinal and goes There is this necklace that I really want But I can't buy it right now because everyone thinks I spend too much money But I really want it. Could you buy it for me and I'll pay you back I just don't want to buy such an expensive necklace when you know, so many people are poor because it would look so bad and uh the cardinal does it and He uh delivers the necklace to a guy that he assumes is the servant of the queen

But is actually john de la moat's boyfriend. This is dope. Then they bounce marianchonette is not paying him back And he starts panicking and then yeah, he comes to court and is like, uh, hey marianchonette I know you said not to talk to you in public, but you gotta pay me back And at this point she's like what? But the crazy thing is as it comes out and of course marianchonette is not at fault She was not involved in this and did not know it was going on The mitt remember like this is a guy that she has like kind of hated her entire lives

And she's like, okay one gross that you thought we were in love Two you thought a prostitute was the queen. That's treason You need to get in trouble for this So because she sort of publicly was like Cardinal wrote de rowan needs to be in trouble for this The propaganda at the time is like this was all a secret ploy by marie antoinette They say that she had arranged this entire thing. She had hired john de la moat, I guess to

Frame this cardinal that she had always hated and or secretly she had just wanted the necklace all along So yeah, so the conspiracy theory is that she did this thing that would make herself look bad to make herself look good Yes, but the end result of this trial in which she really did nothing wrong is people hating marie antoinette And I bet if you were talking to like an average frank lady, you would be like, what do you think of marie antoinette? They'd be like, I hate her and you'd be like, oh, how come and they'd be like, well that diamond necklace thing Yeah, the thing that I think people are realizing kind of now in the pandemic in our current state of the world is like Wealthy people are less adorable now Yes

Where you're like, there's people that are dying kim. Yes, exactly where it's like there is definitely a point I feel like when the economy is booming where we like do really aspirationally love like Sheik rich people with like their shows of wealth and their beautiful homes And when things are bad people are like, I don't want to see your nice house I mean the thing that we need to remember is marie antoinette was Incredibly out of touch But sort of by design like the whole point of Versailles Was that it would be this little city isolated from the rest of the country

And that is the place that she was raised and born in from the time she was 13 Like she is very out of touch But not because she made a conscious choice to be out of touch But then when things are very bad being out of touch is uh much less charming or aspirational So is this the beginning of the slide toward the revolution? Like is the diamond necklace thing in in some way a catalyzing event or like a little milestone along that path? This is four years before the actual revolution And so this is I think the moment where people are like the monarchy is full of liars. They're manipulating the system

Truly like this is the point at which she is so unpopular. She can't just go into Versailles And like pretend it doesn't exist People had already thought that she spent too much and was shallow But at this point the average person in the public hates her right that is her. This is her Benghazi All the writing of the revolution comes back to this stupid diamond necklace. Wow That she that she organized an elaborate fraud for her own frivolous purposes It's like it's not like that you hate her for more nebulous reasons because of what she is Yeah, I mean the the only sort of sweet thing to come out of this terrible affair

Is like it is the only time in writing where I see her husband Lou the 16th like being sweet to her No What is he too? He like really tries to defend her honor and he really goes after Cardinal de Rohe and like if you like look at the way He's questioned like I don't know. It's hard to read their relationship I think they you know have this sort of like not super passionate sexual relationship But they're very fond of each other, you know, they've been married for like 20 years They really uh have this genuine fondness and friendship and there's some like sweet things that have like he

He sort of handles it sort of sweetly. Do people hate him as much as they hate her No Because surely he's doing the same dumb rich people shit. That's a key part of all this in my opinion And like he's a bad Leader, I mean the truth is like I'm not so much like a political or economic historian But but the the through line sort of with his style of ruling is he's just not that Bright when it comes to matters of the state He has like, you know, like different types of intelligence like he's good at like making little locks

But he's not good at like big matters of the state Oh That's like saying he's good at solving rubik's cubes. I feel it seems like he's like fundamentally without self-esteem Yeah, he just sort of is like someone or if someone strongly says something He's like well, that's what we should do and then someone will be like well We need to also blah blah blah and he's like great go ahead do that He just sort of right thinks that being a good leader is just Saying yes to everyone asking for things right but as usual

People who are bad at Governing like we don't hate them as much as we hate people who are like ostentatiously wealthy or as much as we hate women Mike as much as we hate women Yeah, but I mean I mean there's also the thing of like his incompetence is not as visible as hers or like his Wealth is not as visible as hers, right? Just simply because men are not expected to do this like having a ship in their hair Like his job is different from hers and his job is coded in a way That makes us not notice like all of the people he's killing through like bad policies

Whereas we notice her badness because there's all these aesthetics because women are judged on their aesthetics so much more than men It's so much easier to get mad at aesthetics than it is at content, right? We can see her work. Yeah, she's fucked because her role is Totally focused on public performance. Yeah, and that's a gender thing. Oh, yeah Yeah, so uh, he is fundamentally just like a nice guy It seems like the the most generous description of him, but a terrible leader and not smart and uh not to implicate uh America in this but But we had a uh a little revolution that sort of backfired on the french for two reasons

One because france sends a ton of resources to us because they hate the british And then also the people in france are like a revolution. We could have one of those Although there is this like myth right that like the french revolution was a sort of copy paste version of the american revolution When I don't know much about the french revolution, but i'm assuming there's all kinds of domestic reasons why people did it It wasn't just like america's cool. So let's do what america did. Oh, no, it's it's also way Worse like in terms of revolutions, we got off We got off really well There was no like reign of terror post american revolution

But also, I mean the thing is truly like there was a famine in in france You know, we could talk for like hours about the factors that led into the french revolution but like there was massive wealth and equality and resources were scarce and The papers were giving propaganda about how much cake marianche when I was eating at her lesbian orgies Oh You know what's what is nice at least about the way things have progressed is that Millennials are all comforting themselves by having cake and lesbian orgies in this difficult time. So that's nice I mean not all millennials, but I bet I bet quite a number of millennials because lesbian orgies are free

I was saying and marianche when that as a person like if we learn about her as a human being Like outside of her like larger than life reputation She loved children She loved her children a ton like more than women at the time did like most women at the time just sort of had their Babies and I was like, all right now go go over there. She also like adopted Orphans like metaphorically like would pay for their their schooling and tuition But like on a small scale like that's how marianche when that thought about helping poor people It's like she's riding in her carriage and there's like an orphan on the street and she stops and she's like

Oh my god, there's an orphan on the street. We need to help him. Yeah, and she would like pay for his schooling I think she's kind of like a disney princess like when she like happens across something. She's like, oh, no, this is unjust Yes, but she's not thinking in global terms. That's exactly it And she's almost been trained with aversion therapy to be apolitical at this point She's like taylor swift in 2016 so she is uh by all accounts like a nice person who in the abstract Cares and in when it's right in front of her cares about poor people But does not link that in any meaningful way to systemic changes

Yeah, right and then we get into the very dynamic question of how do we hold accountable people who have more power than they know How to use yeah, and I think the the the thing that makes me have a lot of empathy for Marie Antoinette Is this idea that like who among us would do better? Like right like we all assume that if we were dropped into these situations that like we would be the heroes I would simply reign as a good queen of France Yeah, I would simply you know rethink the strategic reserves of like grain and and tax it at a proper rate One none of us know how to do that But also that was not the role that she was told that she was supposed to occupy

From the time she was a child, right? So it's like blaming the famine on Marie Antoinette is like blaming covid-19 on like pat sajak or something It's like that's not what they do or like on like lina dunham, right? It's like oh, maybe she like said insensitive things and is out of touch But like the corona virus isn't her fault right like if only she'd spoken to her followers and started tweeting at them about masks in December So is this the time when we get to the let them eat cake quote?

So the let them eat cake is like my favorite thing Also, because it's so rare that like the most common thing that we know about a person is completely made up And it's also very funny that what was a pure propaganda thing Was also now the most effective piece of propaganda in the world and that it's the only thing we remember about her 250 years later. Yeah, it's like a 200 year old urban legend Yeah, but like a purposeful piece of propaganda that was so crazy effective So, I mean spoiler alert. She never actually said it the first time that that that phrase actually appears Was not in relation really to Marie Antoinette just sort of in the zeitgeist was uh Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Writing his autobiography telling like a little anecdote and at this point Marie Antoinette is like 10 She's probably she's still in austria has not come to france yet But uh Rousseau writes like anecdotally like I remember hearing this story once about a princess who when She was told that the presence couldn't afford bread said let them eat cake So he as just like a smart writer was just saying this smart little funny anecdote as a way Of of being witty and talking about how out of touch the royals are right royals as a class not necessarily Marie Antoinette Just like rich people suck here's a funny illustration of how rich people yeah Like he could have made that up right and so then later people

Start attributing it to Marie Antoinette and actually being like let them eat brioche is the is the french translation of it So it's not even cake. It's just like a rich butter and egg bread, which is like a luxury food Right. It's like a kind of bread. Okay. Yeah, so that's sort of in the propaganda papers then becomes attributed to her Because as today like one person probably reads it and kind of misremembers it and it's like hey She said this can you believe it and then it's snowballs, right? Yeah, and also she's out of touch I mean the thing is like Marie Antoinette's actual attitude is not let them eat cake And also like in her letters to her family. There's a quote that I had It is quite certain that in seeing the people who treat us so well despite their own misfortune

We are more obliged than ever to work hard for their happiness. Okay, so she's like not a terrible human being basically It's not like she sees people poor and suffering and she's like fuck these people She's like oh this little orphan. I should do something to help. Yeah, like she just can't see the bigger picture She also assumes that her husband is on top of things. She'll go to her husband and be like People seem sad and poor and he's like, yeah, I'm on it. I'm working hard and she's like great. My job is done Yeah, right so People aren't wrong when they portray her as out of touch and like that's I think why the propaganda against her is so long lasting and effective and I mean why it eventually leads to her being murdered in a guillotine

Because like they're not wrong, but it also just doesn't accurately Take into account like the context or like her feelings as a person and she's an example of something She's not the cause of it like she's the shining star exemplifying a problem But she's not the cause of the problem. Yeah, she represents the most convenient form of You know a manifestation of an actual problem But that is using her as a symbol and not a human being So how do we get to the death part? Like where does it get real bad? So my first episode of noble blood I focused almost exclusively on the six months of her imprisonment

And people got mad at me because they were like Marie Antoinette was out of touch and like and the people of france were starving And it was a justifiable revolution. Well, yeah You could acknowledge that and be like but the end of her life was really really sad also And what what happened is there's this uh, the fish the march of the fish wives, which is the first physical violent attack on the the monarchy Which is the fish wives who are kind of what it sounds like women who sell fish at the market That's not what it sounds like. It sounds like they're married to the fish. Why are they called that? I've always wondered this because they're wives and they work with fishes

I mean if you sell books you're not called a bookwife, although maybe you should be so that's the first like violent Assault on the monarchy is like women actually physically marching from Paris to Versailles, which is, you know, maybe 30 miles away I'm not 100 on that. So the women get the revolution started in a physical way. Yes, they uh, Physically attack the Versailles guards trying to get their way to the queen Saying if we get to the queen, we will kill her They uh, order a bunch of guards and hoist their heads on pikes. Wow those fish wives were pissed Sexism goes both ways in a crazy way Because they are drawn always as like harpy shrews as like wild

Herodin women. I bet they're drawn with like big biceps and like big eyebrows Yeah, people hate Marie Antoinette, but they also hate these violent crazy ladies. They're like, I hate all women I just can't explain it because there's something that all women have in common that makes me hate them I don't know what it is. So this march is what forces The royal family to come to Paris. So they're in a city with the people Yeah, they're forced to be like among the people for the first time ever which sucks Yeah, as things become like incredibly incredibly violent, especially towards the the upper class, you know, the guillotine People are being executed and when they're not being guillotine, they're literally just being ripped apart like physically ripped apart

Oh boy The story that I opened an episode of my podcast with because I think it just embodies like the genuine cruelty and bloodiedness of the revolution is one of the queen's Friends and ladies, uh, the princess dillambal who was of course propagandized as being in a lesbian affair with the queen Was hoisted in front of a big group of people on the street. They demanded that she like discredit the queen What's the word for that or like renounce renounce exactly renounce the queen and she refuses And so they literally rip her apart like a mob of people Take her head and they say we're gonna make the queen kiss her lover

And they say, oh no, we beat her so bad that she doesn't look like herself the queen won't recognize her So they bring this bloody ripped off head to a hairdresser and have it styled in the style that the princess dillambal was sort of famous for and then they hoisted on a pike outside Marie Antoinette's window Yo, that's fucked and the hairdresser has a sign up that's like due to the revolution I am no styling heads to look like the noble people they once were so they can be hoisted on pikes if you're doing that I'm an essential worker, which is just not to say I Don't understand the impetus of the revolution and I'm I don't think greedy monarchies

Are the best system of governance. I'm a Danish words on the record as pro-democracy But I think that we can also acknowledge the anger was legitimate, but also there is a Gruesomeness to these murders Well, and then even when the anger is legitimate it falls disproportionately on women in a way that is unjust, right? I mean, I I I hate this thing where like when you tell historical stories people call upon you to like root for or against particular actors in them When like the most interesting thing about history is that there often is no one to root for Yeah, I mean my interpretation of events is like as a movement

The french revolution had good ideals in general, but on a person-to-person level I'm not a fan of like mass executions and ripping people apart. Yeah, me too So then things get go from bad to worse for marina twinette as you can imagine She's imprisoned in the temple palace, which is sort of becomes a palace slash prison And this is when her husband the king is tried and executed And of course her name is no longer the queen marie entoinette. He just because and he's no longer the king He becomes louis capet marie entoinette is moved from the temple to the conciergerie Which I hope I'm pronouncing right. I never studied french, which is like an actual prison

Do she still have her children at this point? This is when her children are taken away It's very very the most heartbreaking thing It's so like it again is difficult to overstate the amount of hatred that people had for marie entoinette And at this point her oldest son who is I guess technically now the king of france Depending on if you still think that is a thing that exists Is taken away from her but they keep him purposefully Within like audio distance of her so that she can hear as he's being like beaten and whipped and forced to Renounce his mother and his family and say the trainers

He's like nine years old and they're making him like drink They think it's very funny to have the prince like become drunk. Oh, it's like dumbo Yeah, oh god She spends her basically all of her time pressed up against the wall As certain ways so she can look out the her door At a particular angle because when they bring her son outside once a day like that's the place where she could see him Jesus. Yeah, do they kill her kids eventually? Are they executed? No, he dies of like prison fever as I call it

There and there arises a theory later on when this feral child is found in the forests of france Which is a hard thing to say The wild boy of ave ron who's like taught to communicate is a sort of age of enlightenment Scientific experiment and there is this sort of theory among the people that know like actually they faked the death of the little dauphin and then they left him in the forest And he's this boy somehow, but there's no evidence to support that It's just something that people tellingly wanted to believe Her daughter lives a little bit longer and one of her sons lives a little bit longer, but the line doesn't continue

Oh, okay. So that's the end of the antoinets. Yeah, her kids don't have kids Okay, so she's sort of tortured in prison as you can imagine She sometimes borrows books from the guards and reads like adventure books Any guards who show her like an ounce of kindness are then punished themselves So she becomes this symbolic figure who has to be mistreated because the revolution is trying to overcome all of the old ideals of the past regime and yet still is holding on to the same superstitions of the lost world Completely and when she shows up for her trial people say that she is unrecognizable that Whether it's apocryphal or not her hair is white at this point, even though she's only like 37

But you know, she's been under a tremendous amount of stress and torture. Yeah, the worst part is she's Accused of molesting her son and they make her son who's been tortured testify that she was molesting her weird Okay, brand when that panic because the charges against her were not enough. They have to just add this thing I mean, obviously she then she's found guilty up until this point She sort of had no idea what day she'd be murdered. So she would just wear black every single day But then before her actual execution they come in and they make her change into like a plain white dress They make her change in front of the guards. She asks to relieve herself They make her relieve herself in front of the guards and she is

Driven in an open cart like a caged open cart for an hour down the streets of paris to the guillotine That's been like erected in the middle of town for like an entire Ride with people jeering and throwing things at her So the humiliation is a huge component of the punishment That's part of it and like the catharsis for the french society at the time the hatred towards her Is just insane and then she's guillotined about noon and her last words which are I think just so thematically resonant is um, she steps on the executioner's shoe by accident And so her last words are I'm sorry, sir. I didn't mean to do it. Oh no way very christlike

That's not apocryphal. That's like very perfect. I know that's a real thing Wow, okay, and then her body is thrown in an unmarked grave. Oh, so do we still not know where it is? No, it's exhumed later during like the bourbon restoration in the 1800s and like 1815 the original you're wrong about Yeah My favorite weird fun fact of like history coming together Is you know, um, madame two so in like london like all the wax figure Uh, was a real person who made wax figures of people And she's the one who made marie entoinette's death mask because when her body was thrown in an unmarked grave

They wanted the french revolutionary. It's like wanted the metaphorical dead marie entoinette that they could like parade around Just normal stuff. Just like make us a death mask so we can hate her after she's dead So like madame two so because she had like worked at versailles and was sort of um Associated with that she sort of then became a servant of the revolution where they're like make Death masks for us because she was perceived as like a royal sympathizer So they made her make death masks of like the most famous people who died so they could like show them off as trophies So is that what they did with marie entoinette? Yeah, I think her first Wax museum had her like actual the her death mask of marie entoinette. Oh the actual one that they paraded in the streets

Yeah, ew, okay So does france just like continue hating her for the next kind of foreseeable future until Her reputation is exhumed. I feel like her reputation still is not exhumed like I think that people still hate her I guess. Yeah, the layperson's only association marie entoinette is that she was a Overspender who did not care about more people. So it was only with a podcast by dana schwarz After the turn of the century that really changed her reputation. I really single-handedly was the one who did that Yes I think yeah, you're doing the ship you well you wouldn't you wouldn't honey a phraser

But I think though you're you're the two and and so fia coppola and so fia coppola You know, I'm one of those people who actually really likes that. So fia coppola movie me too. It's a movie for girls It's fully a movie for girls I think people are mad that it doesn't focus on the revolution like it ends right as the revolution starts So it just focuses on like marie entoinette's peak sort of which is like how crazy that it looks at life as it is from her Perspective and they were like, oh, they make it look like just like a teenage gossipy blah blah blah But like that's exactly how it was in Versailles like that movie is like Shockingly historically accurate for a movie that that like the promotion campaign had her wearing converse or whatever to like show

That she was relatable. It's capturing the truth of her spirit. No one understood metaphors then they were like converse Oh, no, it's like the water bottle in game of thrones I mean, I guess like the the challenge with fictionalizing these kinds of narratives is that if you were to tell them accurately It sounds like they kind of would be a reality show They'd be really gossipy and everyone kind of cloistered together And people would be kind of clueless just because like the division of labor back then Sounds like a lot of the people would be focused on frivolous things because they've never received any formal education in anything else So it would be sort of real house wivesy. Yes, it's stylized

But it's also an incredibly accurate portrayal in my mind of like how her reality was which like yeah her reality The movie does not focus on poor people because Marie Antoinette's reality did not include poor people That was not her daily life Her daily life was I am this 14 year old girl who's been plunged into this elaborate world That I now have to navigate and try to navigate correctly. Right and we don't have to like Root for or against that like that can just be the reality of the situation without necessarily being like and it was good Or like she's she's the hero of the story or she's the villain of the story. She can be neither Yeah, history isn't sitting around waiting on our approval and like it's not in our power to like cancel historical figures

Like it's all over That is the problem where it's like people then want to celebrate like Marie Antoinette with secretly a feminist hero Like that's that's like right, but it's like no, I mean she's not she's a selfish person Marie Antoinette slays. Yeah Just like Marie Antoinette got a rough go at it, you know for the last Five years of her life, right? Like I mean I feel like what's sad about her has nothing to do with the content of her character Or to the extent that it does it's like, oh, she was just like a regular person. She was a mom You know today she would just be like just a nice happy

Kind of hippy mom who like maybe sold essential oils And like like a good sale at Target and just not someone who was interested in politics Or had ever been encouraged to be part of that and that's like the tragedy of her position in some ways And we can just be like yep She was just like a simple soul who was living in a complicated role in a complicated time Yeah, she was absolutely not capable of being a nuanced political leader who could solve an economic crisis But that is also the problem with a monarchy is that your leader happens by an accident of birth Yes, I think that's less

Marie Antoinette problem and more like okay. Well your leader should not just be whoever Happens to be the son of the current leader. It's a political science problem. Yeah, it's not a like Marie Antoinette sucks problem Yeah, like as a person She seems like a nice person and of course because of circumstances outside of her control She became a massive figurehead and lightning rod and also, you know, I'll go on the record saying I don't think anyone should be uh Murdered and they have their children tortured me too. I'm into that. Let's all end on a note of agreement So, uh, thanks for coming on Dana. This was great. Did we ever have you say the name of your podcast?

Yeah, where can people find you? My podcast is called noble blood. Um, but I'm on like twitter and instagram and yeah I'm around and you're recording at home now too. What are you working on? I am I'm doing I don't know when this podcast is gonna go but right now. I'm doing a series Of the six wives of Henry VIII for noble blood. I'm so excited about that Some of the wives are uh, I find more interesting than others I'll take and we'll just let that hang there mysteriously and people have to find out who's who's more interesting I also think there is like this tendency I find where it's like you want to secretly you want every woman to secretly be a feminist hero

Yeah, and some of them just suck Some of them suck. A lot of men are dumb and boring and sometimes also women are dumb and boring. Yeah That's the real lesson of this episode Some women are dumb and boring But isn't that really quality that everyone is just allowed to be as good or as mediocre as they actually are? Yeah, that's history You