Royal families, of course, are the ultimate celebrities. They’ve been the center of national and international attention from time immemorial. And there are few royal personages who have been more famous than Marie Antoinette. In her Marie Antoinette: The Journey, Antonia Fraser presents the life of the title subject, a woman who didn’t even make it to 40 but still looms large in our cultural imagination. And first things first: Fraser debunks in the prologue the myth of “let them eat cake”, looking at historical sources to ascertain that the same words had been attributed to unpopular upper-class French women several times previously.

What emerges from the well-researched work is a portrait of a disaster that would have been difficult to avert unless the people involved had been truly extraordinary. And unfortunately, Marie and her husband, Louis XVI, were unsuited for both each other and the circumstances in which they found themselves. Marie, born Archduchess Maria Antonia of France, was charming, graceful, and eager to please but a poor student of anything outside of music. Louis-Auguste was awkward and though bright, poured his energies into locks and hunting. Their failure to consummate their marriage and produce an heir until seven years after the fact made them the subjects of vicious, back-biting gossip which continued throughout their reign, with Marie as a particular target. According to the rumors, she was a lesbian who had flings with her favorite ladies-in-waiting, or she was being unfaithful to the king with various and sundry men, including Swedish Count Axel Fersen (who it is likely she actually had an affair with). Even as the French Revolution loomed, the royal couple refused to leave France until it was too late, and as we all know, they lost first their crowns, and then their heads.

Biographies of historical figures range the gamut from fact-intensive, can’t-see-the-forest-for-the-trees tomes to light and gossipy and style-over-subtance. Fraser manages the tricky art of having clearly done her homework, referencing many primary sources, while not forgetting to make sure that the book is ultimately appealing to readers. She ties in larger historical movements and personalities to Marie’s story, giving sufficient context to her audience for understanding while not letting herself get drawn too far into tangents that would distract from the narrative arc she builds for Marie. It helps, of course, that her life was both well-chronicled and dramatic, soaring to the heights of wealth and luxury before plunging into despair and death. It’s sometimes dense, but ultimately compelling, with Fraser drawing out a real sense of a person underneath the facts. I found the book both entertaining to read and informative, and would recommend it to anyone interested in the subject! ( )

I loved this book, even though it is absolutely tragic. The author does an excellent job at the end of depicting the misogyny of the times by contrasting the authorities' treatment of Marie Antionette and King Louis XVI - or is it just lingering scraps of respect for a king being demonstrated, when no such scraps existed for this "enemy alien" queen? ( )

A compelling and human look at Marie Antoinette's life. It was a page-turner for me up until about the last 50 pages or so and then I started to get anxious for my next read. It's well worth the time invested. ( )

Antonia Fraser's biography of Marie Antoinette is a vast improvement on Évelyne Lever's flowery and decidedly prejudiced account, at least in my opinion! Sofia Coppola also based her 2006 film on Fraser's account of the late queen's life. The author aims were 'to unravel the cruel myths and salacious distortions surrounding [Marie Antoinette's] name' (from 'let them eat cake' to her alleged affairs with close female friends) and 'to exert common sense in an area which must remain forever speculative, as indeed it was in her own day' (Count Fersen). She is fair to Marie Antoinette, if not a little biased in opposition to Lever, concluding that the French queen was in a way 'a victim from birth'. Her bluntness in appraising Louis XVI - 'What he lacked in confidence, the Dauphin certainly did not make up for in physical attraction' - and the Princesse Lamballe (who was 'not clever') among other made me laugh, however.

I think the most shocking part of Marie Antoinette's life to remember is that she was only fourteen when her mother, the Habsburg Empress Maria Theresa, married her off to a stranger in another country. Fourteen! And almost from the start, she faced abuse from the French court: Marie Antoinette was sneeringly baptized l’Autrichienne by Madame Adélaïde, eldest surviving daughter of Louis XV, years before it became a popular term of derision. Her husband, the future Louis XVI, was only one year older and not interested - or perhaps unable - to consummate the relationship, either through shyness or a medical condition. It's hardly surprising, therefore, that Marie Antoinette turned to friends like the Princesse de Lamballe and the Duchesse de Polignac and preferred to have fun gambling and attending parties, catching the disease of Versailles at an early age. Her historical reputation is one of excess, ignorance and haughtiness when contemporary accounts portray her as compassionate, affectionate and loyal. When all of Paris turned out to celebrate her marriage to the Dauphin, Marie Antoinette recognised 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'. And during the infamous 'Affair of the Diamond Necklace', she told the jewellers that 'We have more need of ships than of diamonds'. Fraser's biography highlights how Marie Antoinette became the scapegoat of France ('Madame Deficit', 'Madame Veto') because she was a foreigner and her husband was not fit for the role he was born into. What happened to her during the Revolution was horrendous by any standards. 'Oh my God,’ she wrote in October 1790, ‘if we have committed faults, we have certainly expiated them.’

Although probably not Antonia Fraser's intention, I am a now a firm defender of Marie Antoinette. There is a lot of background politics to plough through - the power play of Versailles and the Queen's relationship with her Austrian mother and brothers - but the heart of the story is a young woman who had to adopt a new country and language at a tender age, and wanted nothing more than to be a wife and mother, yet who faced judgement for being both an outsider and a 'flaunting, extravagant queen'. ( )

Maria Antonieta é uma figura mítica. Julgada severamente por seus contemporâneos e pela história, vista por todos como uma rainha celerada, e depois um bode expiatório, ela sempre foi unanimemente admirada por sua inabalável coragem perante os grandes cataclismos de seu tempo. Coroada rainha da França em plena saída da adolescência, ela foi incumbida por sua mãe, a poderosa imperatriz Maria Teresa, da tarefa de proteger os interesses de seu país natal, a Áustria. Por toda a vida, exerceu um papel político ambíguo, atraindo a desconfiança e o ódio do povo francês. Neste livro, Antonia Fraser retraça a jornada inicial da rainha. Ela examina detalhadamente a personalidade e os percursos de Maria Antonieta - a infância, as influências dos laços familiares, as relações conjugais marcadas por um casamento não-consumado por um longo tempo, a vinda tão esperada dos filhos, o idílio com o conde Hans Alex von Fersen, seus contatos com as grandes figuras da Revolução, e, enfim, seus esforços heróicos para salvar a família e a monarquia da violência revolucionária.