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00:00:41.780episode description. Enjoy! Hello, and welcome to Vulgar History, a feminist women's history
00:00:57.720comedy podcast. My name is Anne Foster, and this is part five in our Marie Antoinette series. We've
00:01:03.360been heading here for a year and a half if you've been in this for the whole multi-part season seven,
00:01:08.740But also, I know a lot of people joined just for the Marie Antoinette of it all.
00:01:11.720So this is part five, big finale, what's going to happen?
00:01:15.620I think we all know what's going to happen, but how we get there is interesting.
00:01:19.760And actually, before we get into the episode, episode, I have two more announcements.
00:01:23.520The first one is that if you're in or near London, England, the V&A Museum has an exhibit
00:01:28.720on right now called Marie Antoinette Style.
00:01:31.540And it's a celebration of her iconic, groundbreaking style.
00:01:35.680I mean, we've talked in previous episodes about her clothes maker, Rose Burton, her hair guy, Monsieur Leonard, but really it was her vision.
00:01:43.900She was the one who was pushing the boundaries of what a queen could wear, what a woman could wear.
00:08:49.000For the emigres and the foreign royals, they just saw them as kind of like, I don't think
00:08:53.040that these are the people who want to be the monarchs right now.
00:08:55.020So that kind of makes them more want to support some of the other contenders for the royal throne, which are Barry's cousin, Ryan Phillippe from Cruel Intentions, and also Barry's brother, his younger brother, Provence, and his other younger brother, Artois, are all kind of guys who've been kind of wanting to be king, sort of this whole story, like since they were boys.
00:09:14.280So they support the concept of monarchy, but not Barry as the monarch.
00:09:20.100And so the younger brother, Provence, because he had successfully escaped because he did the reasonable thing.
00:09:25.300He left with pretending to be one guy, like not a royal, just being some sort of English tradesman or something.
00:23:23.400She's been on how many marches next to the mob, holding her friends' heads on pikes like she knows they're not stopping hating her and wanting to kill her and blaming her for everything that was going wrong.
00:23:36.340So March 1792, her brother, who was the Holy Roman Emperor, Leopold, died suddenly of pneumonia.
00:23:43.920This was like two weeks after he had just pulled through the most amazing diplomatic thing, where he agreed to join a coalition of European monarchs to combat the French revolutionaries.
00:23:52.720Like this was the Holy Roman Empire teaming up with Prussia, which had been their long-time enemy.0.91
00:23:58.640People who listened to the Maria Teresa episode know that these two countries did not fuck with each other ever.
00:24:05.180So the fact that the French Revolution had brought them together is like impressive.0.97
00:24:37.280So he, Francis, because of this, so they were teaming up against not France.
00:24:42.920They were teaming up against the French revolutionaries.0.75
00:24:44.780So Francis, the Holy Roan Emperor, let the emigres come into Habsburg territory to assemble troops.
00:24:52.620So this is like French people teaming up with Austria, teaming up with Prussia to attack the French revolutionary government, which made the French revolutionary government decide that they had to go to war against this coalition.0.52
00:25:06.400And they needed Barry to like stamp the approval for that.
00:25:09.900So April 20th, Barry, again, kind of felt he had no choice and he was forced to publicly declare war on Francis. And so he delivered this speech to the National Assembly and then wars started happening and the French Revolutionary Army did not do well. This exacerbated everybody's anxiety.
00:25:33.320so paris is like the purge at this point well it's still pre the purge getting close to the
00:25:41.500purge but just everyone's just like constantly on edge riots happening constantly you know heads
00:25:47.140on pikes energy a lot of like wooden clog murder energy and this the fact that they're now at war0.52
00:25:53.300with like every country in europe made everybody be a bit like oh god what next and this the fact
00:25:59.020the French revolutionary government was at war against Austria. It was one of the people in that
00:26:04.660alliance. Made them even more remember the whole like, oh, Marie Antoinette is Austrian. She's this
00:26:10.280ostrich bitch, like which the aunts had started. So they're just like, they're even more suspicious1.00
00:26:15.560of Marie Antoinette because they're like, well, she's probably in their side. And guess what?
00:26:19.620Bitches, she was because you are bitches and you're trying to kill her constantly. So yeah,1.00
00:26:25.000She was on the side of her brother and Austria in this instance.1.00
00:26:28.680She's like, fuck France, understandably.0.98
00:26:31.680So in fact, what Marie Antoinette was doing during these wars was she was like creeping0.99
00:26:34.940around, not sure how she did this, impressed that she did this, but she had actually like
00:26:39.560snuck into some rooms or had some people who snuck in rooms and told her, and she was leaking
00:26:43.140information about the French revolutionary army movements to Axel von Fersen, who passed
00:26:47.920this along to like Francis and the head of the Prussian army, a certain man called the
00:26:53.580Duke of Brunswick, who is the father of a certain Caroline of Brunswick, who we've talked about on
00:26:59.080this podcast before, and who I've written a book about more on that later. So Marie Antoinette,
00:27:03.780fully a spy at this point. She's in her spy era, double agent, Josephine Baker energy.
00:27:09.720But her schemes, like this is giving me Mary Queen of Scots a little bit. I did a whole series about
00:27:15.620Mary Queen of Scots. I know there's a lot of new listeners who joined just for the Marie Antoinette
00:27:19.060season. But if you scroll back, I did a multi-part season about Mary Queen of Scots.
00:27:23.500And when she was in a similar situation of house arrest, she was nonstop scheming. She was sending
00:27:28.280secret code letters to her spies. She was putting secret spy messages in her embroidery. She was
00:27:33.520doing whatever she could. And Marie Antoinette, who is in fact a descendant of Mary Queen of
00:27:37.960Scots, if you go back through the family tree, she's channeling that a little bit here.0.56
00:27:42.180So another schemey thing that Marie Antoinette was up to was... So two weeks before her0.95
00:27:48.940brother Leopold had died suddenly of pneumonia. So Axel von Fersen had risked everything to come
00:27:54.700and visit Marie Antoinette at the Tuileries Palace. He risked capture and imprisonment.
00:27:58.600He slipped into Paris. This guy gets it. Axel von Fersen, well, he can get it, but also he can
00:28:04.980sneak into places. He's good at being a spy in a way that nobody else is. So he snuck into Paris
00:28:11.340on February 13th, 1792, wearing a wig and carrying a false passport. Don't know what his fake name
00:28:18.200was. I bet it was great. He went directly to the Tuileries Palace and he stayed overnight with
00:28:23.440Marie Antoinette. Remember, it's February 13th. He spent Valentine's Day with her. This is where
00:28:27.540it's like, are they lovers? And I believe this is the occasion where people who are, who believe
00:28:34.060that these two are lovers. So Axel Lundfersen like fucks around. Good for him. That's a great energy.0.97
00:28:39.960And when he, and he kept a sex diary and in his sex diary, when he like spent the night with a0.79
00:28:44.580woman where he like had sex with a woman, he would write, I slept over in French. And after this0.79
00:28:51.380night with Miranda, he's like, I slept over. So it's like, did, did you just sleep over or did
00:28:56.400you like sleep over? Anyway, I hope they had some nice times together on Valentine's day, 1792.
00:29:04.420Anyway, but he also like checked in with Barry, who was like new, but ex of one person respected
00:29:09.040him and appreciated him. Ex of one person later reported from this visit, I found the king and
00:29:14.260queen firmly determined to bear anything rather than their present position. And from a conversation
00:29:19.240which I had with their majesties, I believe that I can assure you, sire, that they feel strongly
00:29:23.560persuaded that there is no way of reestablishing their authority except by foreign troops and
00:29:28.580foreign assistance, which is true. Like the only way, like they're not going to do this themselves.
00:29:33.720And so in fact, while they were together, Marie Antoinette and Axel Von Fersen had like figured
00:29:39.100out a plan a daring new plan in which so this depends again on like other troops doing what
00:29:44.560they want but like hopefully they will so the plan was that the austrian troops would cause
00:29:48.180kind of a distraction by attacking somewhere else which would lure the french troops out of paris
00:29:53.740leaving paris less defended so the prussians could come into paris to free the royal family
00:29:58.240so that's the plan at the moment if they can get like francis to agree to this meanwhile barry is
00:30:04.760still, he's been reading about Charles I. He's been just like dealing with this depression,
00:30:10.860all of his big feelings. And he decides that the best course of action for him to do is to die.0.97
00:30:18.540So it's not a suicidal ideation type thing. It's more just like, he feels like the only thing that
00:30:25.100he could do that would help is to become a martyr. So Marie Antoinette's lady-in-waiting, Madame
00:30:29.860Campan, who survived all this and wrote a memoir later, she wrote, I'll just do a little quote.
00:30:33.320the king fell into a state of despondence which amounted almost to physical helplessness
00:30:38.000he passed 10 successive days without uttering a single word except in playing backgammon when he
00:30:43.780was obliged to pronounce the words belonging to that gate Marie Antoinette roused him from the
00:30:47.940state so fatal at a critical period by throwing herself at his feet urging every idea calculated
00:30:52.840to excite alarm and employing every affectionate expression she represented also what he owed to
00:30:57.960his family and went so far as to tell him that if they were doomed to fall they ought to fall
00:31:01.640honorably and not to wait to be smothered upon the floor of the apartment. So Barry not just
00:31:07.920wanted to, he didn't see becoming a martyr as just the best thing he could do to help his family,
00:31:12.900but he also thought it was the noblest thing he could do. And also that maybe this would help
00:31:16.880save France itself. And the way he was determined to do this was to be executed like Charles I had
00:31:23.400been. And he found an opportunity to do this pretty quickly because so he, the way that the
00:31:30.240government was working out. It was like the government would say like, we want to do this.
00:31:33.380And the King had veto power, but he knew if he ever exercised it, they would be like,
00:31:38.700you're a tyrant and he'd be executed. And so he found a good excuse to do a veto.
00:31:42.240May 26th, the national assembly passed a decree, exiling all priests who refused to swear
00:31:49.360allegiance to France instead of to the Pope. And if you recall from the flight to Varenne episode,
00:31:54.240the thing about like the juror priests versus the non-juror priests is like really important to
00:32:01.240Barry. So it's not even necessarily, he's like, I'll take any excuse to become a martyr. He's
00:32:04.960like, fuck this. No. And so he uses veto against his proclamation, knowing that to do that in this1.00
00:32:12.520present powder keg of a society would mean he would probably be executed, which is what he
00:32:17.940wanted. He said, I expect death and I pardon them in advance. And like immediately after
00:32:25.140vetoing this decree, he called for his priest saying to his confessor, come and see me. I have
00:32:31.860done with men. My eyes are turned toward heaven. He's like, I am sacrificing myself. This is like,
00:32:37.320he knew that vetoing this would mean that he would be executed. And so there's already a
00:32:42.180demonstration plan for the next day because it was by this time, the one year anniversary of
00:32:46.420the flight to Varenne. So the mob was already assembling. So the National Assembly was just
00:32:52.140like, you rioters who are already assembling, like, here's another thing to riot about.
00:32:57.320Barry just used his veto. They called him, and Marie Antoinette, Monsieur and Madame Veto,
00:33:04.940which is like a big, rude thing to say, I guess. And this is what led the already planning to
00:33:12.940riot mob to specifically attack the Tuileries palace, which is right in the middle of Paris.
00:33:21.060Like it's on the street. Like it's pretty easy to get to probably pretty hard to guard. And this is
00:33:25.280the afternoon of June 20th, 1792. So tens of thousands of Parisian mob market ladies type1.00
00:33:31.220people and lots of men. I keep mentioning the market ladies because they're my fave, but like1.00
00:33:35.580men and women, lots of people. Um, a lot of these people had spent the day drinking heavily
00:33:40.260because they were celebrating, I guess, the anniversary of having not let Marie Antoinette
00:33:46.120escape. So the mob came in, they've got their regular makeshift weapons, pikes, axes,
00:33:51.340homemade weaponry, knives, forks. There were 16,000 national guards assigned to protect the
00:33:56.700gates and they did not stop them because they were on their side also. So the only people
00:34:02.500actually protecting the royal family were the privately hired Swiss guards who were like
00:34:06.320mercenaries. So the royal family was just hanging out, um, in Barry's apartments when a member of
00:34:13.220his, one of these Swiss guards came in and said like, Barry, you need to go show yourself to the
00:34:18.480mob. Like maybe this will calm them down. Marie Antoinette wanted to go with him. Um, she said,
00:34:22.740let me go. My place is with the King. I will go and die at his feet. But he was like, no,
00:34:27.020stay with the children. And Marie Antoinette called to his attendants, like, please save the
00:34:31.680king please protect them and so he faced off against the mob for two hours again just like
00:34:37.000killing time but like doing what was asked of him they held out one of the red smurf hats that the0.54
00:34:41.520mob like to wear on like a pike um and he reached out and he put it on um he just kind of did0.98
00:34:46.680whatever he could to try to calm things down and just to give everybody time to maybe escape but0.97
00:34:51.500this was like being happening indoors in the toileries palace in this one room and not not
00:34:56.06010 000 people couldn't fit in that room so the other people couldn't fit they went trying to
00:35:00.580find Marie Antoinette because they wanted to kill her. So to protect her and the children,
00:35:06.400200 members of the Swiss Guard took the family into a back room. Marie Antoinette and her daughter
00:35:11.680were put into sort of like an alcove. So I don't know, sort of like next to the window or just
00:35:15.740sort of like a gap in the wall or like a little nook. And they fully lay mis this. They like put
00:35:22.580up like a barricade of just like up and in furniture and whatever. They put the Dauphin,
00:35:26.640this little boy who's like six years old at this point on top of the the barricade is sort of like
00:35:33.640maybe this I don't know that's what they did and then they let the mob in Marie Antoinette apparently
00:35:38.640said under her breath this is too much it exceeds all human patience but she refused to show fear
00:35:43.780like she did before when she was being brought back by the mob from Varennes when she went out
00:35:49.300on the balcony in Versailles like she just she has this dignity her comportment like her posture even
00:35:56.640the aura, the charisma of this woman. It's so noble. It's so notable. And she just stood there
00:36:02.120and they're just like, like your most terrifying elementary school teacher. And they're all just
00:36:06.000like, Oh, Oh, we're not gonna. Okay. So an observer observed if one of those rascals had
00:36:12.280dared strike the queen, everyone would have followed his example. And all those who were
00:36:15.700in the room would have been massacred happily. The queen's majesty, her air of assurance
00:36:20.100overawed the mob. They tried to get her to wear the red hat as well. And she said, Nope.0.99
00:36:24.020they tried to get her to wear the cockade the mob was like ron philippe sent these bitch1.00
00:36:29.040she didn't wear the cockade either she just like stood her ground and like that made them not kill1.00
00:36:34.280her which is really impressive considering how much they wanted to kill her it took until about
00:36:39.02010 o'clock until the mob i guess got bored and just left the royal family could not believe
00:36:44.540and survived marie antonette wrote to axel one person i still exist but it is a miracle
00:36:50.000and so her entourage encouraged her to wear this kind of bulletproof vest of just folded fabric
00:36:55.760that was folded so tightly it was like stab proof as well and so she tried it on she had um madame0.83
00:37:01.800campan i think attempt to like stab her with it to test it but ultimately she was also like no you0.97
00:37:08.000know what like if they assassinate me that will be a blessing because my life here sucks uh she0.95
00:37:13.740wrote i think to excellent person to confront the dangers head-on i could act and mount a horse if0.90
00:37:18.200need be. But if I acted, it would put weapons into the hands of the king's enemies. A general
00:37:23.320outcry would be raised in France against the Austrian woman, against female domination.0.57
00:37:27.840A queen who is not regent must in such circumstances remain inactive and prepare to die.
00:37:32.720This is an intense thing going on. So, and again, like she knew her only chance was to keep waiting
00:37:40.140for the Prussian army led by Caroline of Brunswick's dad to come in and save her. So
00:37:44.940realizing that Barry was just like prepared to murder himself. She's like, it's up to me to
00:37:49.700keep my family alive until we are inevitably rescued. So she begged like via Ambassador Mercy,
00:37:55.920who she was able to write letters to, she was like, get the Prussian army, Carolyn Brunswick's
00:38:00.480dad, to issue a declaration with the intent of frightening the revolutionaries so much that
00:38:06.640they refrain from any further violence against the monarchy. Like she wanted the Prussians to0.58
00:38:10.800and a threat just being like, listen up Paris, like treat the royal family well, or we will kill0.99
00:38:15.980all of you. And that is what he did. He issued a proclamation. I'm going to quote part of the0.99
00:38:20.780proclamation made by Carolina Brunswick's dad, the Duke of Brunswick. The city of Paris and all
00:38:25.060of its inhabitants without distinction shall be required to submit at once and without delay to0.59
00:38:29.300the King of France. If the Chateau of the Tuileries is entered by force or attacked,
00:38:33.500if the least violence be offered to their majesties, the King, Queen, and royal family,
00:38:36.980we will inflict an ever memorable vengeance by delivering over the city of Paris to military
00:38:42.340execution and complete destruction and the rebels guilty of the said outrageous to the punishment
00:38:46.740they merit. So this is what Marie Antoinette wanted him to do. He did exactly what she thought
00:38:51.520would help. And it did the opposite. Because the publication of this declaration coincided with
00:38:58.920news that the Prussians had penetrated the French border, like the Prussians were in fact getting
00:39:03.020closer and the people in France. And again, this is August. It's hot. Everybody's hangry. Like
00:39:09.360they're hungry, angry, hangry. They've been like the scent of blood is everywhere. People are just
00:39:14.140like used to murder by now. You're like walking over body parts and they're just like losing
00:39:18.520their minds. So basically a week after this proclamation came out, the Tuileries was attacked
00:39:24.480again. And not just by tens of thousands of people, but by apparently everybody, all of Paris
00:39:29.940seemingly attack the two ways in this second attempt. So the Prussians have basically said,
00:39:35.260like, dared the revolutionaries to disobey them. And the people of Paris all believed they were
00:39:40.660going to die anyway when the Prussians invaded. So they were just like, bring it on. Everyone in1.00
00:39:45.560this story at this point is like convinced they're going to die. And so that's guiding
00:39:51.380all of their actions. And it's a really intense story. So this time the mob didn't, because it
00:39:56.340everybody. It wasn't just like market ladies with their like pikes and forks. This is like,1.00
00:40:00.140they brought soldiers, they brought cannons, they brought muskets. The royal family was advised,
00:40:05.380understandably, to flee the palace and throw themselves in the mercy of the National Assembly.
00:40:09.780And if you're like the National Assembly, isn't that the same as the revolutionaries? No,
00:40:12.520no. The National Assembly is the former third state who were just like, let's have a
00:40:20.080constitutional monarchy. The revolutionaries are just like, fuck this, kill everybody. They're1.00
00:40:24.300two different groups at this point. The National Assembly at this point met in the riding school
00:40:29.280adjacent to the Tuileries Palace. Marie Antoinette was like, no, we're not going to leave. We still
00:40:34.460have these Swiss guards here with us. We should stay here and fight and not pack down. She said,1.00
00:40:40.920you can nail me to these walls before I shall consent to leave them. But one of the soldiers
00:40:45.900or assistants said, Madame, all of Paris is in motion. Action is useless. Resistance impossible.
00:40:51.060Do you wish to render yourself responsible for the murder of the king, of your children, of yourself, of the faithful servants who surround you?
00:41:12.300Some really small enclosure where the roof wasn't high enough that adults couldn't stand in it.
00:41:17.640And while they were rushing across, Marie Antoinette lost a shoe, a la Cinderella, which the shoe is now in the collection of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris.
00:41:26.820And I'm pretty sure it's part of the V&A exhibition in London right now, her shoe.
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01:02:39.800to the royal family the revolutionary government they banned silk in general like the fabric silk
01:02:45.820um because that was once the pride of the french luxury industry remember it used to be like wear
01:02:50.580silk because that's like like when marie antonite was wearing her cotton and muslin people were just
01:02:54.780like she's not patriotic enough she's not wearing silk french fabric but now they're like no silk
01:02:59.960is too much associations with the royal family cockades should now be made out of wool all
01:03:05.220cockades other than the tricolor was banned. Um, citizens, if they saw people wearing deviant
01:03:10.640cockades, um, those people could be brought in and murdered. So green also became banned as a
01:03:19.640color, um, because this is when we did an episode about this, um, Charlotte Corday, who was, she
01:03:26.840supported the more moderate revolutionaries. Uh, she had stabbed to death the revolutionary
01:03:30.940journalist marat in his bathtub look for the episode she killed him in the bathtub to learn
01:03:36.080more about that but she had been apprehended with a green ribbon in her hat so green was now seen as
01:03:40.940a color of like counter-revolutionary so now you can wear green anymore and where it's like when
01:03:46.720you have to ban colors like is this a strong successful government you know like if you have
01:03:53.140to infringe on people's free speech and free color wearing to this amount it's like people
01:03:58.220aren't supporting you because they support you. They support you because they're afraid of you.
01:04:03.200And that sort of support doesn't last, I don't think. Marie Antoinette, for the record, by this
01:04:07.400point, incredibly ill. She had been ill for a while. She was growing really thin from her
01:04:12.760various symptoms and she was hemorrhaging large amounts of blood all the time. This could maybe
01:04:20.060be like, she's 37 at this point. So maybe like a perimenopause thing, maybe a stress thing,
01:04:25.640maybe fibroids or maybe like some sort of cancer like something is going on and this
01:04:31.520she dramatically changed her appearance in this time she just looked way older than 37
01:04:36.960a Polish artist Alexander Kucharski who had become Marie Antoinette's favorite painter after
01:04:49.680afterwards from memory and she looks not great but accurately to this person who is suffering a
01:04:55.040great deal but also she's still around because kind of no one knew what to do about her like
01:05:00.320there had never been regicide like the murder of a king in french history so there's no established
01:05:05.560protocol for like the widowed queen um and at first they're like well like if you look back
01:05:11.780at like fredegund and brunhild like ancient frankish days it's like well maybe like when
01:05:16.920a king died like the queen was sent to a nunnery like maybe instead of keeping her a prisoner
01:05:21.240or being put on trial, maybe she'd be sent off to live with her relatives in Austria,
01:05:25.440maybe sent to a nunnery. But while they were kind of figuring this out, just the political climate
01:05:31.180affected what the options are going to be. So the new government, this like not very
01:05:36.540popular government that was forcing people to not wear green, there was like, there's still a war,
01:05:42.460remember, like with every country in Europe, they instituted a revolutionary tribunal in Paris.
01:05:49.320this is where the part of the story where it's just like who's being unpatriotic and they're
01:05:53.480just like pulling in everybody like they they arrested Ryan Phillippe for instance because
01:05:58.140his son had like gone to Austria to meet with some people and they're like that means he's
01:06:02.760not a patriot and like if he's not safe then like who is so they just at this point they knew that
01:06:07.480Marie Antoinette was like a figure that as long as she's still alive her and her son like people
01:06:12.500would support the royal family because they were there and they saw her and wearing her black
01:06:16.660Koche, who's sympathetic. Groves-Pierre, who is in charge at this point, he informed the rest of
01:06:22.940the convention, it was time for patriots to rekindle their vigorous and immortal hatred for
01:06:28.040those who are called sovereigns. So first, this just meant that just, I mean, everything's shitty,0.97
01:06:33.840but first this meant that the guards just treated them worse. So they were deprived of everyday
01:06:38.720necessities like clean sheets. They were woken up in the middle of the night so the rooms could be
01:06:43.340searched for evidence of treasonous activity. None was ever found. Some of the stuff they found
01:06:48.860was just like significant, like sentimental things. Like Madame Elizabeth had kept a hat
01:06:53.260that was Barry's. It was like a memento of her brother. They also found in Marie Antoinette's
01:06:57.460room, the small, a small scrap of fabric embroidered with a crucifix, a crown and Jesus's
01:07:02.900arrow pierced heart. And apparently this is a symbol of Catholic rebels. So they're like,
01:07:07.580aha, she's a Catholic rebel. The discovery of this emblem, which I'm just like, did they find
01:07:12.960it or they just say they found it wasn't in her room like where was it anyway this justified them
01:07:17.180as portraying her as an agent of the counter revolution which like she was like we knew0.86
01:07:23.280she's doing spy shit but they just had to have they're preparing to put her on trial and so0.55
01:07:26.680they're just putting together some evidence interestingly do you remember way back in0.99
01:07:30.720episode like one where marie and chanette was 14 years old and she's going on this long carriage
01:07:35.880ride to france and then they went to this like pop-up house that had been sort of decorated
01:07:40.800really quickly with just random tapestries. And I mentioned at the time that the tapestries
01:07:45.120were maybe not totally suitable for like, you know, portending well of a marriage of a young
01:07:50.660person. Cause it was images of Medea, this like classical figure from mythology who had
01:07:57.220murdered her children. And it's quite a story. Anyway, interestingly, this comes back. I think
01:08:03.840I said, then it's going to come back and this is where it comes back. So they found in Maria
01:08:07.080Jeanette's room, a small wax medallion of Medea from mythology. So apparently she had received
01:08:13.700this from one of the officers at the temple later and they brought him in. They're just like, why
01:08:17.720did you give her this wax figure? And he's like, oh, I just make wax figures of like various things.
01:08:21.360That's my hobby. He's like, this is just one of about 4,000 like it that I have at home. This
01:08:26.480guy's just like making wax figures. He said most of the wax figures he made were allegories of the
01:08:31.680revolution and therefore were harmless. But why of all the wax figures had Marie Antoinette chosen
01:08:38.220to keep that one? So it's interesting and mysterious. The image of Medea had no known
01:08:45.320connotation to like political stuff or religious stuff. So it's just like, what does this mean to
01:08:51.400her? Why would she have kept this? So potentially he had given it to her. Potentially he gave it to
01:08:58.460her because Marie Antoinette had been portrayed as a harpy, as the new Messalina, other deadly
01:09:06.060figures from classical antiquity. So maybe he had given this to her as an insult, giving her a
01:09:11.700medallion of mythology's most notorious female villain. But perhaps, and I think, I got this
01:09:18.840idea from Caroline Weber's biography. Maybe Medea had been someone who interested her after she was
01:09:24.260in that pop-up house and she saw the tapestry, she might've been like, what's the story? And
01:09:28.860like Medea and that stuck with her. And so like, this is 23 years later after she first saw those
01:09:34.020tapestries, but like, so to have Medea at the beginning and then also later on in her story.
01:09:38.740So maybe she just like felt some sort of kinship with Medea. It's just sort of like a woman who
01:09:44.860had been wrong, a person who tried to wrest control in whatever way she could. So maybe
01:09:52.060like gave her strength or something. I don't know. It's, it's interesting, certainly, but
01:09:58.000it also made the revolutionaries, like they found this embroidery. They also found this
01:10:01.960media thing. So one Republican like pamphleteer wrote, by what magic has this infernal Antoinette
01:10:08.500taken control of our countrymen's hearts? Has she held in her possession, the secrets of cruel1.00
01:10:13.060Medea? Yes. Without a doubt. So they were just like, they're using anything, like anything to
01:10:18.800just be like, she's a villain. She's a villain. Look, she has like anything that would have been
01:10:21.780like, look, she has a sock. That means she's evil. Like, but they found Medea. So they're1.00
01:10:25.600just kind of trying to make it be like, this means she's counter-revolutionary. Like they
01:10:29.280just wanted an excuse to put her on trial. And so this was part of the excuse. And in the whole
01:10:34.520sort of like psychological torment that they were putting her under, you know, like she was staying
01:10:39.580strong, even like she has these medical problems. She's like bleeding out constantly. They're not
01:10:45.180giving her new linens to like change her, like dressings for her, like bleeding that's happening
01:10:50.760all the time, but she's just like this poise, this, this way about her is they haven't broken
01:10:56.220her basically. So they're just like, here's how we can break her. So they knew that she was so
01:11:02.020fond of her children, like a lot of mothers are. Um, but they also knew that she was,
01:11:07.480everything she was doing was to try and make things okay for her son when he was eventually
01:11:11.360going to become king. Um, so there was allegedly rumors of a plot to kidnap Marie Antoinette's son,
01:11:17.060the Dauphin and install him as the new King of France. Like as soon as Barry was killed,
01:11:21.680her son, the Dauphin, whose name is Charles, uh, Louis Charles, he was, he became, he was King of
01:11:27.820France. Like France didn't have a King, but like to Royalist believers, he would be the King because
01:11:32.580the previous King was dead. And so he would be Louis the 17th. And so there's, I think there
01:11:37.660were plots of people to try and kidnap him and, or free him, liberate him so that he could be the
01:11:43.500new King of France. Maybe the guardian would be like his uncle Provence or Artois, or I'd say
01:11:48.880Ryan Phillippe, but he's in jail at this point. Anyway, so allegedly that was their excuse. They
01:11:54.660said for why they were separating the Dauphin from the rest of his family. And so six officers
01:12:00.520arrived in the middle of the night as always, all these shitty things, always they did them0.51
01:12:05.100the middle of the night to just be as upsetting as possible. So six officers appeared to separate0.51
01:12:10.140him from the rest of the family. Marie Therese, the daughter, she later recorded, she was awakened
01:12:15.940and she said, they read us a decree ordering that my brother be separated from us and lodged in a
01:12:21.020more secure room in the tower. Hardly had he heard it when he flung himself into my mother's arms,
01:12:25.680uttering loud cries and imploring not to be parted from her. My mother on her side would not give up
01:12:29.880her son and defended against the municipals, the bed on which she placed him. They absolutely
01:12:34.620determined to have him threatened to employ violence and call up the guard. My mother told
01:12:38.740them they would have to kill her before they could tear her child from her. An hour passed in0.98
01:12:42.980resistance on her part. At last, they threatened my mother so positively to kill him and us also0.86
01:12:48.340that she had to yield for the love of us. So she was separated from her son. He's like six years
01:12:53.040old at this point. Actually, let me double check his age because I want to get this right. Yeah.
01:12:58.060So he's about eight years old. Little kid, little boy. He spent most of his life in some sort of
01:13:03.400house arrest like with his mother basically now he was removed from all of his support systems
01:13:08.900and so Marie Antoinette was just like this like everything that's happened to her of course she's
01:13:14.600beside herself she would have been beside herself if this was any of her children but this was like
01:13:18.920her favorite child but also it's like her he was her petit shoe her little cabbage her most
01:13:24.400beautiful child and also the one who's going to become the next king like her whole hope
01:13:27.920like everything in her was just like living so that his life would be better and now she was
01:13:31.740separated from him. So after this, the only way she could see him was there was a small crack
01:13:37.260in one of the walls of the room that they were in. And she could see the staircase leading up
01:13:42.340to the top of the temple prison. And the Dauphin was sometimes allowed up those stairs to go
01:13:47.040to the roof to like have some fresh air. So she would just stand there for hours,
01:13:51.340Marie Therese recorded, like Marie and I would just stand there looking at this crack just for
01:13:55.400the instant when she could just see him going up those stairs or down those stairs. Marie Therese
01:14:00.160said it was her sole hope, her sole occupation. And this was a month because at the end of that
01:14:05.800month, Marie Antoinette herself was removed from the temple and taken to the conciergerie prison
01:14:10.360for her trial for treason and other things. So she was a prime suspect in the counter-revolutionary
01:14:18.840conspiracy. Allegedly, that's what she's on trial for, but they're putting her on trial so they can
01:14:22.540execute her to make people stop liking the royals, to make people more sympathetic to that convention.0.95
01:14:28.560this very unpopular government so they allowed her no privacy um as she changed from a night1.00
01:14:34.880like they came in the middle of the night because i always do so just to like give her like no1.00
01:14:38.820respect like they watched her she changed um and the only dress that she was able to take with her0.80
01:14:45.300was her black mourning dress which she'd been wearing every day because she was like she knew
01:14:49.380she might be taken to be executed every day and she wanted to be wearing this dress so she just
01:14:54.060wore the dress every day just in case the dress was like in tatters at this point she asked if
01:14:58.820she could bring some needlework with her she'd been working on sewing a pair of socks for her
01:15:03.760son this was not allowed and so she brought she wanted to bring like some personal possessions
01:15:08.620with her but they were taken away from her and what she wanted to bring with her was her little
01:15:12.900necklace with the locks of hair from her husband and her children a miniature portrait of the
01:15:17.120princess of lamb bell um and a little pocket mirror she had used to just like do her like
01:15:21.660morning, get ready with me type stuff. She's also, side note, incredibly sick. So they took0.99
01:15:28.100her in a carriage from the temple to the conciergerie and she actually bled like she
01:15:32.360hemorrhaged so heavily in the carriage that her skirts and the seat that she was sitting on were
01:15:37.340all stained with blood. This is a horrible story I'm telling you right now. I'm so sorry, but this
01:15:42.520is the story that there is to tell. So I do want to mention she's being treated especially cruelly,
01:15:48.240not all high-born high-profile prisoners were treated this way just her so for instance um
01:15:55.040ryan philippe when he was arrested as a counter-revolutionary suspect like he at this
01:16:00.140point so his real name was louis duke of orleans and to be like i'm like you fellow poor people
01:16:06.140he changed his name to philippe egalite because remember you're not allowed to have titles anymore
01:16:10.220so he's like i'm philippe you know the french thing it's like liberte ecolidae so he's like
01:16:15.160i'm philippe egalite i'm like a total normal guy too like make me be your king please thanks but
01:16:22.020when he was incarcerated he uh he was first incarcerated in merseille and then he was sent
01:16:27.080to the conciergerie later he was allowed to maintain an extensive wardrobe full of all the
01:16:31.560luxurious clothing that he had not worn during his time period of trying to be like every every man
01:16:37.380like please make me your king so he just like in jail he's just like yeah no i'm like a rich guy
01:16:43.680like whatever. So Marie Antoinette was being treated especially cruelly because she was so1.00
01:16:49.060hated because she was such a symbol of like decadence and whatever. So she was placed in a0.99
01:16:54.540dank, squalid and sparsely furnished cell at the conciergerie. And I believe this is the place
01:17:00.680where if you watch last year's Paris Olympic opening ceremonies, this is where there's the
01:17:07.820part where they bring out the like heavy metal band and they sing a song, Sa Ira. Um, and that
01:17:13.520is a song that was sung by the revolutionaries. It was actually set to the tune of a song that
01:17:20.920Marie Antoinette used to like, and then they made it into the song and then they bring out
01:17:24.900in the opening ceremonies, the sort of chorus of beheaded Marie Antoinette's all standing in
01:17:29.480the window. That's the conciergerie prison. I now understand why people got upset about that
01:17:34.340because that's a pretty shitty thing to do. So she got to the cell. The thing she has with her
01:17:40.100is like her wedding ring, her other ring, like the gold watch from her mom. And so she hangs
01:17:43.760a gold watch up on the wall, just kind of like a token. She's had this her whole life
01:17:47.100just to like give her comfort. But then that was taken away because they were like, no,
01:17:51.540she can't have anything. And at this point, like she had been stoic for so long and she just broke
01:17:56.540down when they took away this gold watch. She also asked, can I have the needlework? I was
01:18:01.280working on like knitting these stockings for my son. And they're like, no, because they were afraid
01:18:05.520that allegedly that she might hurt herself with the needles, but she was just like, no, I'm going
01:18:10.360to make these stockings for my son. God damn it. So she picked thread. There was like a torn tapestry0.99
01:18:16.220on the wall over her bed and she picked threads out of it and using a pair of toothpicks,
01:18:23.180knitted a pair of garters, um, for her son, which is like, she won't be stopped. She won't be
01:18:30.980broken. She asked the prison concierge to please send these to the temple, to her son. The gift
01:18:35.760never reached him. And, uh, just, you know, what happened to the Dauphin is that he died under
01:18:41.780mysterious circumstances in the prison. Um, but we'll talk about that in a bit. Anyway, later,
01:18:47.040a few years later, the garters were given to, uh, Marie Therese. Um, and that's how we know
01:18:52.580that they existed anyway. So a few days later, like a few days after she was placed to the
01:18:57.040conciergerie she was able to get a scrap of paper and she wrote a note to her daughter so her
01:19:03.080daughter had stayed behind her daughter and madame elizabeth are still back in the temple
01:19:06.820palace and what marie internet wrote to her daughter was i want to let you know my dear
01:19:11.400child that i'm all right i'm calm and i would be all together so if i knew that my poor daughter
01:19:15.860were not worried i embrace you and your aunt with my whole heart please send me some lace stockings
01:19:20.600a cotton redding goat and an underskirt so this note got to them like they had supporters there's
01:19:25.980still people sending the notes back and forth. And so Madame Elizabeth and Marie Therese fulfilled
01:19:29.940this request. They found a sympathetic officer who brought a package of clothes to Marie Antoinette
01:19:34.820at the conciergerie. Apparently she was overcome by emotion as she got these items. And her sort
01:19:40.580of like assistant, like maid at the conciergerie was this woman called Rosalie, which is interesting
01:19:45.920because Rosalie was the name that Marie Antoinette had as her pseudonym during the flight to Beren.
01:19:50.320Rosalie was like sympathetic to her and brought her a cardboard box that she could store them in
01:19:54.900Because if there wasn't a box, she would have had to put this stuff on the floor and it would have gotten dirty.
01:20:01.220Rosalie also got her a little red painted mirror that she got from a nearby trinket dealer because the queen wanted a mirror just so she could do her morning toilette.
01:20:16.280And Rosalie just did what she could. She tried to keep the bed linens changed and clean as much as she could, even though they were covered with bugs.
01:20:24.900She tried to do her hair as much as she could.0.85
01:20:27.100There was another prison employee called Madame Harrell1.00
01:20:29.340who helped do Marie Antoinette's hair every day1.00
01:20:31.840with a white ribbon and a touch of powder.
01:36:52.960Also, interestingly, um, another way that people are scapegoated for weather problems.
01:36:59.200Anyway, so there's an artist called David who we talked about in a previous episode.
01:37:03.540He's the one who did the, um, painting of Marat who like after Charlotte Corday killed
01:37:10.040Murat. David made this beautiful painting of Murat where he kind of looks like Jesus.
01:37:14.520So he's like big revolutionary guy, David. So he did a sketch of her going by in the cart. And
01:37:20.420it's like a quick sketch. It's described in this one source as a brutal sketch. Like it's not
01:37:24.700flattering. It's not a beautiful image. He saw her as pathetic, as this kind of like hideous
01:37:30.680crone, just like she used to be so narcissistic and so vain and look at her now. But it's like1.00
01:37:36.640to me and some of the people who see this like it's a accurate adjacent image and it's it just
01:37:43.480kind of shows like a woman who's like proud she's still got the posture that's always been impressed
01:37:47.620about her her whole life and this aura about her to me i see like a strong woman who is just like1.00
01:37:53.660fuck you fuck all of you like i'm gonna be remembered and none of you are so just like1.00
01:37:58.680fuck you is how i see it he saw it's just like look at this gross crone and it does capture her1.00
01:38:03.480profile, which she'd never liked to have portrayed in images with the long nose and the lip and the1.00
01:38:07.680resting bitch face. So he thought she looked so shitty, but other people were very moved by what0.99
01:38:15.680they saw. And we talked in the Charlotte Corday episode about kind of how she was kind of looked0.86
01:38:19.980like an angel going to her execution. And some people just saw this sort of like the same thing
01:38:25.500with Maria Antoinette. They're just like, oh my gosh, like she's so white, like the purity,
01:38:31.080the like angelicness of this, like the way that she's carrying herself, like this magic power
01:38:36.180Marie Antoinette had with just her like posture and her composure. Some people are just like,
01:38:41.820oh my God, look at her. So anyway, she withstood it all with dignity. She did not break. Um,
01:38:49.440even if she mounted the steps to the guillotine. And I'm not going to say like, no, like Madame
01:38:53.880Dewberry was just like, wait, someone saved me. Stop this. Like being executed sucks. Like the
01:38:59.100way that people behave when they're being executed it's just like i've done a couple stories like
01:39:02.500this like lady jane gray mary queen of scots like it always sucks and so she like my internet she
01:39:09.460portrayed herself as she wanted to be portrayed she wanted to be just like i'm still the queen0.99
01:39:13.580fuck you and that's what she gets across um her last words where she said pardon me sir i did not0.98
01:39:18.680do it on purpose because she accidentally stepped on the executioner's foot while she was climbing1.00
01:39:23.340up the stairs which kind of just is like remember when she was with elizabeth vigela brun who was
01:39:28.360like the pregnant painter and she dropped some paintbrush and Marie Antoinette went to pick it
01:39:31.840out for her. It's just like, she's just nice. She's just a nice person. And at noon, the guillotine0.65
01:39:37.920blade dropped. Um, and this was, she was 37 years old. It was two weeks before her 38th birthday,
01:39:45.020but that's not where the story ends because we've all heard of her. And why is that?
01:39:50.740So in the immediate aftermath of Marie Antoinette's execution, um, Madame Tussauds,
01:39:56.040So our friend from a previous episode, she was employed to make a death mask of Marie Antoinette
01:40:01.020and I hope it's still there. When I was a young person in the nineties, I went to see
01:40:06.080Madame Tussauds Wax Museum in London and there was the death mask of Marie Antoinette. I have
01:40:10.220not been back there since, but I understand that the chamber of horrors is, is there again. And I
01:40:15.320think that the death mask is probably there too. Um, and it would mean more to me to see it now
01:40:19.460when I was a kid and I didn't really know about Marie Antoinette. Anyway, death mask was made.
01:40:23.520Um, her body was thrown into an unmarked grave in the Madeline cemetery, which was close by.
01:40:29.200And this is just where, cause remember they're being like, everybody is the same. There's no
01:40:32.440Royals. They just threw her like a mass grave with other people executed that day. And that0.51
01:40:36.360cemetery got full, I guess, because of all the people being executed. So it actually closed the
01:40:41.520following year because it ran out of capacity for more dead bodies. What happened internationally?
01:40:46.180So Marie Antoinette's sister, Maria Carolina, the queen of Naples was furious about this. Um, and she offered to help French emigres fleeing France. Um, she granted a lot of them pensions if they came to Naples. Um, the French revolution after this point devolved into the purge, which is like formerly known as the terror, uh, where it's just like, again, like the shitty government.
01:41:11.820It's like without Marie Antoinette there, it's like the thing for everyone to hate together.
01:42:53.140And then the new king, he died of the result of the horrific abuse he faced in the prison
01:42:59.140and maybe potentially tuberculosis just because he was treated.
01:43:02.900he was living in really bad conditions and he probably was susceptible to a lot of diseases
01:43:08.100and it's really sad and for the rest of marie tris's life sort of like the princess in the
01:43:13.760tower in english history like men would show up and be like it's me i'm the dauphin i actually
01:43:18.060survived and that was really traumatizing for her because none of them were her brother and
01:43:22.360she lived through such a sequence of shitty things marie tris she was never okay understandably
01:43:27.940anyway so the new king when there was the restoration of the monarchy louis the 17th
01:43:32.420Who is that? Well, it was Barry's younger brother, Provence, who long wanted to be the king instead
01:43:38.540of him. And when he took over with the restoration of the royal family, which again, it's like,
01:43:43.120why did the French revolution even happen? Well, I mean, we know why it happened, but it's like,
01:43:47.900what did it lead to? Oh, just the royal family coming back again. Okay. So Provence became the
01:43:53.040new king. He had Marie Antoinette's body and Barry's bodies exhumed from the mass graves where
01:43:58.020they were left. So this is in 1815. He had their bodies re-interred in the necropolis of French
01:44:04.000kings at the Basilica of St. Denis. And there are statues there of them both as well. Marie Antoinette
01:44:09.480in the statue, interestingly, because this is 1815. So she's wearing more of like an umpire
01:44:13.500waistline dress. It's like, well, she never dressed like that, but okay. If she was alive,
01:44:16.680she probably would have at that point. Then 1824, Provales died of gangrene. He had no surviving
01:44:22.480children. So the next king became the other brother, Artois, who became King Charles the
01:44:28.10010th. His son was the heir. So his son is the heir. And there's also Marie Therese's husband.
01:44:36.380So Marie Therese is now married to the Delphin of France, making her like her mother, the Delphine
01:44:41.160again, which is interesting how that happens. Artois, not a popular king. As you might understand
01:44:46.700and appreciate and might've been like this yourself. Like he was really tyrannical and
01:44:52.140wanted to not have revolutionaries do anything because he saw how that like destroyed his
01:44:56.620brother's life and threatened the monarchy. His unpopularity, Artois as Charles X led to the 1830
01:45:03.240July revolutions, which is another sequence of, there's so many revolutions in the history of
01:45:08.560France that just kept happening. But the result of this 1830 revolution resulted in Artois,
01:45:15.820Charles X, abdicating of being king. He named as the next king his nine-year-old nephew,
01:45:21.920but the government at that time was just like, we don't think so. We want someone else's king.
01:45:26.980And the person, another guy swooped in and usurped the power. And who that person was,
01:45:31.880was the son of Ryan Phillippe. And he took over as Louis-Philippe, the citizen king, he was called.
01:45:38.720So then it's 1832. Students in Paris revolt against Louis-Philippe, the citizen king.
01:45:45.020this is what Les Mis is about. So many people, when I talk about the fact I'm doing this
01:45:49.520Marie Antoinette series or French Revolution, they're like, oh, like in Les Mis. And I'm not
01:45:53.820going to be like, oh, actually it's a different revolution because this is convoluted. But this
01:45:57.460is what the Les Mis revolution is about. And nobody would know about the 1832 student revolution,
01:46:03.960except Victor Hugo wrote a book about it and it became Les Mis. The schoolboys do not win.0.64
01:46:08.880As we know from the end of Les Mis, they're all killed. But then in 1848, there's another French1.00
01:46:13.700revolution. And this time they get rid of the monarchy again. And who is elected is Napoleon's
01:46:19.880nephew who becomes president. Um, and then later he's like, what if instead of president, I'm
01:46:25.760emperor Napoleon the third and his wife, Eugenie, who we talked about in a previous episode was a
01:46:32.880Marie Antoinette fangirl, also a redhead, also loves glamour and knows the power of fashion.
01:46:38.660and she because she loved Marie Antoinette so much like as soon as she became emperor she's0.96
01:46:43.980just like she went to Versailles she wanted to see Petit Trianon she was just like where's all
01:46:47.240the stuff like how I feel about how I want to see the Marie Antoinette exhibit anyway so she
01:46:51.420Eugenie really set to work trying to amass as much of Marie Antoinette's furniture and
01:46:56.000belongings as she could because she was just a fan and she wanted to rescue it and that's why
01:46:59.940at the V&A exhibit now they have a lot of the things they do so thank you Eugenie for getting
01:47:05.580that all together. And then in 1871, there's another revolution. France becomes a republic
01:47:11.520again and stays that way. And that is where we are now with France no longer has a king. Although
01:47:18.100there are people who are like royalist supporters, like today's Bourbon descendants,
01:47:23.600even the Habsburg descendants. Like when there was the Olympic thing with Marie Antoinette,
01:47:28.940with the headless Marie Antoinette singing the Sa-Ira song.1.00
01:47:33.840The Bourbon descendants were just like, this is shitty.1.00
01:47:37.200The Habsburg descendants were like, this is shitty.0.99
01:47:39.460And a friend of the podcast, Lea Renman-Chang,1.00
01:47:42.800who's on one of our earlier episodes talking about Olympe de Gouges,0.68
01:47:47.800she wrote a really beautiful essay about why that was shitty.
01:47:51.060And now I understand even more fully understanding the context of that song,
01:47:55.420the fact that it was at the Salpatier prison where Marie Antoinette was sent to die,
01:48:00.400the whole pointlessness of the French revolution and executing her. I'm like, yeah, that was shitty.0.98
01:48:06.760That was a shitty thing. The Olympic opening ceremony is dead. And this is the end of the0.97
01:48:11.860Marie Antoinette episode. And so what we do on this podcast, when we reach the end of a biographical
01:48:17.600episode or series is we score those people in four categories on what is called the
01:48:22.980Fredegund Memorial Scandaliciousness Scale. So there are four categories and just to kind of
01:48:29.420see how everybody adds up in these various areas. The first category, and this is a tricky one,
01:48:35.000honestly, I've been thinking about it a lot because the first category for Marie Antoinette,
01:48:38.280well, for everybody is scandalousness. How scandalous was this person's behavior
01:48:42.840based on the society of the time? And with Marie Antoinette, a lot of it, it's like
01:48:49.020people thought she was scandalous but it wasn't scandalous people thought she was having all these
01:48:54.260orgies and lesbian relationships and like secretly manipulating the royal family and stuff and like1.00
01:48:59.540but she wasn't but she did do some things that were challenging societal norms like being the1.00
01:49:05.420queen and having this political power being the queen and having this fashion power um having1.00
01:49:10.880petite train on not like the fact that you know she like maybe scratched to enter door with not1.00
01:49:16.440her left pinky finger but her right pinky finger like people like Madame Etiquette would be like1.00
01:49:20.760Herman my pills like there's stuff she did that I'm gonna discount most of what she did to0.86
01:49:26.780scandalize the Versailles crowd because that's a cult and that's insane well and then it's like
01:49:31.160she was put on trial for all this stuff where it's like was that scandalous like having a Medea
01:49:36.540a dalliant and stuff but where I do think she did push society like push the boundaries with some0.93
01:49:43.340of her fashion stuff was like very in the context that she was in as a queen of france was was very0.99
01:49:49.320provocative i guess um like i wanted to say the stuff she did that was scandalous
01:49:56.060brackets positive brackets that she actually did but the fact that people thought that she did0.99
01:50:02.680other things like i don't want to give her a really high score for scandalousness because0.80
01:50:05.900it's i'm like defensive of her i'm like but she wasn't scandalous but she was in a lot of ways
01:50:10.260Like she went to Paris. She like went in disguise to balls. Like she, she did do things that were0.99
01:50:17.160shocking to the people of the time and place. I'm going to say like, I'm going to say six out of 10
01:50:22.220for scandalousness because she did push the boundaries of what was acceptable behavior for1.00
01:50:28.020a queen. And in a different context, maybe it wouldn't have been a shocking and it wouldn't0.87
01:50:31.980have led to the French revolution and her dying. It's a tricky one, but I'm going to say six because
01:50:36.240she did do a lot of stuff that really at this point, like in a certain way was progressive,
01:50:40.660um, that she was challenging some of the really outdated stuff that Versailles was doing.
01:50:46.980Yeah. I'm just, you know, how much is my show six for scandaliciousness? I'm going to say
01:50:51.160the next category is scheminess. And I think that this is interesting because
01:50:54.860in the first part of her life, she was not because she did not have to be
01:50:58.200everyone around her was doing schemes all the time, like trying to fool her and trying to
01:51:01.940trick her and trying to manipulate her. And she was just being like having a nice time,
01:51:05.940Like trying to deal with the fact that she had not consummated her marriage in seven years, that there's all these expectations on her as the queen that, but they're all trying to undermine her at every turn.
01:51:16.340Like she wasn't scheming until she was in prison.
01:51:18.760And this is where she took a real Mary Queen of Scott's pivot, where she's just like writing a secret code, making secret plans, like buying the party bus.
01:51:27.480Like, I feel like her scheminess, again, like in a defensive way, like of me defending her, she's put on trial because they're like, oh, she was like a traitor to the Republic.
01:51:35.000and at that point she kind of was but not like they thought like she yeah she was communicating
01:51:40.400with the other army and telling them what France was doing because France was trying to kill her
01:51:45.820so she was so it's like that's scheming in a way but again you know I feel like she was
01:51:50.840scheming in a positive way that I respect to the best of her abilities like did her schemes amount
01:51:56.320to much like well she was surrounded by people who were not helping that like the fact that
01:52:00.700Barry was involved, made it very hard to pull off a lot of the schemes that she was up to.
01:52:05.140I think I'm going to say, I'm going to say, because she did really like with the spy stuff
01:52:11.840and the making the plans and the secret codes, like I'm going to say a six for scheminess as
01:52:17.020well, because she pulled it out when she had to. The schemes didn't all work. Most of them did not,
01:52:23.900but that doesn't mean that she wasn't scheming. Significance, I think is a 10, but I will talk
01:52:28.680about that for a bit more. I'm doing this podcast about women in history. And to the average person
01:52:37.040who I talk to, most of the people we discuss on this podcast, they have not heard of, but they've
01:52:41.800heard of Marie Antoinette in the same way they've heard of Cleopatra. These are such famous names,
01:52:49.380even if you don't really know her story. And I didn't really know her story until I did all
01:52:52.880the research for this season. I didn't know about how wronged she was. I didn't know that she had0.88
01:52:58.040like a pants gender bending era i didn't know a lot about her even if you don't know her whole1.00
01:53:05.920story you can picture her like it comes to mind it's like the the poof hairstyle the big fancy
01:53:10.960dress the jewels the even people who think she said let them eat cake it's like yeah she didn't
01:53:17.300say that but you know who she is and you think she said that like she's so well known right now
01:53:22.280So like in terms of significance, like countless movies and books, podcasts about her, the VNA has this whole exhibition, Marie Antoinette style, like, and people are going to go to that because she's so famous. Her style is so famous. And I love that for her. I love that she's being celebrated in this exhibition where she is often vilified to still to this day, but she did have an impact on style.
01:53:46.680like her significance in terms of that of just like showing like how a woman in power could
01:53:51.780operate how you can use fashion to and empress eugenie did this as well following in her idol's1.00
01:53:57.460footsteps like how you can inspire the get more people buying french silk by wearing french silk
01:54:04.680to the point that when you switch to cotton it like threatens the entire industry like you still
01:54:07.780see this with people today who are just affiliate links and any instagrammer saying it's like people
01:54:12.480want to look like a famous person and she's kind of the first person to made that attainable by
01:54:16.420working with rose portent and leonard like her forward thinkingness like to me is like a fashion
01:54:21.220girly like i see her influence is huge but then also her significance to like all of history like
01:54:27.660we've talked about the french revolution and that one million reasons why it happened and why she
01:54:32.500ended up being the scapegoat like she did not cause the french revolution there's so many people
01:54:37.260and weird decisions that came into that but she was part of that like she's a important part of
01:54:44.000how everything unfolded. If she hadn't been there as a scapegoat, if Barry had married somebody who
01:54:50.480was less progressive, for lack of a better word, if he had married someone who was more traditional,
01:54:55.940then maybe there wouldn't have been this. If he had married someone more traditional and he had
01:54:59.320a mistress, like would people have hated the mistress? Like would people still have hated
01:55:02.320the queen if she wasn't somebody who was just like doing all this house remodeling and stuff?0.67
01:55:06.580I don't know. But the fact that she was there was like a mandatory canon event. And that's part of
01:55:10.880how the French revolution happened. Like she's so intricately connected to it. Like she's a 10
01:55:16.180out of 10 significance for sure to me, like both her influence on like fashion, but also her
01:55:20.860influence on history and the fact that everybody, everybody knows her name. If you don't know her
01:55:26.100story, when you hear her name and you can picture her, if you see someone in costume as her, you
01:55:30.660know, that's her. Like she's, she's like, I don't know who's more famous than her as a woman from
01:55:36.580history. She's the most famous woman from history, even to people who don't give a shit about women0.99
01:55:40.480mystery those poor people the final category we have is the sexism bonus which is where I think0.91
01:55:46.220about like how much more could this person have accomplished if not for sexism how much did the
01:55:51.120patriarchy get in their way and affect what they were trying to do in their life and I think for
01:55:55.100her this is a 10 as well this is truly a 10 for me because the hatred the like part of it was a0.52
01:56:04.260xenophobia part of it was like she was Austrian and people that was an excuse to be suspicious
01:56:08.960of her to not trust her like the aunts did. As soon as she came into the country, just because0.89
01:56:13.000the long dispute between France and Austria, people hated her. And people hated her because0.77
01:56:17.420she was a woman who was not behaving the way that they thought a woman should. She was a wife1.00
01:56:21.960who was not becoming a mother, not because of her choice, but just because of circumstances.
01:56:27.980And she was living her own life independent of her husband in a lot of ways. She was making
01:56:32.280decisions on her own. And that just terrified people. It confused people. It angered people.
01:56:36.760And it made it so easy for people to vilify her.0.91
01:56:40.260I mean, and then you see, like we saw, she was a scapegoat.
01:56:43.600She was kept alive until the government needed her death to try to prop themselves up.
01:56:47.600And then, and then when she died, everything, like the whole government fell apart.0.79
01:56:52.160Like this sexist, misogynistic, xenophobic hatred of her was keeping everything running.
01:57:00.460And when she was removed from that, everything devolved into absolute chaos purge.0.95
01:57:06.760like her hating this woman kept it all going.
01:57:12.020And we see that in so many other circumstances with so many women in,