Vulgar History - Marie Antoinette (part two)： Teenage Drama Queen

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00:00:30.000 hello and welcome to vulgar history a feminist women's history comedy podcast

00:00:43.320 my name is ann foster and this is marie antoinette month and we're in the midst of telling the story

00:00:49.120 of marie antoinette herself over the past few weeks we've talked about some of her friends

00:00:52.640 we've talked about her mom last week we got into the story of our girl herself and today we're

00:00:58.100 going to be continuing that Marie Antoinette part two my references for this episode and I recommend

00:01:04.560 each and every one of these books if you want to dig more into it because there's only so much I

00:01:08.280 can say in a podcast format so in the shadow of the empress the defiant lives of Maria Teresa

00:01:13.200 mother of Marie Antoinette and her daughters that's all the title by Nancy Goldstone as well

00:01:17.840 as the ur text kind of everyone agrees this is kind of the Marie Antoinette biography to get

00:01:23.380 the overarching story of her life itself in a sympathetic way. Marie Antoinette, The Journey

00:01:27.960 by Antonia Frazier. And I also consulted Queen of Fashion, What Marie Antoinette Wore to the

00:01:33.400 Revolution by Caroline Weber, as well as Marie Antoinette, Teen Queen to Guillotine by Melanie

00:01:38.420 Burroughs. That's a book that's coming out, I think in October next month. And I was fortunate

00:01:42.840 enough to get an early copy of it. And I really appreciated being able to consult all these books

00:01:47.040 and to crunch all the information together to try and make it into a chronological story for me to

00:01:52.400 share with all of you. So because it's been a minute for some of you a week since we had our

00:01:57.900 last Marie Antoinette episode previously on, here's what you missed on vulgar history, Marie Antoinette.

00:02:03.240 So Marie Antoinette, age 14, left behind her entire Austrian identity to move to Versailles

00:02:09.140 to marry the Dauphin of France, whose name was Louis Auguste. He was the Duke of Berry. People

00:02:15.600 called him Berry. And I'm going to continue to call him Berry just to tell him apart from all

00:02:19.460 the other people called Louis in this story. She did not realize when she arrived in Versailles

00:02:24.040 that almost everybody there hated her and that it was this kind of cult without a leader since

00:02:30.200 the king was just checked out and playing golf all the time. Hateration nation comprised a lot

00:02:35.500 of people who she met and who she thought she should have been able to trust, like her aunts,

00:02:39.540 like her husband's brothers, like her husband's cousin, like the ladies in waiting, kind of

00:02:46.160 everyone hated her before they even met her because they hated the idea of her because she 0.96

00:02:50.280 was Austrian. And a lot of people in France didn't trust Austria. And also because a lot of people

00:02:55.440 were worried that the power that they had being sort of tangentially close to the king would maybe

00:03:01.280 be threatened by her because maybe she would become close to the king. None of this was her

00:03:05.120 fault. And she didn't realize at first how many people hated her and were pulling mean tricks on

00:03:11.060 her. And then they got married. She was 14. Barry was 15. They didn't know how sex works. We'll talk

00:03:16.040 about that in this episode some more. And so they have still not, at the point that we're in,

00:03:20.320 in this episode, four years into their marriage, consummated their marriage because they don't

00:03:23.980 know how sex works. Marie Antoinette worked out her frustration at all of this, being surrounded 0.95

00:03:29.140 by haters, at having nobody she can trust, at feeling like a failure at what she'd been sent

00:03:35.220 there to do, which was to have children by this person. She learned how to horseback ride. She

00:03:40.000 started wearing pants. She kind of had the idea that if she couldn't get power by being the mother 1.00

00:03:47.020 of the future king of France, she would get power by just kind of cosplaying as Louis XIV,

00:03:52.300 the previous much beloved king of France. Meanwhile, she and Barry got to visit Paris

00:03:57.720 for the first time. And just like in so many shows, Sex and the City, Emily in Paris, The Hills,

00:04:03.240 the summer I turned pretty, like Paris is the place for a young woman to go to really find

00:04:08.380 herself. And she loved it there. And everyone there loved her at this point. So even though

00:04:13.220 the bitches at Versailles were comprised, hater Asian nation, the common people in Paris were 0.99

00:04:19.280 like really excited to see her and to see Barry, including even the market ladies presented her a 1.00

00:04:24.120 bouquet of produce. Marie Antoinette was like, wow, this is great. They all like me personally

00:04:28.620 as a person. That's not true. She didn't know that yet, but you know, bless her heart. She's

00:04:32.720 young and we have retrospect now but people were just really excited to see new hot young royals 0.59

00:04:39.340 because everyone hated the king so much and so again the same way that hateration nation hated

00:04:46.260 marie antoinette because of what she represented the people of paris loved her because of what

00:04:52.120 she represented none of this was about who she really was or what she actually represented

00:04:55.460 we ended our episode last time with the death of golf king louis the 15th marie antoinette and

00:05:01.300 Barry sobbing on the floor, praying, saying, we are not, we're too young, we can't be king and

00:05:06.720 queen. And that's where we left off. And I'm going to backtrack a little bit so we can appreciate

00:05:13.360 more about the context in which Marie Antoinette became queen of France. And to do so, we need to

00:05:19.640 talk a bit about Barry's cousin, Philippe, the Duke of Orleans, who we mentioned last time,

00:05:25.940 and he's becoming a main player. So on this podcast, that means he gets a cute nickname.

00:05:30.440 So his name is Philippe, and we're going to call him Ryan Phillippe, which people, millennials will know as Reese Witherspoon's ex-husband and co-star in the movie Cruel Intentions.

00:05:44.780 And that's how you pronounce his name.

00:05:46.420 It looks like it's pronounced Ryan Phillippe, but it's pronounced Ryan Phillippe.

00:05:50.340 And our Ryan Phillippe, honestly, just picture Ryan Phillippe from Cruel Intentions because that's kind of the vibe. 0.92

00:05:57.660 He's a womanizer. 1.00

00:05:59.020 He's a fuckboy. 1.00

00:06:00.440 We mentioned him before. 0.99

00:06:01.580 He was pals with the Princess de Lambal's husband.

00:06:04.940 They used to like to go to orgies together and stuff.

00:06:07.480 So Ryan Phillippe was part of the French royal family.

00:06:11.200 So there was Louis XIV, who was the Sun King.

00:06:14.960 He was the one who invented Versailles.

00:06:16.040 He had a brother called also Ryan Phillippe.

00:06:19.780 And so our Ryan Phillippe is the descendant of Louis XIV's brother.

00:06:24.840 So he's like a cousin to the French royal family,

00:06:28.080 which makes him called a prince of the blood.

00:06:30.560 And what this also meant is that in terms of the line of succession,

00:06:33.200 so Barry has just, well, is going to become king, Louis XVI.

00:06:36.900 And then like next to the line of succession after Barry would be his next younger brother,

00:06:41.540 Provence.

00:06:42.200 And after that is his next younger brother, Artois.

00:06:44.060 And after that, assuming none of those guys have sons,

00:06:47.760 Ryan Phillippe would be the next king.

00:06:49.980 And so his whole branch of the family, the whole Ryan Phillippe family,

00:06:53.760 was just mad because they felt like they should be king.

00:06:55.920 they should be further ahead in line of succession. His whole family, like his dad.

00:07:00.200 They all hated Louis XV, the Gulf King, because of his autocratic ways. They thought that we would

00:07:06.140 be like the chill, cool kings. Like we should be the kings instead of him. We don't like how he

00:07:10.660 just does what he wants without like seeing other people's ideas, like our ideas. And so because the

00:07:16.980 whole family hated the Gulf King, they stayed away from Versailles a lot of the time and they started 0.81

00:07:21.460 of their own sort of like rival fake Versailles, a kind of le fufu Versailles in Paris, which is 0.73

00:07:28.060 called the Palais Royale. And this was like Versailles is not just one building. It's a

00:07:32.640 whole bunch of buildings. It's like a compound. So the Palais Royale is kind of like a big mall

00:07:37.960 area that is like, there's a place where they live and they host events there, but also there's

00:07:43.080 like a marketplace and there's a street and there's shops and cafes and it's all in the

00:07:47.420 Champs-Elysees and anybody can go there anytime, which also anybody could go to Versailles anytime.

00:07:52.900 It was strangely open to the public constantly, but the Palais Royale was open to the public and

00:07:57.440 in Paris. So more people would kind of go there. And so the Rand Philippi family had sort of liberal

00:08:02.980 adjacent politics in the sense of, you know, they didn't support Louis XV having been this kind of

00:08:10.060 tyrant autocrat is how they saw him. And he kind of was before he just fucked off to just play golf 0.99

00:08:14.980 all the time. The Ryan Phillippe family was like, we'll be cool kings. We'll be like kind of liberal 0.99

00:08:20.040 kings. We'll be the king for like the common man is kind of their vibe, even though they are also

00:08:25.060 aristocrats and, you know, dressing up fancy and whatever. And so the people in Paris liked them

00:08:30.240 because they could hang out in their mall. And because these guys are kind of cosplaying as being

00:08:35.080 like real working class type guys. So yeah, anyone could go to their mall, the Palais Royale, and just

00:08:41.260 hang out, like wander around the gardens, visit the shops, there's cafes, there's like gambling

00:08:46.280 spots, bookstores. It was also a popular place for sex workers to hang out there. And the Paris

00:08:52.120 Opera was also there. The Paris Opera is a place where very rich, influential people would go.

00:08:58.540 So the Palais Royale is like, anyone can hang out there of any kind of class, really. And it was

00:09:04.160 sort of a place where the high-born people and the low-born people are all kind of in the same

00:09:08.180 place at the same time, which is kind of unusual for France at this time. So Ryan Phillippe,

00:09:14.560 remember, fuckboy of the world. He had a wife because everyone in this story is married, 0.99

00:09:20.240 even though they're fucking other people. His wife is named Louise. And so Louise, 0.99

00:09:25.400 we've kind of talked about before in the Princess de Lambelle episode, because Louise is the sister 0.89

00:09:30.080 of Princess of Lambelle's dead fuckboy husband. So Louise is sister-in-laws with Princess Lambelle.

00:09:35.640 And if you recall, the Prince of Lambelle, the dead fuckboy husband, his family was super rich.

00:09:41.300 And when he died, Princess of Lambelle, his widow, who was like 19 or something, 0.71

00:09:45.600 became the wealthiest woman in all of France with this cool father-in-law who supported her always.

00:09:51.320 Louise also inherited a lot of money.

00:09:53.680 So that's part of the reason why Ryan Phillippe married her. 0.99

00:09:56.140 And so he neglected his wife, obviously, because he sucks. 0.98

00:10:00.600 And Louise is just like, well, what's a girl to do? 0.99

00:10:03.060 well, I'm here in this, the Ryan Phillippe mall area, and I'm just going to go hang out in the

00:10:08.340 shop. So I'm going to like go try on some dresses and just like become a fashion girly, which is

00:10:14.040 what she did. So in the Palais Royale, there's like fashion stores and there's also nearby Rue

00:10:20.080 Saint-Honoré. There's also lots of boutiques you can go to, to get your like literal couture.

00:10:25.840 That's where it's invented. And so she was just like, Louise is like, I'm super rich.

00:10:30.000 I have nothing to do. So I'm just going to like get really into fashion. So she was considered

00:10:34.820 the most stylish woman of the era. And while shopping one day, Louise is just like checking

00:10:40.900 out the shops and she found the shop called the Grand Mogul named after kind of Asia because

00:10:47.760 sort of Asian influence was, was trendy at this time. The Grand Mogul is owned by a fashion

00:10:54.540 designer slash entrepreneur named Rose Bertin who made the most amazing outfits. Louise was just 0.78

00:11:01.680 like, never seen outfits this good. I'm going to wear these outfits like Rose Bertin. Look at what

00:11:07.340 you're doing. She's like, it's hard to say. I don't know who's like a real fashion designer

00:11:11.900 who's a celebrity right now. It feels like fashion stylists are kind of more celebrities

00:11:17.260 and fashion designers. But Rose Bertin is just like her store, like she will make you a dress

00:11:23.320 to your specifications like you choose your fabric you choose your design and she will do it up but

00:11:28.760 her store also sells other stuff like hats and ribbons and accessories and stuff so she's kind

00:11:34.540 of like it's all in one all in the shop she becomes i draw from this well a lot but i feel

00:11:39.460 like the most well-known fashion like consultant advisor person these days is la roach who does

00:11:45.520 who works with zendaya for her outfits and it's at that level rose burton is just like she's got 0.89

00:11:50.500 fingers on the pulse. She knows what's going to be cool before it's cool. She's making trends. 1.00

00:11:55.520 She's setting trends. And Louise is like her muse at this point. So we'll talk a bit about

00:12:00.400 Rose Bertin because she's going to be another important character in this whole story.

00:12:05.000 So at this point, what are we in? 1774. So Rose Bertin is like in her early twenties. She's an

00:12:10.980 up and coming young Gen Z. She's from Picardy and she's not noble or royal or aristocratic at all. 1.00

00:12:18.900 She's just like a girl with a, you know, thimble on a dream.

00:12:22.780 And so at the time in Paris, I think in all of France, the law said that the only people

00:12:27.540 who could set up like fashion stores and like make clothes were only men who were members

00:12:33.540 of this like guild of sewers and the wives of those men.

00:12:38.620 And Rose Burton, unmarried, not a man, is just like, well, you know what? 1.00

00:12:43.520 I'm just going to do this and fuck that law. 0.99

00:12:46.260 And her story was so good. 0.99

00:12:47.240 everyone's like that's cool you can stay like we'll allow this so her shop again the grand

00:12:52.180 mogul sold kind of everything her store was really successful because she had such a good eye

00:12:57.940 for choosing fabric she had really good suppliers um the dresses and the hats and everything were

00:13:03.620 so just like her aesthetic is like lady gaga mixed with chapel ron it's like extravaganza

00:13:12.260 maximalist just like eye-catching cutting edge at first when you see some of the stuff you're like

00:13:20.040 well that's weird but then you're like but it's also beautiful and so she just had this great

00:13:24.800 eye for everything she was described so the store was really big it was like how we'd probably

00:13:29.020 imagine like a department store or something today and she would just lay back on this like

00:13:32.620 chaise lounge and just be like you should try that dress on you should try that dress on and

00:13:37.180 she's and everyone's like okay because you get it like this is the she set the aesthetic just

00:13:41.340 this young woman from Picardy. And so she's also, so she's setting this trends. And when I personally,

00:13:48.700 before I started researching the series, when I thought about Marie Antoinette, I would picture

00:13:52.280 her kind of like the big bouffant hair, the really big, like sideways-y hoop skirt. Like that's kind

00:13:58.060 of the aesthetic that I imagine most with Marie Antoinette. And Rose Bertin is a person who kind

00:14:02.680 of invented or popularized that aesthetic, specifically the poof. So the poof. If you 1.00

00:14:09.440 watched Bridgerton on Netflix and you know, the kind of hairstyles that Queen Charlotte would wear

00:14:15.960 in Bridgerton, which is like huge, huge wigs with like moving carousel horses in them and stuff 0.73

00:14:24.420 like that's, that's the poof. This is what we're working with here. So the poof was initially 1.00

00:14:29.640 developed by Rose Burton and her hairdresser bestie, Monsieur Leonard, who we're just going

00:14:36.380 to call leo also main character in this and he's like the most famous hairstyles i know of it's

00:14:41.500 like chris appleton who does the hair for like jennifer aniston and people so leo and rose are

00:14:48.480 just like they're the it like glam squad of the era and so together their powers combined to

00:14:56.060 create the poof hairstyle slash fashion moment so initially the poofs were created for actresses

00:15:04.340 because rose and leo they have lots of different customers of all different classes because they're

00:15:09.500 in this mall the palais royale like rich people came and poor people came and like noble people

00:15:14.960 came some of the noble people were poor and some of the lower class people were rich and actresses

00:15:19.620 really needed to actresses at this time were sort of actresses slash sex workers it was kind of like

00:15:25.940 understood that that's sort of what the job was and they wanted to stand out both as actresses 0.81

00:15:31.000 to get cast for roles, but also to attract the attention of maybe sugar daddies. And Leo was

00:15:37.640 also designing hairstyles for plays and stuff. So they were just like, let's do something

00:15:42.560 dramatic. What can we do vis-a-vis hair? So they initially created these poof hairstyles as a way

00:15:49.380 for actresses to kind of stand out. And the noblewomen, because it's like, again, in this

00:15:54.060 mall, you've got the rich and the poor and everyone's hanging out together. And they saw

00:15:57.160 these actresses, they're like, that looks fucking rad. I want one of those poofs. And they're like, 1.00

00:16:01.220 oh, I got it at Rose Burton's Grand Mogul shop. So a poof. To describe it, it's a huge wig that 0.99

00:16:09.840 is built on... It's so huge. Again, think about Queen Charlotte in Bridgerton on Netflix. You need

00:16:15.360 wire scaffolding. Some of the poofs are like three feet tall. They're like massive construction 1.00

00:16:21.260 things. And you'd tease the person's hair around it a bit and powder their hair. But there's also

00:16:26.260 like wig hair on it also. And also just these like structures. So you've got like this scaffolding

00:16:32.880 holding up this huge thing. And it's not just like, Oh, here's my hair. It's big. It's like

00:16:36.760 you, they would use it to make sort of like artistic tableaus that sort of advertise like

00:16:41.800 a billboard, something that person wanted people to know about them. For instance. So Louise

00:16:47.160 Phillippe finds out about the poof and she's just like, she's the fashion girly. She's the 1.00

00:16:51.000 Hailey Bieber of this era. She's just like trend setting. And she is like, this poof is it. Like 0.99

00:16:58.260 this is a way that I can communicate the things I want to say in an artistic style and look rad

00:17:03.520 as hell. So when she gave birth to one of her sons, she commissioned, she worked with Rose and

00:17:07.940 Leo to get this poof that was like a birth announcement poof. And this poof, this giant

00:17:13.780 wig thing, it featured on it, like carved out of, I don't know if these are like figurines,

00:17:19.820 like made of ceramic or if it's like carved out of actual hair.

00:17:22.920 But the things in her poof included her parrot,

00:17:26.620 the image like a little tiny statue of a nursemaid seated in an armchair.

00:17:31.380 The armchair also in the poof.

00:17:33.020 The nursemaid is clasping a newborn baby to her breast. 0.86

00:17:35.440 And also Louise Phillippe's like African servant was part of it.

00:17:39.460 So it's just like a painting, but on your head. 0.68

00:17:42.140 And it's not a painting, like it's a three-dimensional object.

00:17:45.240 She's just like, look, I had a baby.

00:17:47.240 See?

00:17:48.180 It's her walking Instagram.

00:17:49.820 Marie Antoinette is spending more and more time in Paris, but she also knows Louise Philippi.

00:17:55.160 Like that's kind of part of the young, cool crowd of people that she spends time with sometimes. 0.99

00:17:59.360 And she saw Louise Philippi's poof and she's just like, what the fuck? I need one of those. 0.99

00:18:04.100 What is this? Who made you this poof? And so Louise Philippi was responsible for bringing 1.00

00:18:08.920 Rose Bertin to Versailles and introducing her to Marie Antoinette. And these two,

00:18:13.520 it's Zendaya and La Roche. It's just like, it's a beautiful relationship where they just like

00:18:18.680 creatively, artistically, just vibes based. Like they just like, this is it. This, these two are

00:18:24.140 going to work together really well. And Marie Antoinette was just like, I'm all in on the poof.

00:18:28.680 I love it. Like let's, let's have a poof moment. I'm in my poof era. So she just like got right

00:18:34.400 into it. So we're getting caught up to where we ended last week's episode, which was the death

00:18:38.640 of golf King Louis the 15th. Marie Antoinette commissioned a morning poof. So it's like a

00:18:43.940 giant, you know, three foot tall wig structure covered in like black velvet ribbons that are

00:18:48.960 used for mourning officially trimmed with a black veil and topped with a crescent moon. 0.96

00:18:54.980 This is, this is a way that Marie Antoinette, it's like when there's official mourning at 0.79

00:18:58.980 Versailles, like everyone has to wear black. And there's like, of course, specific rules about it

00:19:02.620 because everything at Versailles is specific rules, but she's like, I'm following the rules. 0.99

00:19:05.740 And also I look fabulous as fuck. And I'm the queen and I'm in mourning. And if you'll recall 0.99

00:19:11.780 what Golf King Louis XV died of was smallpox, a strong supporting character in this series of

00:19:18.920 episodes as well. And you may also, well, I'll remind you that a whole lot of people in Marie

00:19:24.240 Antoinette's family had died of smallpox all in a row and, or gotten smallpox and, or gotten

00:19:29.200 disfigured by smallpox and, or just their health suffered by smallpox. Like her mother was suffering

00:19:34.420 from like long smallpox. Her sister Elizabeth's like face was disfigured to the point that she

00:19:39.180 couldn't even arrange a marriage anymore. One of her sisters died of it. Two of her sister-in-laws

00:19:45.420 died of it. Marie Internet was just like, fuck smallpox. And in Austria, where Marie Internet 1.00

00:19:50.800 is from, there was the whole inoculation thing, which if you want to get a deep dive in that,

00:19:58.320 I did an episode back in 2020 when I was doing some pandemic specials about how the concept of

00:20:03.640 inoculation spread throughout Western Europe. And it came from the Ottoman empire and the Ottoman

00:20:11.220 empire who had some women there who are from like Eastern Europe. And they had figured out this

00:20:16.620 thing called variolation, which is someone has smallpox and you would just take like some pus

00:20:22.100 from one of their sores. And then you like scratch a person who doesn't have smallpox and put the

00:20:25.700 pus in that person. And then it's sort of like by exposing them to a controlled small amount of

00:20:30.520 smallpox, it made them immune to smallpox usually. And there's also a thing called,

00:20:36.600 I think, I don't know if it's all called inoculation or variolation, but coming out of

00:20:40.580 the UK, there was the concept, Edward Jenner was the person who popularized it, where milkmaids

00:20:47.460 were found who spend a lot of time with cows. Cows get a disease called cowpox, which is similar

00:20:52.060 to smallpox. And the milkmaids never got smallpox. So Edward Jenner was like, oh, so if we expose

00:20:56.640 people, instead of like scratching them and putting in smallpox, if we expose them to cowpox,

00:21:00.560 maybe they'll be. This is what's happening. And this is the backbone and foundation of today's

00:21:05.120 vaccination. Anyway, Marie Antoinette was just like, oh my gosh, smallpox. Like the king died 0.99

00:21:09.940 of smallpox. Everybody in Versailles had to like flee because they didn't want to all get smallpox

00:21:14.600 and potentially die or get disfigured. And Marie Antoinette is just like, you guys, why don't we

00:21:18.760 just get inoculated like we do in Austria? She herself had had smallpox, I think when she was

00:21:23.080 like a young girl. So she was basically immune. Her husband, Barry, was not immune. And so

00:21:28.720 Marie Antoinette is just like, can we just get you inoculated, please? And this was

00:21:33.980 hater nation. The people who hated her and Austrians were just like, oh no, like the king,

00:21:41.260 like, please don't do this, Barry. You know, she's an evil Austrian whore. This is going to kill you. 1.00

00:21:46.900 It's some sort of poison. But like this disease had just killed his father and made him be the 0.58

00:21:51.020 king and he and Marie Antoinette is just like how about we make you be immune to this horrific

00:21:55.700 disease and Barry's like okay I'll do it and so he did get inoculated and he survived and Marie

00:22:03.080 Antoinette could be like told you so this is a safe thing to do and how did she celebrate her 0.99

00:22:08.200 triumph at being right and convincing her husband the king to get inoculated with a poof the poof

00:22:14.180 uh l'inoculation the inoculation poof so this is like a huge you know scaffolding structure wig

00:22:21.480 that features all the emblems of inoculation which included a serpent which is associated

00:22:27.940 with the greek god of medicine the serpent on this poof is twined around an olive tree the

00:22:33.120 tree represents wisdom behind the olive tree and the poof beams a great golden sun which is a nod

00:22:38.640 to her and also to Barry's ancestor, the joint ancestor, Louis XIV, the Sun King. So this is

00:22:44.740 kind of like a promise that the glory of the Sun King had returned to France through Marie Antoinette

00:22:50.160 and Barry and this new scientific thing, inoculation. So Poof Nation just took off. 1.00

00:22:58.280 Once Marie Antoinette started wearing the Poof, then everybody's wearing the Poof in Versailles, 1.00

00:23:01.880 but also in Paris every like it's a nation all under one poof so the poofs that other women were

00:23:09.100 wearing at this time everyone's excited at like even though hater nation is there doing their

00:23:14.540 best to like spread pamphlets and stuff against Marie Antoinette most of the people the cultural

00:23:20.120 vibe in Paris is oh thank god the golf king is dead we like Marie Antoinette and Barry let's

00:23:26.420 celebrate them this is the restoration of like having good kings again it's just like Louis

00:23:31.460 the 14th. And so the poofs that women wore were to celebrate Marie Antoinette. So they were

00:23:37.680 designed to pay homage. So for instance, a popular poof theme that Rose Burton was selling 0.85

00:23:42.460 was a cornucopia, which is like the big horn of plenty, like you have a Thanksgiving or at the 0.94

00:23:47.480 Hunger Games. And so the cornucopia shaped poof symbolized the prosperous future that awaited

00:23:53.040 France under the new king and queen. And Marie Antoinette also, she won some more brownie points

00:23:58.400 among people because when they became, when she became queen, there had been a tradition where the

00:24:03.660 queen would usually be paid a certain financial gift, which would come from a tithe or a tax

00:24:09.560 that the French, that the poor people of France who are starving would all have to pay to give

00:24:13.280 her a gift of money. And she was just like, it's fine. I have money. You don't need to give this

00:24:17.180 to me. And everyone's like, oh, she's so generous. We love her. She's so great. So it took about a

00:24:21.040 year from the time that they were named king and queen until there was actually the coronation.

00:24:25.180 And I assume that's just partially because of like quarantining for smallpox and just because like Gulf King Louis XV died suddenly and unexpectedly.

00:24:33.080 So there was a, it takes time to plan a big event like this.

00:24:35.540 Think about planning a wedding.

00:24:36.700 This is even more elaborate than that.

00:24:40.760 So June 1775, a little over the year, like a year and a month after the death of Louis XV,

00:24:47.040 Barry is crowned in Rheims Cathedral in Rheims, which is a place about 145 kilometers outside

00:24:54.560 of Paris, which I just want to note that distance because this is the furthest Barry had ever been

00:24:59.480 anywhere. Like he had spent time almost all of his life in Versailles. He went to Paris sometimes

00:25:04.100 and Rheims, this is like the furthest he's ever been, the most he's ever traveled. And so, you

00:25:08.500 know there's a big thing it's a big event like he's wearing his cloak and then there's a big

00:25:14.280 part of the ceremony where the crown of charlemagne who is like the og king of france kind of this

00:25:21.000 huge old gold crown all the princess of the blood are there ryan philippe all the guys and they kind

00:25:27.620 of make a circle sort of like in the end part of the cat's eye gap ad they make a circle all around

00:25:33.320 Barry. And then they like jointly put this crown on his head because the crown is really heavy

00:25:38.740 and one person can't do it. And when the crown is put on his head, poor little Barry. If you recall

00:25:43.600 our neurodivergent king, I was heard to say the crown is hurting me. I'm sure it was. And also

00:25:51.240 psychologically. Meanwhile, you know who has the next strength to carry a huge thing on her head?

00:25:58.420 it's Marie Antoinette, who was there on the scene. So they built a special grandstand in 0.99

00:26:04.020 Rheims Cathedral just for her, because this was the first concert to attend a coronation of a

00:26:10.920 French king since 1547, which that had been Catherine de' Medici. And that was because

00:26:16.140 the last three kings had all been crowned when they were like little boys and they didn't have

00:26:20.600 wives. And then they all ruled for a really long time, which is how you have only three kings

00:26:25.100 between 1547 and 1775, I guess. Anyway, so it's kind of like up to her what she wanted to wear

00:26:30.880 because there wasn't really a protocol for this because the last time this happened was 1547.

00:26:35.120 And you know, our girl's not going to wear a ceremonial garb. Like the second she became 0.95

00:26:39.020 queen, she's just like, fuck all y'all's rules. Like I'm going to be me. Watch me go. And so she 1.00

00:26:46.160 wore a Rose Bertin original creation. So her gown was covered in jewels. So many jewels. It made it

00:26:54.080 so heavy. The Rose Burton had to give special instructions about how to carry this dress. 0.88

00:27:00.320 It was so heavy, you couldn't just carry it. So she had to design this special stretcher just 0.89

00:27:05.780 to carry the dress. It was so extreme, so glittery, so jewelry. And of course, Marie Antoinette's hair

00:27:11.920 was in a poof. I'm sure it's called the poof a la coronation, topped with a cluster of white 0.98

00:27:17.500 feathers. Some haters were like, oh, her poof is so tall. We couldn't even see the king. She

00:27:22.540 blocked our view. It's like, she did not, in fact, haters do that because she was up at the front.

00:27:27.660 Nobody was behind her. So yeah, she's queen. I want to put this in context that she became queen

00:27:33.980 when she was 18 years old. So at the time of the coronation, she's now 19 years old.

00:27:38.820 In previous episodes of this podcast, we talked about another monarch, Christina of Sweden,

00:27:44.800 who was from, you know, a few hundred years earlier. Christina of Sweden did not like rules, 0.89

00:27:49.720 did not like living the way that people wanted her to. And eventually she ended up quitting 0.74

00:27:54.740 and stopping being queen. And when she, Christine of Sweden ran off to just kind of like do her own 0.65

00:27:59.200 thing, I called it in those episodes, which are from, I don't know, 2021, 2022, her bangers era

00:28:05.300 in reference to Miley Cyrus, who went from being like a Disney Hannah Montana starlet and the

00:28:10.120 bangers era Miley is when she's like twerking, cutting off her hair and stuff. At that time,

00:28:14.320 it felt like a relevant comparison. But Miley Cyrus has been through so many eras since then.

00:28:19.320 I think just to put you in the mind of like what Marie Antoinette is up to here and her age

00:28:23.140 and what she's doing, I'm going to say this. She's in her Jojo Siwa era because like Jojo Siwa,

00:28:29.280 Marie Antoinette is incredibly young. She's 19 years old. She had sort of a happy childhood,

00:28:35.460 but kind of neglected. And then she was sent to Versailles age 14 and she had to kind of perform

00:28:41.620 in this way that she wasn't necessarily comfortable, that she didn't want to. And now

00:28:45.160 she finally has some control over her life. Like Jojo Siwa, when she went from being like the girl

00:28:49.300 with a bow to being like what she referred to Jojo Siwa as the first lesbian pop star.

00:28:54.900 Like Jojo Siwa is like going through some real personal discovery in a very public way that

00:29:00.940 leads to some mockery from some people. And Marie Antoinette is that same age. She's in her Jojo

00:29:06.920 Siwa era. And she's just like, who am I even? I haven't had a chance to think about this,

00:29:11.620 to develop my own identity, my own fashion sense. Like I just want to like be a young woman and like

00:29:16.740 play around and have a nice time and figure out who I am really. And the thing here is that she's

00:29:22.980 also the queen of France. And there's broader repercussions for her doing this than there are

00:29:28.080 for Jojo Siwa, who's entering her trad wife era or whatever she's up to at the moment. 0.98

00:29:32.920 So, but Marie Antoinette at this point, she hated all the weird Versailles rules. She hated 0.98

00:29:39.080 how everybody hated her and was always trying to trick her. And now she's like, I'm the goddamn 0.99

00:29:42.720 queen. I'm going to do what I want. And Barry is like, hell yeah, girl, you are. She would just 1.00

00:29:47.380 be like, Barry, I want to do this. Can I fire Madame Etiquette, this bitch who's always been 1.00

00:29:52.340 mean to me? And Barry's like, hell yeah. And Marie Antoinette's like, can we just exile Madame 1.00

00:29:56.260 Du Barry, the CEO of Hater Nation, who's been against me this whole time and who I don't like?

00:30:03.380 And Barry's like, yeah, whatever you want, babe. So Marie Antoinette, they just have more

00:30:06.980 control over things. These are the sorts of things that she wants to be in control of. 1.00

00:30:11.380 some people from hater nation would are thinking like oh marie antoinette like she's this austrian 0.99

00:30:16.580 spy she wants to take over the government and it's like no what she wants to do is just party 0.69

00:30:20.880 and have a good time she's in her kesha era she's in dare you say tits out era so she loved paris

00:30:28.600 remember she went there for that one time and she liked it there and now she's like she's met

00:30:33.100 rose berton she's met leo she's like i want to hang out where you are in the rhine philippi mall

00:30:39.080 Like I want to see the open air markets and go shopping and just like live my Emily in Paris

00:30:44.260 fantasy. So she would go to Paris like two to three days a week. She wouldn't like stay there

00:30:48.040 overnight. It was, I don't know. What did I say? I don't think I said, but it's maybe a couple hour

00:30:53.800 carriage ride. So she could like go there in the morning and go back to Versailles to sleep there

00:30:56.980 at night. And she just loved it. Who does it like, like any 19 year old in a self-discovery

00:31:04.320 vibe. She's just like, this place

00:31:06.540 is great. So she would browse

00:31:08.580 the open-air markets, stroll along

00:31:10.440 the Champs-Élysées, the river.

00:31:12.560 She would have picnics with her besties at this

00:31:14.520 point. She's got her girl gang. She's got 1.00

00:31:16.720 Gabrielle de Polignac 0.99

00:31:18.540 there with her. She's got Princess de Lambelle 0.70

00:31:20.460 with her. And she's just like having a nice time 0.59

00:31:22.400 with her girls. She would go to

00:31:24.420 the Paris Opera a lot to see

00:31:26.380 because she loves music. Remember from when she was

00:31:28.380 a kid, she loves music. She loves supporting the

00:31:30.400 arts. And so she's seen there

00:31:32.220 like applauding at the at the opera and they would also host balls at the opera and she would go

00:31:37.420 there in disguise she would wear a mask and just like get down at the parties and then eventually

00:31:42.540 when people figured who she was then she'd have to leave but like people in Paris were like this 0.81

00:31:47.760 is great look at this queen who's like here amongst us having a nice time like the same way

00:31:54.100 that Ryan Phillippe and his family were sort of popular because they were like among the people

00:31:57.960 at this point the people in Paris were just like this is rad this is great we like having the queen

00:32:03.640 with us she's like a cool queen like what a fun new era we are in like she went to see the opera

00:32:10.260 supporting the arts and she also supporting the arts back at Versailles where she still lived

00:32:14.860 she would host concerts there and she would also have kind of like little jam sessions in her

00:32:19.400 apartments where she would invite her favorite musicians over to hang out with her and one of

00:32:23.460 her favorite musicians is Joseph Boulogne, the Chevalier de Saint-Georges, who we did a whole

00:32:29.100 episode about a few months ago. He is the black fencer, composer, musician, later soldier. Overall,

00:32:38.840 very impressive guy. Marie Antoinette was really into his music. He wrote this fun music. And so

00:32:43.940 she supported him basically by like hiring him to do concerts and like hanging out with him in her

00:32:48.720 rooms and stuff and when the job of the director of Paris Opera came open to the job opening

00:32:55.000 uh Joseph Boulogne was like oh like I would love to be like this is such a highly cherished

00:33:00.940 position is such an important position I would like to be considered for this role but um he

00:33:07.320 had his own haters because of racism so a whole group of actresses wrote directly to Marie Antoinette

00:33:13.160 being like we can't we can't be actresses at the Paris Opera if the person in charge 0.70

00:33:18.300 is a mixed race black man. And so it was a whole scandal thing. We talk about this in my episode 0.93

00:33:23.860 about Joseph Boulogne Chevalier to St. George, if you want to get more details on it. Effectively,

00:33:29.120 he removed himself from consideration because he didn't want to put Marie Antoinette in an awkward

00:33:33.380 position, but he kept on playing music in other symphonies and she continued to support him.

00:33:38.740 Hater Nation is never not looking for something to complain about. And they're just like,

00:33:44.340 oh my God, Marie Antoinette is spending time with this like very handsome black man.

00:33:49.320 And there's a whole racist thing about Joseph Ballone and like,

00:33:52.680 was he a womanizer? 0.99

00:33:53.620 And he was friends with Ryan Phillippe and that kind of fuck boy crowds. 0.99

00:33:57.060 But it's just kind of like, oh, like Marie Antoinette is this... 0.97

00:34:00.220 Anytime she's spending time in a room with any human being, 1.00

00:34:02.920 someone's like, oh my God, she's fucking that person. 1.00

00:34:04.980 Like man, woman, anyone is just kind of like, 0.99

00:34:08.380 hater nation just didn't like to see her with anyone.

00:34:10.960 The vibes are very much just like, how dare Meghan Markle, Meghan Sussex have a cooking

00:34:17.300 show and invite on her makeup artist, Daniel Martin, like what a disgrace to humanity this

00:34:24.120 is.

00:34:24.920 So anyway, Joseph Boulin got all caught up in that as well.

00:34:28.360 And Marie Antoinette is just kind of like, again, to paraphrase something that I've read

00:34:33.100 that Meghan Sussex has said, there's a quote that she lives her life by.

00:34:36.980 Actually, I think I heard this from Amanda Matta, who was a guest on the podcast a couple

00:34:40.280 weeks ago.

00:34:40.960 But it's like, you put praise and you put hatred, it all goes down the same drain.

00:34:44.780 Just like, you do you, babe.

00:34:46.440 Like, just do what you're going to do.

00:34:48.040 Haters are going to hate, hate, hate, hate, hate.

00:34:49.820 That's quoting someone else. 0.97

00:34:51.380 She's just going to shake it off, is what Rhea Antoinette is up to. 1.00

00:34:54.540 Because she's the goddamn queen. 1.00

00:34:56.720 And she's just like in her Jojo Siwa era. 0.99

00:34:59.300 Like, again, I really want to emphasize how young this person is.

00:35:03.220 She is at this point, maybe 20 years old.

00:35:05.620 Like, contemporarily, a 20-year-old in America, not allowed to legally drink alcohol.

00:35:09.980 can't rent a car and she's she's this little baby in charge of everything just like having a nice

00:35:17.120 time the vibes are i can't with jojo siwa but also any child star i'm thinking about like

00:35:22.900 justin bieber now just like somebody when you're so young and you have access to so many resources

00:35:28.640 to just like really engage with what interests you with your hobbies and everyone around you

00:35:33.700 just being like, yeah, girl. Yeah. Like it's hard to mature in a similar way to other people. Like

00:35:41.160 she came to Versailles at age 14 and then she's kind of trapped. So by the time she becomes queen

00:35:45.720 when she's 18, like I think she's still psychologically maturity wise, really similar

00:35:49.720 to that 14 year old girl. And she was a young 14 year old girl. She like played with dolls.

00:35:54.580 So now she's 19, 20 years old, queen of France. And she's just like, I just want to have fun.

00:36:00.000 I just want to have fun again in my life. She's also like seemingly everybody in France

00:36:06.860 and like all of Western Europe in this time period, a huge fan of the philosopher Jean-Jacques

00:36:12.180 Rousseau. And Rousseau has come up quite a bit. If you listen to our episodes about French

00:36:17.360 revolution era, you'll know I'm not a fan. His whole thing, Rousseau, is he was from a lower 0.99

00:36:25.040 class family. He did not get much formal education. And so he was kind of like, we should not have

00:36:31.700 class divisions. It should be a meritocracy where people like I, Rousseau, can have more

00:36:38.220 opportunities than I have, which is like fair point, makes sense. And like everybody should

00:36:43.980 be treated the same and there shouldn't be any class divisions. And it's like, okay, okay. And

00:36:48.740 he's like, and also we should all just be back to our traditional roots as like human animals,

00:36:53.380 which he read stuff like john smith who was from not only a character in the disney movie pocahontas

00:37:00.960 but also real history he was the colonizing guy who got all up in the business of the girl who

00:37:08.500 you know is pocahontas her real name was matoka i did an episode about that a while ago so john

00:37:13.000 smith and people like him went to america and canada and just were like wow look at these

00:37:19.380 like indigenous people and they misrepresented how they were living and they're like look at how

00:37:23.520 like simple quote-unquote simple their lives are we should be like that too we should all just like

00:37:29.480 vibe with nature and like be among gardens and trees and like just everything should be like 1.00

00:37:35.120 how it was but for him part of that simple quote-unquote life was like women should stay

00:37:39.920 home and just breastfeed babies all the time and like everyone this is kind of a huge deal

00:37:45.060 that he said that women should breastfeed because at this time, rich people, women didn't breastfeed

00:37:51.160 because it was seen as that's a thing that peasants do, but also breastfeeding, as maybe

00:37:55.220 you know, has some contraceptive properties and this is a Catholic country and they wanted women

00:38:00.640 to have lots of babies. Anyway, Russo's whole thing, it's multifaceted, problematic in many

00:38:06.040 ways. What Marie Antoinette took from it was like, let's be in nature more. And that's a nice

00:38:12.140 thing. So she wanted to simplify her life. I think she was living like, Versailles was so

00:38:17.780 restrictive to her. Like the clothing was so restrictive and every day she had to do the

00:38:22.740 same things and she hated all of those things. And if you recall from her girlhood, like she's

00:38:27.460 an ADHD coded girly. Like she likes variety. She likes excitement. She wants to just like

00:38:33.880 have a nice time and explore what life has to offer. So she's just like all up in Russo at

00:38:39.980 this point. She's like super into Russo. She, um, she and her friends went to like visit his grave

00:38:45.200 and stuff. She's just like such a fangirl for him. She loves this whole vibe. She loves the

00:38:49.240 whole back to nature thing. And she's like, you know what? Inspired by Russo, I would like to

00:38:53.020 stay up and watch the sunrise and just like experience the like beauty of the world. It's

00:38:58.540 a real, like, again, the age that she is like, you know, just like a girl who's just like 0.56

00:39:02.880 backpacking and like, she takes like ayahuasca. She's like going to Coachella. She's just like,

00:39:08.320 let's just like isn't isn't nature beautiful so she's like let's stay up she told her friends

00:39:14.160 like let's just stay up and watch the sunrise that would just be like a sweet thing to do

00:39:18.040 to just like be in nature and so in the gardens behind the palace um she had her ladies-in-waiting 0.55

00:39:24.900 with her she had other like chaperones with her there was lots of people there to monitor this

00:39:32.100 And I mentioned that because shortly after, one of the first like really anti-Marie Antoinette pamphlets that came out was claiming that this had been an orgy and everybody, they're all just like having sex in the bushes together.

00:39:45.980 So this was the first really major anti-Marie Antoinette pamphlet.

00:39:51.340 And I do want to mention that there's going to be a lot of anti-Marie Antoinette pamphlets coming up in this episode.

00:39:57.380 And these were not just like a thing that people in Paris were like, oh, I feel like this.

00:40:01.080 let's just write this like these were being paid for by hater nation. There is a hateration

00:40:06.380 in this dancery and it is being paid for literally by people like Ryan Phillippe,

00:40:13.080 um, Barry's aunts, Barry's brothers, Barry's brother's wives, people very close to her

00:40:19.580 really wanted her to be hated, um, for their own reasons, because that would give, they hoped

00:40:25.900 themselves more power. And remember, she's still, she hadn't had a child. This marriage is not

00:40:30.640 consummated yet. So as long as the marriage is not consummated, what hater nation wanted

00:40:35.160 was for her to be sent back to Vienna. They're just like, she's this evil German person. We 0.94

00:40:39.820 hate Austrians and we just want to get rid of her. So if we make her reputation as terrible 1.00

00:40:45.540 as possible, maybe she'll be kicked out. But what they didn't think about is that Barry was a man

00:40:51.500 of habits and consistency and he had come to really depend on Marie Antoinette. He was never

00:40:56.860 gonna kick her out no matter how bad her reputation got but hater nation was still trying their best

00:41:02.460 anyway this like staying up to watch the sunrise it's a sequence if you watch the sofia coppola

00:41:06.200 movie which i haven't rewatched in a bit but i do remember that that's the scene in the movie

00:41:09.820 just this beautiful like just like watching the sun and having a nice time that's what she's into

00:41:14.220 at this point she's getting into sort of like a back to nature clean girl sort of like if we're

00:41:20.000 looking at taylor swift eras like she's in sort of like an evermore folklore type moment like a

00:41:25.320 nap dress moment is coming. At the moment though, poofs are still it. Everyone's still doing poofs. 0.99

00:41:31.160 So at this point feathers, so you've got like your three foot tall poof, and then you put like a

00:41:36.240 three foot ostrich feather on top of it. So it's like some descriptions of people wearing poofs

00:41:40.780 or it's kind of like the face is halfway in the middle. It's like, there's the face and there's

00:41:44.220 the whole body. And then the poof is an equivalent height of the entire body of the person. Like 0.91

00:41:50.000 it's, it's getting the same way fashions now. Like it gets like to one extreme and then it

00:41:54.400 which is the other extreme it's like oh my god now we're like low rise could not ultra low rise 1.00

00:41:59.320 and suddenly it's like super high-waisted jeans like things are so the poofs could not be bigger

00:42:03.800 and her fashions so both the poofs and also the dresses that rose bertaine is designing for her

00:42:10.740 and just bear in mind like her outfits every day it's not just like oh this is like my casual dress

00:42:14.820 like every day for her because she was the queen was like not just like a celebrity going on a red

00:42:20.920 carpet. It's like the Met Gala. Like every outfit is like extreme and like very complicated and like

00:42:27.480 a real statement. And people are so interested because she wore a different dress every day.

00:42:31.800 And so there's so much interest in what she's wearing because she was so public facing. There'd

00:42:35.980 never been a queen of France who's just walking around people being seen so often. People are so

00:42:39.880 interested in what she was wearing, what she's doing, and they all wanted to copy it. So this

00:42:43.780 inspired an increase in French fashion almanacs, which are sort of the precursor to like Vogue

00:42:49.220 magazine or something. It's just books with pictures of outfits. And so if you're like a

00:42:53.780 dressmaker in, not in Paris, maybe you're in Lyon or you're in Nice, like you could get this almanac

00:42:58.980 to be like, oh, this is what they're in Paris. Great. Like I will make these dresses. And

00:43:03.020 aristocratic ladies would look at the almanacs and be like, oh, that's what they're wearing. 0.96

00:43:05.920 I want to wear those dresses. And the drawings, like the face of all the people in these almanacs

00:43:09.980 looked a lot like Marie Antoinette, who we talked about last time has this really distinctive

00:43:13.780 profile. She has this like long nose, she has this pouty lower lip, like she is distinctive 1.00

00:43:19.020 looking. And she's at this point, um, still being popularly celebrated for her, for her fashion. 0.95

00:43:27.380 And then these almanacs, like these are expensive things, only like rich people,

00:43:31.360 rich women could get their hands on them. But then poor people were able to get like pirated 1.00

00:43:35.940 versions of them or just like, like copies of some of the pages or something. So the drawings

00:43:40.820 of these outfits were just going everywhere. Like she was, this is kind of the invention of

00:43:46.180 our current fashion cycle, the current influencer cycle. Like this is the first time that what one

00:43:51.860 woman was wearing was so powerful and was copied so much and was discussed so much. And she had

00:43:59.180 really made fashion, not her hobby, but like her main job. Like she was introducing a new fashion

00:44:05.100 almost every day. And in this, so I said, she's kind of the first queen to be like this. 0.83

00:44:10.820 But Louis XIV had kind of been like this, like her ancestor, the Sun King, this very successful French king.

00:44:17.780 He had also favored like maximalist outfits, a new outfit every day.

00:44:21.960 He wore huge wigs.

00:44:23.100 At one point, he had on call 40 wig makers.

00:44:26.800 I don't know how many wig makers Marie Antoinette had.

00:44:29.580 I think she got them all from Leo and Rose Breton.

00:44:32.440 And I'm sure they had a lot of people on staff.

00:44:35.500 But like what she was doing was not unprecedented in terms of like French royals.

00:44:40.320 it was unprecedented in terms of French royal women, especially French royal wives, because,

00:44:46.780 you know, you listened to the episode last week, I presume, but just to recap what we said there a 0.92

00:44:51.580 bit is that there used to be until this couple, there's the French king, there was the queen,

00:44:57.180 and then the king had a mistress and the mistress was the fashion person. The queen was just kind

00:45:01.400 of like, no one ever really saw her much. She would just kind of like, be like, look, I had a

00:45:04.920 new baby. Okay. Bye. Like she would just kind of hang out and be with the children and like

00:45:09.420 overseeing their education and stuff the mistresses were the ones who were like coming to parties and 1.00

00:45:13.300 wearing outfits and setting the trends and like really showing like look how much money the king 1.00

00:45:17.100 has spent on me so she was this is the first time a queen had ever really done this had ever been

00:45:23.440 this like fashion girly also bear in mind at this point Marie Antoinette and Barry had still not yet 0.98

00:45:30.100 consummated their marriage um he also as much as some of hater nation thought she was this like 0.98

00:45:35.380 Austrian spy who's like influencing him with her like shadow cabinet. They thought that like her 0.99

00:45:40.780 and Rose Bertin were like a secret like women second government who are actually in charge 1.00

00:45:46.080 of everything. Barry didn't listen to her advice about politics. Remember, he'd had that tutor 1.00

00:45:49.920 who was like, Austrian women, don't trust them. They're all bitches. So Barry didn't listen to 1.00

00:45:55.940 her about that. Like he liked having her around for like emotional support, but he was not,

00:46:01.220 they were not having sex. They were not becoming parents. She was not influencing his politics.

00:46:06.640 And she knew, she knew that Hater Nation's goal was to like have her exiled from the kingdom.

00:46:11.320 So she had to be like, I need to present myself as more powerful than I am. So she was presenting

00:46:16.520 herself with the poofs and with the big dresses as literally larger than life. This gave the 1.00

00:46:21.660 impression that she was much more powerful than she really was. And it kind of in a way

00:46:26.240 made her more powerful because people thought that she was because by showing that she had 0.93

00:46:31.180 enough money to get these outfits and to get the poofs, it showed that Barry was willing to spend 0.88

00:46:36.640 all this money on her the way that other kings had spent so much money on mistresses. And it's 0.98

00:46:40.280 like, well, why would he spend so much money on her if he wasn't, he didn't really value her and

00:46:43.760 her judgment. So it's, again, it's sort of like, I read a bunch of different biographies and people

00:46:48.180 have different takes on this. And this point of view was really from Carolyn Weber in her book,

00:46:52.760 fashion and it it vibes with me it makes sense to me that marie antoinette has been there are

00:46:58.820 people who are like oh she's so frivolous all she cares about is fashion and these outfits but like

00:47:03.240 what caroline weber advocates in her book is that marie antoinette was so powerless like if she had

00:47:09.300 children then she would be the mother of the next king or she would have a role that people

00:47:14.340 understood but because they hadn't consummated their marriage and maybe i don't know if things

00:47:18.480 would have been different if they had consummated the marriage and it turns out that they were

00:47:21.000 infratile as a couple, but that wasn't the situation. She had to make herself look powerful

00:47:25.560 somehow. And she became so powerful by just kind of like being out among the public and also

00:47:32.540 setting these fashion trends. And I will say that setting the fashion trends were also

00:47:36.120 beneficial for the economy of France because so many women wanted to dress like her. And so they

00:47:41.100 were buying more dresses and they were importing more silk and that's supporting like the silk

00:47:44.840 industry in France. So like there's, there's like influence to what she's doing. She's not just like, 0.89

00:47:49.260 she's not just being silly like there's intent behind this and it's protecting her role as queen

00:47:55.600 which she knows is under threat from kind of everyone at Versailles so unlike other queens 0.61

00:48:02.000 other previous monarchs so usually when there's like the queen has her dressmaker and her hair 0.97

00:48:07.200 person it's like they were exclusively only for her nobody else could use their services but she 0.99

00:48:11.940 was like no I want Rose and Leo to keep taking other clients because she knew that by doing this

00:48:17.380 she didn't want them to be with her only because then how would they stay abreast on the other 0.80

00:48:21.680 trends? How could Marie Antoinette be on top of like the trends and what people were doing? She 1.00

00:48:25.400 wanted to know like the same now it's like, you know, the fashions that you see, like street

00:48:29.700 fashion, like influences high fashion. Like people are always trying to see like, well,

00:48:33.800 what are like the cool young people doing in like these certain neighborhoods? Like she's like,

00:48:37.920 no, I need Rose and Leo to be like, with like ear to the streets, like seeing what's happening.

00:48:41.540 So I can know about all the trends. Um, and that would mean that her outfits would never be

00:48:46.020 passe. She would never get stale. And this was beneficial to Rose and Leo, because if you were

00:48:52.940 like the people who are making the outfits for Marie Antoinette, like the most influential fashion

00:48:57.620 girly, everybody wants to come to them and have them do their hair and make their poofs and get

00:49:02.080 their dresses from them. Rose Burton also was allowed to sell knockoffs as Marie Antoinette's 1.00

00:49:06.800 own outfit. So she was like Sheehan of the era. She would make like a beautiful, extremely expensive,

00:49:11.800 like wild like Lady Gaga Chapel Rowan outfit and then two weeks later and always it could always 0.81

00:49:18.620 it had to be at least two weeks later she would then have like a cheaper knockoff version that 0.87

00:49:22.440 other people could get so they could dress like Marie Antoinette so it's like buying the outfit 0.99

00:49:27.340 from the same person that made Marie Antoinette's outfit and that was the rule that Marie Antoinette

00:49:31.200 had implemented with her she's like you can't sell the knockoffs until at least two weeks after 0.97

00:49:35.320 I wore it so she has to have two weeks of being like I am inventing this trend and after two weeks 0.98

00:49:39.700 other people can get it. But that's how quickly the styles and the fashions were changing that

00:49:43.580 she was implementing. Meanwhile, zooming out from Marie Antoinette and what she up to, France, 0.87

00:49:50.020 the country is hugely in debt and lots of people are starving. So the country is hugely in debt.

00:49:58.980 And one of the reasons that they were having trouble paying off their debt

00:50:01.300 is that the nobility and the clergy were exempt from paying taxes. The only people who paid taxes

00:50:09.420 were like the third estate, which is like everybody else. So like middle class people, 0.77

00:50:14.820 working class people, poor people were the only people paying taxes. So to pay off this debt, 0.74

00:50:19.280 their taxes kept increasing versus just like implementing taxes for like the rich people,

00:50:25.480 which is similar to conversations happening today. So the poor people were getting even more poor

00:50:30.680 because their tax bills were increasing to try and pay off the national debt. And then,

00:50:37.100 So the year that Marie Antoinette and Barry became king and queen, 1774, like that's when 0.94

00:50:42.840 the Gulf King died.

00:50:44.100 There had been a really harsh snowy winter, which led to a grain shortage, which led to 0.68

00:50:49.120 an era or an event called the Flower Wars, F-L-O-U-R.

00:50:54.180 Not like flour, like you're in your hair, but flour, like you cook with.

00:50:58.140 The Flower Wars, people were starving because there was a grain shortage because the crops

00:51:03.500 have been bad.

00:51:03.940 And bread is really important to people in France, as we've talked about in previous episodes.

00:51:08.900 If you're poor, like this is the only, your only source of sustenance.

00:51:11.960 So the Flower Wars, 5,000 people came to Versailles.

00:51:16.380 Remember, it's like, it took Marie Antoinette, what, like an hour or two in a carriage to get there.

00:51:19.940 So people came from Paris to Versailles, 5,000 of them.

00:51:22.860 They charged the gates because they believed that the royals had a secret stockpile of grain and bread.

00:51:30.020 And they wanted to go and get it because they're starving.

00:51:31.940 and they mistrust the monarchy. Good reasons. What the government did in response, so again,

00:51:40.300 it's 5,000 people coming to Versailles looking for secret bread. The government responded with

00:51:45.340 25,000 troops. So 20,000 more troops than people. Many of the instigators of that flower war were

00:51:53.740 hanged. And this response was seen as overkill, literally. And people were really upset about it.

00:52:00.000 it was just kind of like, we're poor and starving and they're killing us. So people were upset about

00:52:04.400 the government slash the monarchy who were very much like hand in hand, or that's how they were

00:52:08.780 seen. And so they met. People were mad about this. A meeting place for these people who were mad was

00:52:13.840 Ryan Phillippe's mall, which is a place where poorer people and richer people could all hang

00:52:17.840 out. And Ryan Phillippe was just like, yes, yes. Like he fueled their rage. He was like, you're

00:52:23.460 right. They are terrible. Maybe I should be the king. He wanted Marie Antoinette and Barry to be

00:52:28.800 removed from power. So he knew that people were talking like this at his mall and he's like,

00:52:33.580 you know, just like gassing them up, like to be like, you're right. Yeah. We should be mad about

00:52:37.100 this. So after the flower wars, Marie Antoinette kept doing what she was doing because she didn't 1.00

00:52:43.940 know that there was like a vibe shift. And she, you know, she still came to Paris to like go to

00:52:48.960 parties and like go shopping and like hang out and have picnics. But these visits started to be

00:52:54.000 seen by the people of Paris as not so much like a charming, like, isn't it cool to see our queen

00:52:58.620 around us. Um, part of the reason why they were mad was because they knew, so her giant poof 0.99

00:53:05.040 hairstyles, which, so they were colored gray. Like when you think gray or white, like when you

00:53:09.020 picture, at least in my head, Marie Antoinette or people from this era with these wigs on,

00:53:13.880 like you picture their hair is gray or white because it's been powdered and the powder that

00:53:17.420 they used, uh, was flour. So when the mob was going to Versailles, like we think they have a

00:53:23.820 secret stash of flour they kind of did that they used for like hairstyling purposes so people saw

00:53:30.000 her in these outfits they're starving and she's you know her hair is colored white with flour

00:53:36.440 the grain that they need to prevent them from starving so you can understand why they're a

00:53:40.080 little bit mad about that um and her outfits were so whimsical they're just like silly and fun and 0.94

00:53:46.280 that's just like not reading the room that's not the vibe people were like she should be concerned 0.84

00:53:52.220 about more serious matters. And you don't know what someone's thinking about, but it's like

00:53:56.540 the way that she was dressing made it seem like she was only there for a good time. She wasn't

00:54:01.360 thinking about anything serious. So we need to talk about let them eat cake. It is still

00:54:07.360 widely believed that when Marie Antoinette heard that people were starving because there's no bread

00:54:12.680 that she said, oh, let them eat cake, which is kind of an example of somebody being clueless

00:54:17.580 and not really understanding that if you are too poor to get bread, you also can't get cake.

00:54:23.260 She did not say that. She did not say that. Even if she had said that, the haters would

00:54:30.440 have written about it, but the haters didn't write about it. So the first time somebody reported

00:54:35.900 that Marie Antoinette had said this was 50 years after she died. So knowing how much the haters

00:54:42.820 were paying attention to everything she said, if she had said that when she was alive,

00:54:46.760 they would have reported it one would think furthermore the phrase let them eat cake was

00:54:52.000 actually um that's how it's translated but in French it's like let them eat brioche brioche

00:54:57.280 is like a really rich sort of egg bread and that phrase let them eat brioche was first written in

00:55:04.860 a book that was written in 1765 when Marie Antoinette was nine years old and back in Austria

00:55:11.660 and no one ever thought that she would ever be the queen of France.

00:55:14.520 So the book itself is The Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

00:55:19.660 And he just says, here's a quote from his book, translated.

00:55:23.440 I remembered the last report of a great princess who,

00:55:27.140 when told that the peasants had no bread, replied,

00:55:29.300 then let them eat brioche.

00:55:31.220 So in 1765, he's like,

00:55:32.980 I once heard someone tell me that a princess said this.

00:55:36.460 And later on, it just, I can see why.

00:55:40.060 50 years after she died, it would be connected because like the flower and the hair, the poofs 1.00

00:55:45.140 kind of look like a cake. Um, the people were starving. They might've imagined she would say 1.00

00:55:49.320 this, but just for the record, she didn't, she didn't say this. So the vibe shift is happening

00:55:56.060 and it's partially because of what she's doing, which is this fashion stuff, the poof stuff 1.00

00:56:02.460 hanging out in Paris, but it's also the slow insidious work of Hateration Nation and their

00:56:08.780 pamphlets and their gossip. It's all sort of coming together. Like her behavior seems to

00:56:14.680 confirm what the haters have been saying all along, which is that she sucks. So she might 1.00

00:56:20.700 have been inspired by Louis XIV, the Sun King, to like express the glory of the French monarchy

00:56:26.580 with her outfits, to like live up to the expectation of the monarchy as being this like

00:56:30.880 fabulous, larger than life thing. And that's why you should respect them and stuff. But people,

00:56:36.620 because of all these reasons I've said, 0.67

00:56:40.060 largely because of Hater Nation and their pamphlets.

00:56:43.180 And people started to see her as like,

00:56:45.220 she's dressing this way,

00:56:46.200 not for the glory of the monarchy

00:56:47.800 or for the glory of France,

00:56:48.960 but it's like, she's just promoting her own beauty.

00:56:51.840 This is just her own vanity.

00:56:53.780 So her look started to be interpreted in this way.

00:56:56.460 And there was kind of nobody around her

00:56:58.360 to tell her to maybe like chill out on the poofs for a minute.

00:57:02.060 And this is because she had been so repressed for so long 0.99

00:57:04.760 and she fired and or cut off everybody who used to tell her what to do. Like, Madame Etiquette 1.00

00:57:10.240 was long gone. The aunts, the aunties, she had figured out that they were bitches and she was 1.00

00:57:16.180 no longer spending time with them. Other people who were in her orbit, like Ryan Phillippe and 1.00

00:57:20.320 his wife Louise, were not going to be like, you should maybe chill out on the poofs for a minute. 0.91

00:57:24.560 Like, society hates you. Because Ryan Phillippe wanted society to hate her because then he could

00:57:30.140 maybe take over and be the king. One person who did try to intervene to be like, this is not

00:57:34.480 going over well, girl, like maybe, maybe go and like stay out of the public for a bit

00:57:39.040 was ambassador mercy. You remember him? He's still around. He was her mother's ambassador.

00:57:45.060 And he kind of was like the go between between her and her mom, but she just avoided him because

00:57:49.640 she knew that he would tell her things she didn't want to hear. And that's what she's doing right

00:57:53.780 now. Meanwhile, Barry is the King. He's not doing well because he's not suited to that job.

00:58:01.900 um not everybody is i wouldn't be and he was not so i remember he was like weeping and praying on

00:58:08.520 the floor when he found out that he was going to be the king he's like i'm not ready i'm too young

00:58:11.700 both things were true so after the golf king died he was barry was presented with his grandfather's

00:58:17.980 private papers and he just like spent all night just like going through them being like

00:58:21.520 hoping there's like how to be a king for dummies instructions or something there because his

00:58:26.580 louis the 15th just died suddenly like there was no secession planning not that there had been in

00:58:31.700 the first place because he was just playing golf all the time. Anyway, so what Barry found among

00:58:35.900 these papers was like a 10-year-old document, like an already out-of-date document that was

00:58:40.420 recommending candidates for who should be the chief minister, who would be kind of the person

00:58:45.080 who is in charge of things, like just second to the king. And this list is already 10 years out

00:58:49.880 of date. It's not a good list, but this is the only list he could find. So he's like, I guess

00:58:54.700 I'll just do what this list says. He also found among these papers, and this is so sad, he found

00:59:00.140 secret letters that his younger brothers, Pramance and Artois, had written to the Gulf King

00:59:05.200 saying like, please, for the good of the monarchy, can you write Barry out of the succession

00:59:11.060 and give the crown to one of us instead? We don't think he's up to the job, which would be pretty

00:59:16.520 devastating to read for him. Other people knew that he was not up to this job. Like he'd not

00:59:22.380 been trained for this job. He didn't have the personality traits that would be successful in

00:59:26.780 this job he had just all he was was like the oldest surviving son of his father and he he was

00:59:34.160 an indecisive person he got easily overwhelmed he couldn't make decisions quickly just the things

00:59:41.220 that you need in a king in general were not strengths that he had and what you need in a king

00:59:46.320 in a country that's in massive debt and in various wars and the population wants to revolt against

00:59:52.920 to you. He super didn't have those qualities, but he's like, well, this is my job. And the one

00:59:59.120 quality he had was taking it all very seriously. But yeah, so many people knew he wasn't up to this

01:00:03.500 job. Ambassador Mercy even wrote to Maria Teresa that Marie Antoinette should assume the authority

01:00:10.580 that Barry will never exercise because at least she can make decisions. At least she is not 0.52

01:00:16.120 paralyzed with indecision and procrastination all the time. He further wrote Mercy, it would be

01:00:22.540 the greatest danger to the state and also to the whole system of government if the power were

01:00:26.840 assumed by Barry. So lots of people knew this wasn't the move, but this was the law. He was

01:00:34.000 the oldest son and he wasn't going to step down because he was a person who did what he was told.

01:00:38.240 And so he is the king now. And he's just like, I'm going to work on this and I'm going to get

01:00:41.400 good at this. And so yeah, after consulting this like out of date, 10 years old list, he's like,

01:00:47.000 okay, well I'll do what this list says. And as my chief minister, I'm going to choose

01:00:50.340 this one person and already he's like like the first decision he was going to make his king

01:00:55.480 his aunts who he still trusted even though marie antoinette didn't anymore and now for a quick

01:01:01.240 advertising break the war is over and both sides lost kingdoms were reduced to cinders

01:01:09.260 and armies scattered like bones in the dust now the survivors claw to what's left of a broken

01:01:16.440 world praying the darkness chooses someone else tonight but in the shadow dark the darkness

01:01:22.580 always wins this is old school adventuring at its most cruel your torch ticks down in real time

01:01:30.260 and when that flame dies something else rises to finish the job this is a brutal rules light

01:01:35.740 nightmare with a story that emerges organically based on the decisions that the characters make

01:01:41.520 This is what it felt like to play RPGs in the 80s, and man, it is so good to be back.

01:01:46.340 Join the Glass Cannon podcast as we plunge into the shadow dark every Thursday night at 8 p.m. Eastern on youtube.com slash the glass cannon with the podcast version dropping the next day.

01:01:57.020 See what everybody's talking about and join us in the dark.

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01:04:32.480 the aunts heard who he chose and they're just like, Oh no, no, no, no. You should choose this

01:04:36.320 other person instead. And he's like, okay, I'll do what you said. Like he was so indecisive.

01:04:41.560 It was easy to manipulate him if you were a decisive person. And so this is how a chief

01:04:46.680 minister, the person chosen was a 73 year old man, the Comte de Maurepas, who had been in exile for

01:04:52.780 years. This made Marie Antoinette really upset and her mom also, because Maurepas hated Austria.

01:04:59.600 and so this is not good for her or for the Austrian alliance that she had been married

01:05:04.760 to France to like support but again Marie Antoinette had no political influence over 0.97

01:05:09.400 Barry at all and so she's just like fuck everything like I just need somewhere like 0.97

01:05:15.620 she needed like to just hear her own thoughts and like be able to vibe out and like have 0.98

01:05:19.780 a little Rousseau based nature enclave of her own and so she's like Barry could you

01:05:24.700 please give me as a gift the tiny palace of Petit Trianon so I can just like have somewhere

01:05:29.260 to be by myself and just like unwind, please. And Petit Trianon is a smaller castle on the

01:05:36.260 grounds of Versailles. It's like got more privacy than main Versailles. And it actually just been

01:05:40.940 finished being built recently-ish. It had been commissioned by the Gulf King. I think, 0.92

01:05:45.740 I figure it was for Madame du Berry or for Madame, I think Madame de Pompadour. Anyway,

01:05:49.740 it's just like a little castle where she's like, can I just go there and be by myself and just like

01:05:53.720 not have to worry about the Versailles rules? Like I'll obey the Versailles rules when I'm here,

01:05:56.880 but when I'm there can I just like vibes based only and he was like yeah go ahead Marie Antoinette

01:06:01.980 wrote about this and how happy she was about it I will enjoy the comforts of a private life which

01:06:07.120 exists not for us unless we have the resolution to secure them for ourselves and she set up the

01:06:12.200 whole place for just like the vibes here are a bit Princess Diana and a bit um Meghan Markle

01:06:19.840 in the sense of just like knowing how much people are obsessed with trying to catch you doing

01:06:24.560 something that they can complain about or to take pictures of your outfit or whatever it's just like

01:06:28.360 i'm gonna have the most privacy i can possibly manage but in olden day style so what she set up

01:06:34.260 was like the only people allowed a petit train on were people that she permitted there she even put

01:06:40.720 up signs being like everything is by order of the queen um which was not anything anyone had ever

01:06:47.880 done before not just the science but the fact that like she was in charge and barry was like yeah

01:06:52.480 babe go for it like you are in charge like whatever you want there it's like her man cave but woman 0.63

01:06:58.200 and like the whole place was so private she had these things set up like there was blinds and all 1.00

01:07:03.480 the windows so when you close the blinds and the blinds had like mirrors on the outside so if people

01:07:08.760 are trying to go there and like sneak and even see what was happening inside they couldn't see

01:07:12.320 and all they could see was their own dumb reflections so at petit trinan she just like

01:07:17.380 it's very Rousseauian actually she's like here everyone's treated the same like when I come in 0.69

01:07:22.940 even though I'm the queen you don't have to stand like when Barry comes to visit he's just like

01:07:26.520 anyone else like let's just all treat each other just like all the same woman petite renault she 0.99

01:07:30.800 also did a lot of renovations inside she sort of pivoted from her poofs and the dresses and that 1.00

01:07:37.820 hyper fixation into interior decorating which she got really into which is in this situation as I've

01:07:45.660 described it, I think a positive thing that her expensive hobbies are not anything that anyone

01:07:50.060 has to see or know about. So they maybe won't be as mad at her about it. So Versailles was open to 0.95

01:07:55.720 the public. Anybody could show up there and hang out whenever they wanted, but Petit Trinon was

01:07:59.960 only... You could only go if Marie Antoinette had invited you. And so this really bothered a lot of

01:08:07.040 the members of Hater Nation because as much as they hated her, they knew that she was the queen

01:08:11.920 and they wanted to be able to be in her presence because that gave them prestige. So the fact

01:08:15.580 that they weren't allowed in made them even more upset and she's just like not my problem sounds 1.00

01:08:21.720 like a you problem and so she just hung on a petite tree and on this castle with her besties 0.96

01:08:26.080 Gabrielle and Princess Lambelle and some other pals that she liked who were just like a nice

01:08:30.700 time a lot of her friends like Princess Lambelle were from other countries which Marianne like

01:08:36.880 people who were from France and had grown up in France were just like really indoctrinated with

01:08:40.480 this this is the Versailles way we have to do it this way so she liked hanging with people

01:08:44.020 from other countries and she got really into um gambling and playing cards there's one time when

01:08:50.580 she had like a card playing party that went on for like 36 hours or something like people just

01:08:54.620 kind of like stopped for naps and kept playing cards like again so if we're looking at her age

01:08:59.500 she's in her early 20s this very much feels like a college a young woman in college the activities

01:09:05.840 that she's doing she got really into betting on horse racing um england was trendy at the time

01:09:12.020 And so she, and English horse racing became like a thing she was into.

01:09:15.780 In the winter time, I remember she grew up in Vienna and she was always really like,

01:09:20.560 she had such a nice time in winter, you know, tobogganing and having hot chocolate with her

01:09:24.760 family. So she, whenever it snowed, and this is very relatable to me as somebody who grew up on

01:09:29.340 the East coast of Canada, it was always exciting. The first snow of the year for me as a kid is

01:09:33.860 just like, Oh my God, snow. Like maybe school's going to be canceled. We can go build a snowman,

01:09:37.200 like have so much fun. Whenever it snows where I live now in central Canada or the prairies,

01:09:41.800 region as it's called it doesn't snow here as much but when it does i'm just like oh like i'm

01:09:46.360 taken back to my childhood and she is too whenever it snowed she was just like let's do all the fun

01:09:49.800 things i did when i was a kid like the previous time in her life that she was happy so she and

01:09:54.900 her besties princess lambal and gabrielle paul and knack would go for sleigh rides like they wrap

01:10:00.380 themselves in fur and just like ride around they go down to paris um and just like the bells and

01:10:06.360 their horses were ringing and it's just like every christmas song you know and they're just having

01:10:10.520 the nicest time in the world driving their slaves past um the city's you know starving poor

01:10:15.660 inhabitants who can't afford bread not a great look as well a person who saw that this was not

01:10:21.460 winning her any new fans it was in fact getting her some new haters was ambassador mercy um he

01:10:28.660 wasn't able to stop her because she wasn't you know talking to him but he wrote letters to her

01:10:32.940 mom being like the so she's doing this now um what should i do and so here's a letter he wrote

01:10:39.400 in 1775. This is a year into her reign as queen. He wrote, her majesty went to see a horse race

01:10:46.040 that has been held near Paris. Crowds of people flocked to this poor spectacle, but the queen

01:10:50.460 was not welcomed with a customary signs of joy and applause. The public sees that the queen is 0.87

01:10:55.200 thinking only of amusements. These amusements also included at Versailles. So the same way as 0.55

01:11:01.140 she had like the Chevalier de Saint-Georges come in and give concerts, she also had masked balls

01:11:06.840 twice a week and each masked ball had a theme and the themes are sort of like prom themes one of the

01:11:12.720 themes was like norwegians and everyone came dressed like from norway one of the themes was

01:11:18.260 like dressed like you're from the renaissance times and this is interesting because um barry

01:11:23.040 would sometimes come to the parties not always you know he's an introvert but he did come to that

01:11:27.620 party he liked history like history was a big interest of him and he came dressed as the

01:11:31.100 previous french king henry the fourth and she came dressed not as henry the fourth's wife but as this

01:11:36.380 powerful mistress, Gabrielle Destre, which is interesting because again, just to reinforce,

01:11:43.220 like their marriage is still not consummated, but she's presenting herself not as a queen,

01:11:47.520 but as a mistress, which is like, because her role she'd invented for herself was this kind

01:11:52.220 of mistress slash queen thing. But mistresses were known for being more politically influential 1.00

01:11:56.560 than queens. And she was not politically influential, but she wanted people to think that. 0.99

01:12:01.160 I'm not making that up because she herself wrote, I allow the public to believe that I have more

01:12:05.340 credit with Barry than I do in reality, because if people were not to believe me on this point,

01:12:09.700 I would have less power still. So she's presenting herself as having power because

01:12:14.420 she has no power. And what else can she do? And so in Versailles before, when the golf king had 0.96

01:12:21.660 been in charge, the whole family had to have supper at this table, like at a wedding reception

01:12:27.140 where they're all facing out. And then people from Paris could just come and watch them because

01:12:31.400 Versailles was open to the public. Instead of that, she was like, what if I have small intimate

01:12:35.860 family dinners with just people who I want to be around and no one watches? How about that?

01:12:40.220 So she would have the dinners with like herself, Barry, Barry's brothers and their wives,

01:12:44.680 aunties not invited. And so out of all these people at this dinner, out of her family members

01:12:51.100 or Barry's family members, the person she got along best with was his younger brother, Artois,

01:12:55.360 who like of the three brothers, there's Barry, there's Provence, there's Artois.

01:12:58.280 So Artois is the one that most people thought would probably be the most fitted or suited

01:13:03.140 to being king.

01:13:04.380 He's kind of like charming and quick-witted, decisive, handsome. 0.93

01:13:09.680 And so she got along with him pretty well, although his wife was a member of Hater Nation.

01:13:15.180 So she wanted privacy because she was tired of having everything she ever did be watched.

01:13:19.700 And she went from having everything she did be watched to like so little,

01:13:24.460 to cutting herself off so much by being in Petit Trianon or by having these private dinners.

01:13:27.820 people started seeing this secrecy as sort of like,

01:13:31.400 well, then she must have something to hide.

01:13:33.540 So there were rumors that Petit Trianon,

01:13:36.420 you know, that all that was happening there

01:13:37.940 was like orgies with like all different sexes of people.

01:13:42.480 There were rumors that she and Artois 0.97

01:13:44.120 were having a sexual affair

01:13:45.340 because it was seen that the two of them got along

01:13:47.160 and they liked to spend time together.

01:13:49.140 There were rumors that she and her besties, 1.00

01:13:52.060 Lambelle and Gabrielle were lesbians.

01:13:54.900 There were rumors that she was lesbian lovers

01:13:57.440 with Rose Bertin. And so the rumors are, they're growing. The anti-Marie Antoinette hater nation,

01:14:05.700 there's more members joining. And the people funding these pamphlets, remember, are like

01:14:10.180 Philippe, Ryan Phillippe, the aunts, Barry's brothers and other wives. They're funding the

01:14:16.420 pamphlets and the pamphlets are going out, but they're landing because some of the stuff just

01:14:20.060 feels true. People wanted to hate her. And the pamphlets were... Part of where they were so

01:14:25.800 successful is they were consistent in their attacks. Like they kept attacking the same

01:14:30.100 things. Like if you, and we see, we see this literally today with so many hate campaigns

01:14:34.480 about so many people, Amber Heard, Blake Lively, Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris, like just by

01:14:40.800 repeating the thing enough times, it just starts to feel true. And then people think it is true.

01:14:46.920 And it's so hard, impossible really. Once people feel that something is true, you can't convince

01:14:53.460 them it's not true using logic because they feel it's true like they just somehow sense it and so

01:15:00.220 the techniques they're using was just like the repetition of the same things like she's austrian

01:15:04.240 she can't be trusted she's vain um she's a shopaholic she's a spy she's a nymphomaniac 0.94

01:15:11.740 she's a lesbian like all these things just like the same theme so repetition 1.00

01:15:15.060 character assassination and fear-mongering so the fear-mongering is being like she's from austria 1.00

01:15:20.200 and she's gonna try and take over our country. 0.88

01:15:23.140 So, and the fact that her marriage 1.00

01:15:25.320 was still not consummated

01:15:26.900 was also used by the haters as fuel

01:15:29.480 because it's like, 1.00

01:15:30.620 well, how can she be a depraved nymphomaniac 0.96

01:15:33.240 and not have had any children with her husband? 0.91

01:15:35.780 But it's like, oh, well, he's a cook

01:15:38.080 and like she's cook holding him 1.00

01:15:40.320 and she's having lesbian sex 1.00

01:15:42.660 and that's why she's not having any children. 1.00

01:15:45.280 The goal of all the haters were again,

01:15:46.820 still just like have her sent back to Austria,

01:15:49.600 just like get her out of here which is even like that wasn't going to happen because barry

01:15:55.840 really liked having her around but also if if they did then what like then there would just be 0.88

01:16:00.460 a new scapegoat like have removing her from france isn't going to make the country's debt

01:16:06.240 be paid off it's not going to make there suddenly be bread but somehow it was seen like she was like

01:16:12.520 the same way in the united states these days it's kind of like well if we get like you know

01:16:16.420 some people in the United States are trying to get immigrants removed because it's like,

01:16:20.400 then what? Then your country's still going to be in debt. You're still going to be in a recession.

01:16:26.640 Once you get rid of one scapegoat, then another scapegoat has to be put in their place because

01:16:30.460 that's the whole way scapegoats work. Anyway, Marie Antoinette knew about these pamphlets

01:16:36.160 because at first there was that one about her watching the sunrise and Barry tried to have

01:16:39.640 all those pamphlets burned or removed or paying the pamphleteers to stop printing them. But there

01:16:45.760 were so many that they couldn't they couldn't intervene every time and she was aware that these

01:16:49.700 pamphlets were happening but she also knew that she was innocent and she's like well i don't need

01:16:53.760 to fight back because what the writing is not true and it's just pamphlets so like whatever

01:16:57.360 she her vibe was kind of like when they go low we go high and she also didn't change her behavior

01:17:02.700 like she knew that people were mad about what she did but she was just like sorry about it

01:17:06.140 and just kept doing what she was doing meanwhile like she and barry were just like let's have some

01:17:12.720 fertility doctor appointments. Like why can't, why can't we consummate our marriage? Is there 1.00

01:17:18.400 a physiological problem with one of our bodies or something? And so they were both examined and

01:17:24.540 their bodies seem to be in like good working order. Like, again, it's not that there's like

01:17:29.820 a sterility issue or a fertility issue. It's just like they literally had not had penetrative sex

01:17:36.640 with each other in the, how long is this at this point? Like five years of their marriage. And so

01:17:41.960 the doctors were like, what, why? Like what, what's going on with you? And so one doctor

01:17:46.920 suggested that there was maybe this physiological thing with Barry's penis where like he physically 1.00

01:17:53.000 couldn't insert his penis into a vagina. And the doctors were like, and I think the cure for this 1.00

01:17:59.160 would be to give you an anesthetized circumcision. And Barry's like, rather not, rather not do that.

01:18:05.960 And so everyone's just kind of like status quo, I guess.

01:18:09.880 Rumors spread like from these doctor appointments and I guess just from Marie Antoinette's like alleged nymphomania that their childlessness was his fault, not her fault. 0.62

01:18:21.080 So it's kind of like somehow it's like, oh, he's, you know, like he's got these like sexual problems and she's a nymphomaniac.

01:18:27.840 And that is like makes both of them seem kind of like monsters somehow.

01:18:31.580 But then like, just the haters trying just whatever it takes to make people hate her

01:18:36.180 more.

01:18:36.820 And they're like, well, she spends so much time on her looks, on her fashion and her

01:18:40.660 beauty. 1.00

01:18:41.120 Like, why would she try so hard to make herself look beautiful if she's not fucking someone? 1.00

01:18:45.780 She must therefore have a lover and like additional new members of hateration nation are secret 0.99

01:18:52.160 agents for Prussia and England, which were countries who would love it if the French

01:18:56.840 monarchy was less powerful, because then these are countries who are at war with France.

01:19:01.580 And then even some enterprising pamphlet makers, they heard that Barry had paid off that other

01:19:07.060 guy to stop printing the pamphlet. They're like, Oh, if we just print stuff that's like

01:19:10.280 unflattering about the queen, maybe we will also make money by being paid off. So people

01:19:14.660 are just doing it purely for financial gain. It's similar to, I keep bringing this up,

01:19:19.960 but it's like such a modern day, similar equivalency, like clickbait headlines about,

01:19:25.060 I don't know, Sidney Sweeney or about Meghan Markle. People know that those articles are

01:19:30.660 going to get clicks and that is how media sources get money so it's like the more monstrous you make

01:19:37.300 somebody seem the more people are either people going to read it and believe it or people going

01:19:40.940 to read it and get mad about it but either way they're talking about your pamphlet and that's

01:19:44.720 making you some money so there's big money in being a hater at this point so like the haters

01:19:51.040 that started is like the ants ryan philippi like funding people but this was now taking on a life

01:19:55.720 of its own they didn't even have to fund all of them anymore like a lot of people had realized

01:19:59.820 that hating Marie Antoinette was like a lucrative industry to be a part of.

01:20:04.820 And the next sort of fashion-based thing that happens is that...

01:20:09.340 So the whole thing with Marie Antoinette and how she's dressing

01:20:11.600 and how there's the pictures in the almanacs

01:20:13.740 and how rich people got the almanacs

01:20:15.740 and poor people got like pirated, like photocopies of the almanacs.

01:20:19.300 Rose Burton and Leo are both still...

01:20:22.620 They had clients who were like actresses

01:20:25.260 and people from different social strata.

01:20:27.400 But everybody wanted to dress like Marie Antoinette and everybody was dressing like

01:20:31.400 Marie Antoinette to the point that it was difficult when you saw somebody, you're like,

01:20:34.840 is this a wealthy noble woman or is this like an actress slash sex worker?

01:20:41.040 They all allegedly, they're all dressing the same. 0.75

01:20:44.220 They all kind of look the same.

01:20:45.180 And there's a thing called, I think it's called the sumptuary laws, which were laws at this

01:20:49.520 time that were like, if you're wealthy, you have to dress wealthy.

01:20:52.380 And if you're poor, you have to dress poor.

01:20:53.940 And if you're a man, you have to dress like a man. 0.91

01:20:55.800 If you're a woman, you have to dress like a woman. 0.89

01:20:56.820 like you have to dress like who you are in society and if you don't that's against the law

01:21:03.140 so what Marie Antoinette was sort of and it is kind of Rousseauian I guess just to be like well

01:21:10.140 everyone should just be treated the same and everyone's dressing the same and this is like

01:21:13.980 horrifying to people like the aunties and other people to whom class division and stuff like

01:21:20.820 separation is so important. Like the vibe here is very big. Herman, my pills, if you know what I

01:21:27.840 mean by that. So the lines are just blurring between the queen and the whores. And so it's 1.00

01:21:36.520 and people already thought the queen was a whore. So now it started like the rumors started being 0.98

01:21:41.360 like, is Marie Antoinette literally doing sex work? There was actually a portrait that Marie

01:21:47.220 Antoinette had done of herself where she's like really dressed up, really fancy. And she sent it

01:21:50.220 to her mother to be like hey mom here's a picture of me and maria theresa was just like i can't tell 0.66

01:21:55.340 is this a queen or is this an actress like you look so trashy marie antoinette was just like 1.00

01:22:00.060 fuck you mom and just started wearing even taller more extreme poofs in retaliation which is kind of 0.99

01:22:05.840 like where i see like the jojo siwa as well as just like don't tell me what to do like i'm 22 1.00

01:22:11.400 so the line between like sex workers and marie antoinette is also blurring because she went to

01:22:18.000 the Paris Opera so much in the Ryan Phillippe Mall. And actresses performed at the Paris Opera.

01:22:23.620 So she's often in the audience. The actresses are on stage. She would go to these balls,

01:22:27.280 like I said, wearing a mask sometimes. So she's like fraternizing with sex workers and their 1.00

01:22:32.460 clients. Sex workers were also like often working in the mall area. This was all shocking to people 1.00

01:22:39.100 that she went to the balls in the first place because royals and non-royals were not supposed

01:22:42.720 to mingle. This is also like Princess Diana. She used to, at least once, went in disguise with her

01:22:48.760 friend Freddie Mercury to just go dancing in a nightclub like a normal person. So like all the

01:22:53.520 rules of society that so many people felt so strongly about were being challenged. And this

01:22:59.840 is not Marie Antoinette herself directly advocating for change to society. She's just like, she was

01:23:06.260 always sort of like on the cusp of what, where society was going anyway. So she sort of like

01:23:12.120 represented this like dangerous new thing of like, you know, it's like now people like you

01:23:17.120 can't tell who's a man who's a woman or whatever. Like this is like in the 1960s. It's like everyone

01:23:21.300 has long hair. Like who is who? Like this was just an era where lines were blurring and Marie

01:23:27.000 Antoinette was part of that, but I don't think she caused it, but she was the most famous person

01:23:31.400 doing it. And because she was the queen, she kind of became sort of like the face of like

01:23:36.260 cultural change. And also because she was like a childless woman that was sort of seen as these

01:23:41.960 kind of Rousseau ideals are like there should be a man and a wife and the wife should stay home and 0.87

01:23:46.480 watch the children and she's just this like single like Carrie Bradshaw like Sex and the City era

01:23:52.680 not and just like that era just like going out and like dancing and having a nice time and it's 0.99

01:23:57.080 just like what is this like women shouldn't be doing this so one of the other reasons why Marie

01:24:04.560 Antoinette started being widely believed to be literally a whore is because Barry was not often 0.94

01:24:09.820 with her when she went out in public because he liked to stay home with his lathe and do his like 0.81

01:24:14.460 locksmithing work and he was being the king and he didn't like crowds he got like easily overwhelmed

01:24:21.040 so the fact that she was out by herself also made it seem kind of like if she was with her husband

01:24:26.280 maybe people would be less judgmental but she was by herself or with her ladies or with her 0.97

01:24:30.340 male friends and that's where everyone's like oh i guess she's fucking everybody i just want to 0.98

01:24:33.920 throw this in here as well i've mentioned before in one of the i think last week's episode i would 0.88

01:24:38.900 love it. This is not an expectation, but if someone is doing this anyway, please let me know

01:24:43.120 how many past episode people are mentioned in these Maria Antoinette episodes because she

01:24:48.680 overlaps with so many people. And she's about to overlap with another one, which is the Chevalier

01:24:52.720 Dayon, who is a beloved iconic figure on this podcast. The genderqueer soldier slash fencer.

01:25:02.380 I did an episode about her. You can find that if you scroll through

01:25:05.400 Vulgar History and your podcast app. So the Chevalier Dayan, I can't describe their whole

01:25:11.560 deal in just a few minutes in a Marie Antoinette episode. Basically just know this is a gender 1.00

01:25:16.500 bending person. This is a person who lives sometimes as a man and sometimes as a woman.

01:25:20.040 And this was the era, like around 1775, 1776, when Chevalier Dayan was just returned to Versailles

01:25:32.140 for the first time to live as a woman and actually Marie Antoinette was just like I love this I love

01:25:38.380 your vibe I love gender bending like she herself remember Marie Antoinette wore pants people were

01:25:43.120 like oh pants what's a man what's a woman um so she was just like excited to meet Chevalier Dayan

01:25:48.780 she got Rose Bertin on hand Rose Bertin was seen having um dinner with Chevalier Dayan Rose Bertin

01:25:55.560 like made an outfit for Chevalier Dayan for her like grand debut as a woman at Versailles um 1.00

01:26:01.860 Which also led to rumors and Marie Antoinette because of the gender bending of it all. 0.98

01:26:07.460 Like that Rose Breton was seen with Chevalier Dayon. 1.00

01:26:09.880 Rose Breton spent so much time with Marie Antoinette. 1.00

01:26:12.040 It's just like, they're all lesbians. 1.00

01:26:13.520 Like people didn't know what they were talking about, but they all knew they were suspicious and worried about it. 1.00

01:26:18.340 Marie Antoinette found Dayon delightful.

01:26:20.500 She publicly praised her as what she phrased as the female knight commander of my regiment of white skirts.

01:26:27.500 which was her just kind of being like i don't know like she was not literally saying like 0.97

01:26:33.880 day on like please be the commander of an army of women but hater nation like she said there's 0.97

01:26:39.500 an army of women they're all lesbians whatever people just like to hate and now which brings us 0.95

01:26:45.140 to 1777 over in america revolutionary things are happening um people in france were really hype 0.95

01:26:53.460 about it so they had been like english horse racing was really trendy now like american

01:26:58.340 patriotism is really trendy in france so 1776 america there was the declaration of independence

01:27:04.220 which is when around the same time the americans sent benjamin franklin to paris to try and

01:27:11.500 convince the french government slash monarchy to like support their side the american revolution

01:27:17.280 the like american side this was the era when lafayette the marquis de lafayette who we did

01:27:22.740 an episode about. You can scroll back and find that.

01:27:25.040 Market on your little sheets as well.

01:27:26.560 Lafayette wanted to go to America and fight

01:27:28.560 and then snuck off

01:27:30.580 to do so anyway.

01:27:32.400 All this is happening.

01:27:33.980 We're three years into the reign of Barry

01:27:36.400 and Marie Antoinette and

01:27:38.340 Maria Theresa over in 0.99

01:27:40.480 the Holy Roman Empire slash Austria. 0.53

01:27:43.080 So she's co-emperor 0.55

01:27:44.740 with her son Joseph,

01:27:46.540 who's Marie Antoinette's brother.

01:27:48.180 And she's like, Joseph, why don't you just go to Versailles 0.99

01:27:50.640 and see what the fuck is Marie Antoinette doing? 1.00

01:27:52.740 literally what the fuck is happening over there um like what is she doing with these poofs 1.00

01:27:57.960 um with the pants why isn't she pregnant yet like so they've been king and queen for three years 0.99

01:28:04.540 Barry and Marie Antoinette they've been married for seven years um they're both so let me see

01:28:09.460 she's 21 he's 22 um yeah so Joseph was up there basically to do an intervention and he's kind of

01:28:17.460 one of maybe the only person who can because Marie Antoinette didn't have to listen to anybody

01:28:21.820 does because she was queen. Barry didn't have to listen because he was king, but Joseph is like

01:28:25.360 the Holy Roman Emperor. So that's like the one person at their level who they like have to listen

01:28:29.060 to. So he, because there's just not enough whimsy in this story, Joseph arrives in Versailles.

01:28:34.420 He likes to travel incognito badly. So he is like, hello, I'm an ordinary citizen named

01:28:42.240 Count Falkenstein. Everyone's like, you're clearly Joseph, the Holy Roman Emperor, but he's like,

01:28:48.320 Oh, I'm Count Falkenstein. I love this detail. Anyway, he showed up and say what you will about

01:28:54.700 him as emperor. And I did in the Marie Antoinette episode. He was bad at it. He pretty quickly

01:29:03.220 figured out what was going on and was like, here's what's going on. He just met everybody

01:29:10.140 and was like, oh, okay. So Joseph figured out what's going on. Who's doing what? He's like,

01:29:15.560 oh, the antis, they're bitches. Like, um, Ryan Phillippe, he sucks. So he's just kind of like, 1.00

01:29:22.260 okay, like you, in terms of like, who has the qualities to be the leader of a major

01:29:26.980 nation state, he's got more emotional intelligence than Barry, I would say. And so he was just like,

01:29:36.260 okay, got it. Like, I see why these two haven't consummated their marriage.

01:29:39.700 it's because barry is weak-minded and an idiot is what he wrote to marie theresa he's like got it 1.00

01:29:47.200 he's an idiot let's figure this out so he stayed in versailles for six weeks um and during which 1.00

01:29:54.420 time he was able to have a conversation with barry where they just spoke very frankly about 1.00

01:29:59.300 the birds and the bees and so he was very joseph was also like a scientific minded person like

01:30:05.600 Barry was. So he was able to explain things in a way that Barry could understand. And I'll just

01:30:11.520 let you know what's been going on if you've been wondering. So Barry and Marie Antoinette were not

01:30:17.080 having intercourse in a procreatively useful way. At first, they didn't know what to do at all,

01:30:24.160 or they were too shy or too embarrassed or something. What they had been doing for several

01:30:29.260 years when they did happen to try to have sex is that Barry would have an erection. He would insert 0.97

01:30:37.080 his erect penis into Marie Antoinette, keep it there, neither of them moving. And then he would 1.00

01:30:42.160 remove the penis and then go into another room. And then that's where he would come. So Joseph 1.00

01:30:49.520 is like, oh, okay, well, here's what I recommend. When you put the penis in, move around a little 0.99

01:30:55.180 bit and keep moving around until you come inside of her. And Barry's like, Oh, wow. No, never told 1.00

01:31:01.300 me that. Let's I'll try that. Thank you so much. And so August 30th, 1777, seven years into their

01:31:09.700 marriage, Marie Antoinette wrote to her mother, quote, this is the happiest moment. It has been

01:31:14.860 eight days now since my marriage has been consummated. The test has been repeated

01:31:19.280 yesterday even more completely than the first time. And within a year of this intervention,

01:31:26.260 Marie Antoinette was pregnant. Her pregnancy announcement, I don't know if she was into

01:31:31.960 poofs at this time or not, but anyway, the pregnancy announcement occurred almost simultaneously 0.86

01:31:36.940 to the news that France officially recognized America as its own country, separate from

01:31:43.460 Great Britain. And so again, like American revolution, really trendy in Paris, uh, and at

01:31:50.980 Versailles. So Marie Antoinette was just like, everyone's hype about it because like, it means

01:31:57.080 it was a loss for Britain and France and Britain had been enemies for a long time, even though they

01:32:01.860 like English horse racing had been popular there for a minute. So Marie Antoinette invited Benjamin

01:32:06.120 Franklin to one of her card parties, um, and invited him to stand behind her chair, which was

01:32:12.280 a great honor. I don't know if I meant he would like look at the cards she had or anyway, that

01:32:15.740 was an honor that he was granted. Um, she hosted a ball in February, 1778 to celebrate the new

01:32:22.520 allies, France's new ally, America, um, which included what I have to assume is incredibly

01:32:27.960 culturally insensitive, uh, performance of dancers dressed up as quote, native Americans. 0.88

01:32:33.360 She also, oh no, she is in her poof era still. She got Leo and Rose to construct her a poof, 0.95

01:32:40.540 which contained a replica of a French naval vessel, like a Navy ship. And then the large

01:32:47.760 model was hoisted atop her poof as evidence of her patriotism of just like France and America, 0.91

01:32:54.140 BFFs, whatever. And then Friedrich the Great, who we talked about in the Maria Teresa episode a lot, 0.58

01:33:00.880 an enemy. He ruined the party yet again in his usual way by mobilizing the army and preparing

01:33:07.080 to invade Bohemia, which is like one of the territories of Marie Antoinette's mother,

01:33:12.240 Marie-Theresa.

01:33:13.160 So Marie-Theresa was terrified about what would happen.

01:33:17.080 And so she bombarded Marie Antoinette and Ambassador Mercy with like letters saying 0.61

01:33:21.800 like, Marie Antoinette, please use your influence with the king to convince the French to support 0.91

01:33:27.220 Austria in this, to get France to send money and troops to help Joseph.

01:33:32.060 Marie Antoinette did what she could.

01:33:34.260 she's just like, she's like a sleeper cell and she's been activated, which is like what the

01:33:37.860 haters had thought all along that she was secretly there to work for Austria. She's really there to

01:33:41.200 work for the Austria-France alliance, which is what her mother was asking her to do. But if you

01:33:44.980 will recall, the chief minister was this guy called Moripa and he hated the Austrians. And so he

01:33:52.160 warned Barry, like don't listen to Marie Antoinette. She's probably going to like tell you to try to

01:33:56.960 help out Austria. And so Barry did not help out Austria, which is when Marie Antoinette suddenly

01:34:02.580 realize that the whole purpose of her, well, two purposes to her coming to France in the first

01:34:07.800 place. Firstly is to like be the mother of children who would inherit the French throne next

01:34:13.900 that would cement the alliance between Austria and France, but more importantly, um, to ensure

01:34:19.120 that Austria and France stay helping out each other. This was the cornerstone of her family's

01:34:24.020 foreign policy. She had been sent to Versailles specifically to nurture and protect this.

01:34:28.540 and clearly this alliance was over in all but name um and this was maybe kind of her fault

01:34:35.500 was it kind of it was a lot of people's fault i would blame maurepa a lot i would blame the people

01:34:42.720 who didn't train her how to do this well i would blame the people who didn't explain to barry how

01:34:49.060 to be a king i blame the golf king for not updating his letter of who you should choose

01:34:55.400 as your minister. Lots of people to blame here. Anyway, Marie Antoinette felt badly about this

01:35:00.740 personally. She was really upset about it. Mercy wrote, I've never seen her so depressed. And in

01:35:07.300 an outpouring of confidence, she said she wished to make a general confession. She spoke of her

01:35:11.840 amusements, her society, and all the details of her personal life. She added that her deep trouble

01:35:16.120 of being unable to convince Barry to help her brother had led her to think seriously of the

01:35:21.200 life that lay before her. So she had a real, you know, she's just been in this Jojo Siwa era,

01:35:26.660 this Miley Cyrus bangers era. And then she's just like, maybe it's time to grow up a little bit and

01:35:32.360 stop just like being nonstop party girl all the time. And as she's going through this crisis and

01:35:37.620 thinking like, maybe, you know, who am I? Who am I? Like in Zoolander. She found a new confidant

01:35:43.820 and a person that helped her kind of with these existential issues. And it is a really hot guy

01:35:49.320 named Count Axel von Fursen from Sweden.

01:35:53.620 So he'd come to Versailles at around the same time as well, 1778.

01:35:56.680 He was born in Sweden to a high-ranking and well-connected family.

01:36:00.480 He was the same age as Marie Antoinette, like early 20s.

01:36:02.720 He was tall, slender, handsome, athletic, and charming.

01:36:05.820 The vibe is Alexander Skarsgård or any Skarsgård.

01:36:09.680 He was just like a hottie.

01:36:12.020 He was a hunk.

01:36:13.340 He was a captain in the Swedish cavalry.

01:36:15.260 And like Lafayette, he was really inspired by what was happening in America.

01:36:18.880 and he wanted to get permission to go and help fight with, you know, George Washington at all

01:36:24.720 in America. And so he wanted to, because France, like Sweden wasn't involved in the American

01:36:30.400 revolution, I don't think. So Axel von Fursten wanted to go to France to volunteer, to join the

01:36:35.900 French army, to go help in America. So this is why he wound up in France and he was formally

01:36:41.440 presented at Versailles. And Marie Antoinette was like, I remember this hot guy. I met him

01:36:45.640 when he was like traveling around paris like a few years ago and so he's she saw him axel von

01:36:51.200 versen and was like oh here is an old acquaintance and so she's like happy to see him because he's

01:36:55.960 hot um and it turns out also nice and so while he was waiting to get a commission in the french

01:37:00.280 army he just remained in paris slash versailles and marie antoinette invited him to petit trianon

01:37:05.940 um he would come and play card games and stuff and at this time so some of the biographies i read

01:37:14.800 suggest that these two became lovers, but none of them suggest that they became lovers yet because

01:37:19.940 she was, if you'll recall, very pregnant at this point. And so it was sort of like,

01:37:25.740 no one was suspicious about these two being together because she was pregnant at the time.

01:37:29.520 So like, I don't know, she wasn't seen as a sexual person for five seconds.

01:37:33.760 Axel von Fursen wrote really nice things about her. In September of that year, he wrote,

01:37:38.560 the queen who is the prettiest and most amiable princess that I know has had the kindness to

01:37:42.440 inquire about me often she asked my friend why i did not go to her card parties on sundays on

01:37:47.100 november 19th he wrote the queen treats me with great kindness i often pay her my court at her

01:37:51.720 card games and each time she makes to me little speeches that are full of goodwill as someone

01:37:55.420 had told her of my swedish uniform she wished to see me in it i am to go thursday thus dressed

01:38:00.080 to the queen's apartments she is the most amiable princess that i know and the same as how she

01:38:04.780 liked to be friends with princess lambal gabrielle to paul and yak marie antona just likes like a

01:38:09.980 basic, nice person. And that seems like that's what this guy is like. And he's also hot

01:38:14.480 and foreign. So he doesn't have all the like weird French baggage. Marie Antoinette gave

01:38:19.020 birth to her child, May 20th, 1778. And she had to do this Versailles style, which is just like

01:38:26.080 an apartment with like everybody who's like their family responsibility was to be in the room when

01:38:30.460 the baby was born. Because this December, all the windows were like sealed shut to keep the drafts

01:38:34.740 out. But that made the room so hot. And there's so many people in it that she actually fainted.

01:38:39.980 after giving birth and Barry had to break open a window to get some air into the room. This child

01:38:45.160 was a daughter. And if you'll recall, Marie Antoinette's mother, Maria Theresa, demanded

01:38:50.340 that all of the first granddaughters born to her children had to be called Maria Theresa as well.

01:38:55.820 So this little girl was named Marie Therese, but which was not great for the hater. Well,

01:39:03.580 it was great for the hater nation because it gave them something to complain about

01:39:06.120 that this girl had been given an Austrian name. So she was like, she's not really French. She's

01:39:11.080 Austrian. Look, she named her daughter an Austrian thing. They went to Paris for the baby's

01:39:15.580 baptism, expecting to see cheering crowds on the streets. Cause like finally there's like a royal

01:39:20.580 baby has been born, but instead in a really creepy move, everyone just stood there silently,

01:39:26.480 which is ominous, but they were riding through Rose pretend was there standing beside the grand

01:39:34.040 mogul, um, waving at the like parade. And then Marie Antoinette saw her and smiled and waved 0.91

01:39:39.380 back. And then the haters were just like, what? Because, you know, it used to mean something

01:39:44.540 when the queen waved to you, but how dare she wave at this fashion designer, this like person

01:39:49.960 who's not an aristocrat, not a noble. People are already so mad about the whole Rose Burton thing. 0.99

01:39:54.100 Like the Rose would come to Versailles and help dress Marie Antoinette when she wasn't like,

01:39:58.140 you know, a duchess or whatever, like the whole like blurring of lines. I don't get it. I don't

01:40:03.320 get why it's such a big deal because that's not what society that I live in is like really in

01:40:08.700 Canada in the year 2025. But in this era, like class distinctions were so crucial. I think,

01:40:15.740 I'm sure there's places like this. I think England is like this. Anyway, people were just really

01:40:19.700 upset. And now Marie Antoinette was in her maternity era and she'd made a hard pivot into

01:40:24.980 just like mom life. She'd always loved being around kids. She had all these siblings. She

01:40:29.580 had little brothers. When her courtiers had kids, she lived playing with their kids. Like she's just

01:40:34.080 somebody like Carolina of Brunswick, a woman who you might've heard of that I wrote a book about

01:40:38.760 called Rebel of the Regency. Marie Antoinette was just like a woman who wanted to be a mother.

01:40:42.920 She dreamed of being a mother. She always wanted to be a mother. She was in this like

01:40:47.120 strange, like non-sexual relationship for a long time. She finally gets to be a mother and she's

01:40:53.520 just like, okay. And so like everything calms down. So like the outfits, the poofs, everything.

01:40:58.340 She's just like, I'm in my clean girl era and I'm just going to like hang out with my baby 1.00

01:41:03.120 at Petit Trianon and just like live my Russo lifestyle. She also started really getting into

01:41:09.860 a new hobby, which was putting on plays with her friends. So she had a small private theater

01:41:14.620 constructed at Petit Trianon. It was, I mean, I don't know. It was a lovely place. I'm not sure

01:41:20.220 if it's still there, but she would perform in the plays herself. She interestingly would always

01:41:25.560 like to cast herself in the lead roles or roles of women who lived without the strict expectations

01:41:30.620 she had to live in. So these were clearly the sorts of people that she liked to pretend that

01:41:34.080 she could be like a peasant or a servant girl or a shepherdess. Like it would be her and her

01:41:39.120 friends putting on these shows. Like the audience was often just Barry and he had a nice time. He's

01:41:43.540 just like, that's my wife. She's having a nice time. Love this for her. She cut the measles in

01:41:49.560 1779, which I mentioned because she, Barry had not had the measles and so she had to quarantine

01:41:55.600 herself. And so she, for the first time, spent the night at Petite Trianon. Usually she just

01:42:00.200 went up there for the day and then she would sleep back in Versailles, but this was the first time

01:42:03.340 she spent the night there. Obviously, rumor spread that she was having an orgy. Hate pamphlets 0.96

01:42:08.920 increased. People were really mad about it and really suspicious. Although all she was doing

01:42:14.140 there was recuperating from the measles and just like going for a little like time in her garden

01:42:18.960 and like spending time just like chilling in the lake,

01:42:21.820 like in little boats with her friends.

01:42:25.300 But people were just like,

01:42:26.560 that's what she doing, orgies, whatever. 0.95

01:42:28.280 Spending all time with like Austrian spies 0.99

01:42:30.360 who are going to take over France.

01:42:33.340 Finally, Axel von Fursten got a commission to go.

01:42:37.200 Well, honestly, finally, French troops

01:42:39.400 actually were given permission to actually go to America in 1780

01:42:42.980 and Axel got to go with them.

01:42:44.900 So she was without her hot male friend, 1.00

01:42:47.040 but you know stayed busy in her motherhood era and she was just like in her like pregnancy 0.96

01:42:53.380 time and then you know her postpartum time like she wore more comfortable dresses which makes 1.00

01:43:00.600 total sense she and her besties got into this new sort of hat situation called the milkmaid's 0.98

01:43:06.860 bonnet which was kind of like big floppy white cloth hats with a few flowers in them then

01:43:13.080 eventually they kind of evolved this into wearing sort of like straw hats where if you've seen the

01:43:17.480 portrait of Marie Antoinette by Elisabeth Vigée Lebrun in sort of like the white cotton dress

01:43:22.140 with the straw hat there's also similar portraits of Princess Lambelle and Gabrielle de Polignac

01:43:26.380 dressed the same way so like this is this is the new look this is like it's a real you know like

01:43:31.260 it's going from like super low rise to super high rise jeans it's just like could not be more 1.00

01:43:35.440 different from the poofs and the like the huge dresses and stuff and so she the dresses that 0.99

01:43:41.460 she was wearing at this time initially, um, were called a levité. And these were just sort of

01:43:45.960 really simple white dresses inspired by the toga like costumes of classical French theater,

01:43:51.840 as were worn later on by a famous French actress who I've talked about on this podcast called

01:43:56.720 Rochelle. Anyway, so, and maybe this has to do with like the stage acting that she's doing as

01:44:02.320 well, but the levité was like the first iteration of this dress. And then later she moved into the

01:44:06.600 Gaulle, which was sort of like a muslin shift. It's just like a white dress. It's like shapeless

01:44:12.160 and you just like tie a belt around the middle. It's like super comfortable. Like if you're just

01:44:15.640 like pregnant, postpartum, breastfeeding, like this is just like, this is a much more comfortable

01:44:21.040 thing to wear than what the other dresses were like. Rose Burton, of course, was the one who's

01:44:24.860 making these. And these dresses were inspired by what colonial women wore in French colonies in 0.77

01:44:30.640 the Caribbean where it was hot and where this fabric would be more sensible. By 1782, one third 0.88

01:44:37.180 of Marie Antoinette's wardrobe were just these loose shift dresses. And of course, everybody

01:44:42.140 was wearing it because she still, as much as people, some people hated her, people still 0.77

01:44:47.320 looked to her for fashion advice. The boulevards of Paris in the Rhine-Philippe Mall was just like

01:44:52.480 flooded with plain white dresses. Haters pointed out that these dresses were made out of cotton or

01:44:58.300 muslin which were not fabrics that were indigenous to france you had to get these fabrics um rose

01:45:04.580 burton got hers a lot from scotland um anyways the french like silk manufacturing industry was

01:45:10.860 like this is destroying our industry won't anyone think of the french silk merchants

01:45:15.180 some silk workers in lyon apparently lost their job because there was less enthusiasm for silk

01:45:20.540 could possibly also be because everybody is so poor anyway so she's blamed for all of this and

01:45:25.920 then also there was a thing about like these dresses because they were so much easier to

01:45:29.580 take on and off. It's just like, Oh, so that's how she can just like have sex constantly was 1.00

01:45:33.880 what people said as well. Anyway, the silk merchants had like a slight boost in income 0.97

01:45:39.980 when Maria Teresa, Marie Antoinette's mom died back in Vienna. And so all of Versailles went

01:45:46.480 into mourning, which required a whole lot of black silk outfits. Um, but this also meant

01:45:51.620 for Marie Antoinette is that instead of her mother and her brother being co-emperors now

01:45:57.060 it's just her brother and her mother was always paying attention to her and kind to doing her

01:46:01.540 best in her way to look out for her but her brother Joseph was not as close to her like

01:46:05.720 he'd done that intervention but Marie Antoinette didn't feel like if things went badly that he

01:46:10.160 would intervene like maybe the mother might have anyway she had another baby which was a son

01:46:16.120 very exciting because now there's a new dauphin there's a new heir to the throne

01:46:20.700 He was named Louis Joseph for his dad.

01:46:23.040 Remember his dad, Barry's real name is Louis Auguste.

01:46:25.900 Joseph was named for his godfather, Marie Antoinette's brother, the Holy Roman Emperor,

01:46:30.480 which the haters were just like an Austrian name, named after the Austrian.

01:46:34.540 They were mad about it.

01:46:35.620 Through these two pregnancies, Marie Antoinette's hair, which as a younger girl had been like,

01:46:40.380 like my hair, if you're watching the video, sort of like curly and red and kind of thick.

01:46:45.020 But through the pregnancies, her hair started thinning.

01:46:47.580 And so Leo hairstylist to the stars invented a new shorter hairstyle. It was a sort of boyish

01:46:53.560 hairstyle. Um, so that she, that would just be more flattering to her with this hair and people

01:46:58.800 are just like, Oh my God, she's cross-dressing. What's she doing with her hair? People freaked 1.00

01:47:01.500 out about it. But of course women started emulating. So it's like the way that people 1.00

01:47:04.800 hated her, but also emulated her is interesting. And I don't know what contemporary figure has

01:47:11.500 both things at the same time like this. If anyone does, I don't know. I don't know in the same time.

01:47:16.820 So 1783, Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun, she painted this famous portrait of Marie Antoinette where

01:47:21.640 she's wearing a gull, like this shapeless white dress with a sash around the waist.

01:47:25.520 She's wearing her straw hat and she's holding a rose.

01:47:27.860 And the rose is the emblem of the Habsburg dynasty where she's from in Austria.

01:47:31.860 This painting was displayed to the public at the Paris Salon.

01:47:35.520 And it was so shocking.

01:47:37.980 The public were horrified to see the queen.

01:47:40.940 They're like, because the shift dress, they're like, well, that looks like a chemise, like

01:47:44.320 an undergarment.

01:47:45.120 Like, why is the queen being portrayed? 1.00

01:47:46.820 in her undergarments like this is proof that she's a whore um and also the fact that she 0.99

01:47:51.740 there's nothing in the portrait that made it apparent that this is a portrait of a queen 0.99

01:47:54.680 there's no crown there's nothing fancy about it so they're just like well this is devaluing

01:47:59.120 um what the monarchy is this is like disrespectful and stuff to the point that elizabeth fujet

01:48:04.780 libren had to remove the painting from the salon and she made a new replacement painting

01:48:08.460 of marie entoinette in the same pose holding a rose but dressed like much more formally 0.52

01:48:12.740 People were upset about it, but Marie Antoinette was just like, the same as when her mother criticized the poofs and she just wore bigger poofs. 0.72

01:48:19.820 She knew people were mad about these dresses and she's just like, I'm just going to wear even more shapeless dresses. 0.75

01:48:23.800 I'm just going to wear even more straw hats.

01:48:25.920 And apparently her daughter, Marie Therese, she's sometimes called by the nickname Mousseline, which is the French word for muslin, the fabric that her dresses were made from.

01:48:36.520 Meanwhile, France, the country, still in debt because they had spent, they were already in debt

01:48:42.400 and they spent all this money to support the American Revolution. Taxes alone, taxes on the

01:48:48.560 poor people, not the rich people, could not cover how big the debt was. And Maurepas, the chief

01:48:55.060 minister had said, like, we can't increase taxes anymore. Like people are already almost riding,

01:48:59.840 like we can't increase taxes anymore. France had to borrow money from other countries.

01:49:06.560 And this task fell to the Director General of Finances, Jacques Necker, father of Germain

01:49:12.600 de Stael, who we did an episode about a bit ago. So Jacques Necker was just like, how can I convince

01:49:19.400 other countries to loan us money when we're in debt? So he made this document that's just kind

01:49:23.100 of like colorfully creative accounting that revealed the monarchy's accounts to the public.

01:49:28.120 And it's the first time a document like this had ever been prepared in France to show like

01:49:32.080 what the royal family had spent on what.

01:49:35.620 And so even though the debt was like 70 million livres, which I don't know how much that is

01:49:40.200 now, but probably 70 trillion livres, he just, through creative accounting, he made it appear

01:49:45.540 as though there was an annual surplus that could pay off the debt.

01:49:48.860 And this document convinced Ford lenders to lend France more money.

01:49:53.080 Necker was proclaimed a financial genius.

01:49:55.760 And then like the American revolution was still on.

01:49:58.120 going hadn't ended like the Declaration of Independence in 1776. And then they were

01:50:01.940 fighting against the British and the French were there now. But eight months after this,

01:50:06.180 like financial document came out, the British surrendered at Yorktown, a turning point in the

01:50:10.980 American Revolution. So like Francis, like the money that they had spent on that seems to be

01:50:16.320 good. Like it seems to be well spent at this point. So the war was over. America had won

01:50:22.020 with France's help. It had been a really long time since the kingdom could celebrate a military

01:50:27.940 victory they've been a war but they just kept losing things and they were just especially

01:50:31.460 excited that they beat britain they're like arch rival for centuries so like everyone is just happy

01:50:37.440 everyone's happy in france and so the court the royals went on a spending spree marie antoinette

01:50:44.700 spent her money it's not like everyone got a gift but just like everyone's excited they're just like

01:50:49.420 oh we can you know not that they've been saving money but now they feel like well now we can

01:50:53.160 actually spend money again which they have been all along so she indulged her love of the simple

01:50:57.700 life by building a small scale working farm complete with her own chickens, cows, and peasants 0.97

01:51:03.000 on the grounds of Petit Trianon. Um, so she could just kind of like have a nice time in her like

01:51:09.360 rustic Russo, like little enclave, um, pretending that she's a little farmer person and she loved it

01:51:15.740 so much. She's like, I want, like, I want more farm, more farmland, please. So she got, um,

01:51:22.260 Barry to give her enough money to purchase her own country estate. And so her plan for this,

01:51:26.680 it was the Chateau of St. Cloud. And I think it used to be owned by the Ryan Phillippe family.

01:51:31.340 It was six miles from Versailles, so she could entertain people in even greater privacy.

01:51:36.080 And her plan was that this would eventually be inherited by one of their children. 0.78

01:51:40.140 And this was scandalous because the queen, she owned this property herself. It wasn't just like,

01:51:46.780 oh, a chateau on Versailles grounds. It's like, she has her own house. And then people were like,

01:51:52.060 why does the queen need her own house? Is it so that her Austrian emperor brother can take over

01:51:58.060 and that he will live there? It was just suspicious for women to own a house in general, 1.00

01:52:01.680 let alone a foreign queen. I do want to mention that other members of the family were also 0.98

01:52:06.160 spending money on various things. Other people were given mansions. Barry helped pay for

01:52:13.700 renovations. He actually, Barry himself, the French treasury paid the interest on his younger

01:52:18.820 brother Artois' debts. He got money from the treasury, 7 million livres sent to his other

01:52:25.400 brother, Provence, to purchase a second country estate. He already had one country estate. So

01:52:29.600 they also approved the building of a new port at Cherbourg on the English Channel that costs 28

01:52:37.420 million livres. So everyone's spending money, but everyone's on similar things, real estate-based

01:52:44.720 things. But Marie Antoinette is the only one that people are just like, we don't like her having 0.97

01:52:49.780 money and things. This is also around the same time that her previous governess, like the person 0.74

01:52:55.200 taking care of the children, had to resign because of a sexy scandal that maybe I'll talk about in a

01:53:00.620 later episode. But with the job open, Marie Antoinette decided to give the job of governess 0.99

01:53:05.060 to her friend, Gabrielle. And that had a salary of 400,000 leaves annually. And people were mad

01:53:11.780 about that because gabrielle was not a royal because gabrielle was one of her friends and 0.72

01:53:17.300 they're like oh she's gay for that job because they're lesbians or whatever anyway this is 0.85

01:53:21.000 people are mad haters are mad haters are mad about various things but all of these things 0.91

01:53:25.780 like gabrielle's salary marie antoinette buying the house and the like hobby farm and the paying

01:53:30.940 off the debts of the brother like all of these things were like truly minimal compared to what

01:53:35.980 the treasury had spent to help support the american revolution so if you're looking at like

01:53:40.260 why is the country in so much debt? It's not because Marie Antoinette got some chickens.

01:53:44.260 It's because the French cost of the war in America was 1.3 billion in olden times money.

01:53:51.920 So I don't know how much that is now. 1.3 billion livres. So this was significantly more than the

01:53:58.860 cost of all the family projects combined. Marie Antoinette cutting down on the amount of dresses

01:54:03.260 she bought would not have made a dent in the royal deficit. But that's not what it looked like 0.77

01:54:08.320 to the public. And sometimes when a thing looks bad, even if it isn't bad, you can't convince

01:54:14.780 people that it isn't bad. So her reputation had never been worse. And now we're in 1784

01:54:21.400 and the affair of the necklace. Now, I did a whole episode about the affair of the necklace in 2019.

01:54:29.220 Ages ago, ages ago, one of the first episodes of Vulgar History was about the affair of the

01:54:33.580 necklace. And I'm going to re-edit that and air that two days from now on Friday. So you can

01:54:38.240 get all those details of how that happened and more details about it, because I think the context

01:54:42.700 will be useful. But I'm going to go over how it affected Marie Antoinette at this point in this

01:54:48.080 episode. So there's a jeweler in France named Bomer, and he had built the shittiest, ugliest 0.77

01:54:53.700 necklace in the world. It was called the slave's collar. And it was made of like 650 large diamonds 0.76

01:55:00.500 that he had collected from all across Europe. And he had originally envisioned that

01:55:05.520 golf king Louis XV would give this to his mistress, Madame du Berry, who liked shitty, 0.57

01:55:11.580 tacky things, but he died before they could close the sale. But this necklace was still

01:55:16.640 made and it was still assembled. It cost a million livres to make it, or that's how much

01:55:23.240 he wanted to sell it for. There was very few women in the world who could afford to buy this.

01:55:27.540 Marie Antoinette was one of them, but she had never been a necklace girly, firstly. And secondly,

01:55:32.340 she was now in her clean girl era and didn't want a shitty necklace anyway so she didn't want this 0.65

01:55:37.740 necklace he like this jeweler tried to convince her to buy it and she said no he went to barry

01:55:41.480 and was like could you buy it for her and he was like mary internet do you want to buy you this 0.97

01:55:44.500 necklace she's like hell no it's an ugly ass necklace if you want to see how ugly the necklace 1.00

01:55:48.980 is it's like tasseled um uh go to my instagram vulgar history pod there's in my highlights 1.00

01:55:55.240 the neck there's pictures of the necklace there has to be seen to be believed anyway so she doesn't

01:56:01.280 on the necklace he kept trying to sell to her she did not say at one point she said to him i have

01:56:06.460 refused the necklace the king wished to give it to me and i refused it again don't say anything

01:56:10.100 more about it try to break it up and sell it and don't drown yourself about it so she was she thought

01:56:15.160 that this was like over the whole thing had been sorted out but then she's surprised to find get a

01:56:18.900 letter in 1784 from bomer saying you know thank you so much for buying the necklace it's gonna 0.97

01:56:24.320 look so beautiful on you and she's like what the fuck is this junk mail and she literally burns 0.99

01:56:28.460 the letter. She's like, well, he's insane. But she mentioned to her lady in waiting, like, 1.00

01:56:32.320 I just got this weird letter from him. And so her lady in waiting went to talk to Bomer to be like,

01:56:36.840 dude, what's going on with this necklace? And he was like, no, I needed her to pay me for the 0.69

01:56:41.120 necklace because I gave it to someone who said they were going to give it to Marie Antoinette

01:56:45.020 and Marie Antoinette is going to pay me for it. And it's like, bro, you've been scammed.

01:56:50.140 So the person who he had given the necklace to or who had helped broker this was a guy called

01:56:55.900 Cardinal de Rohan. Cardinal de Rohan is a person who Marie Antoinette had hated ever since she'd

01:57:01.560 been a Dauphin, Dauphine. So Cardinal de Rohan had like said mean things about her mom. And so

01:57:08.280 when Marie Antoinette, age 14, came to Versailles in the first place, her mother, Maria Teresa was 0.99

01:57:12.520 like, don't trust this bitch. Cardinal de Rohan, he sucks. And Marie Antoinette is like, got it. 1.00

01:57:17.400 He sucks. And he does. And she was right. So, but Rohan, he sucks. Like, you know, the whole thing 1.00

01:57:23.600 about the like watching the sunrise party. He was one of the people spreading rumors that had

01:57:27.340 been an orgy. Like he was, he was a member of Hater Nation and yet he still wanted Marie Antoinette 0.88

01:57:31.740 to be friends with him. He sucks. At one point she was throwing like an outdoor party at Petit 1.00

01:57:37.240 Trinon and he snuck in wearing a mask and they're like, but he was wearing his like Cardinal's red

01:57:42.160 tights. And they're like, bro, you're wearing red tights. We know you're Cardinal Rohan. And

01:57:46.260 then he got kicked out. He sucks. And so Marie Antoinette was like, that bitch is involved. 1.00

01:57:50.920 like so she went to barry and she's just like i don't know what rohan is up to but like we need 0.99

01:57:56.980 to clear my name because he's up to some shit so they called in um rohan to talk to him and he was

01:58:04.120 like oh yeah no so i did in fact uh i thought that the queen wanted me to get this necklace secretly 0.93

01:58:10.880 and so i uh helped get it because i thought that that would make you like me and they're like bro

01:58:16.920 what and then he's like well you wrote me this letter and he showed them this letter that was

01:58:20.260 like dear Rohan please get me the necklace signed Marie Antoinette de France which is like that's

01:58:26.200 not how Marie Antoinette signed her letters and he would know that she's had her letters just

01:58:29.380 Marie Antoinette and they're like you thought this she wrote this letter like this isn't even

01:58:32.780 a good forgery bro so Rohan was I'm clearly involved in this scandal and Marie Antoinette

01:58:38.160 was just like this is besmirching my name like so many things are but also I hate you Rohan

01:58:43.680 and she wanted to just clear her name that she's like I'm not involved in any of this

01:58:47.560 So Louis or Barry at this point had no chief minister.

01:58:51.180 Moripa had died and Lou Barry hadn't chosen a new one.

01:58:54.620 He was like, I'll just be in charge by myself.

01:58:55.960 It's fine.

01:58:56.440 So there's no one there to be like, let's just handle this privately. 1.00

01:59:00.780 So Marie Antoinette was like, I want this bitch to be embarrassed publicly, humiliated. 1.00

01:59:05.560 Like I need revenge against this guy. 1.00

01:59:07.480 He sucks. 1.00

01:59:08.500 And Barry's like, okay, so Rohan is going to be officiating. 1.00

01:59:12.500 He's a cardinal.

01:59:13.500 He's like a church guy.

01:59:14.460 He'll be officiating the ceremony in the Royal Chapel.

01:59:16.420 so we'll get him arrested in front of everybody. Marie Antoinette was like, yes, perfect. Humilate

01:59:20.900 this bitch. And so the entire court of Versailles got to see him being arrested and dragged out of 1.00

01:59:25.840 there in full ecclesiastical attire. He's taken to the Bastille prison and Marie Antoinette was

01:59:30.880 just like, I want this bitch to be on trial publicly because I need my name to be cleared 0.99

01:59:35.560 and I want him to be humiliated. Some of Barry's ministers were like, this is maybe a bad idea. 1.00

01:59:40.760 this could maybe backfire on you and make the monarchy less popular. But the other ministers

01:59:46.420 were like, no, this is great because they were hater nation members. And they're like, this is

01:59:50.160 going to make Marie Antoinette look bad, which is good for us. So let's do it. So it was a public

01:59:55.380 trial for Rohan for the criminal theft of this necklace. And it caused a sensation. Everybody

02:00:02.640 is starving. Everybody thought that Marie Antoinette is this like lesbian nymphomaniac. 0.98

02:00:07.780 and they're all like, well, she probably did want the necklace. So she's probably just trying to 0.99

02:00:11.160 save face. Everyone just kind of was on Rohan's side because they hated Marie Antoinette so much

02:00:15.680 at this point. The optics were just bad. So there's various co-conspirators,

02:00:21.240 which I talk about in the episode that you'll hear on Friday in your podcast feed. But ultimately

02:00:26.720 what Rohan was on trial for was, did he really believe that Marie Antoinette wanted this necklace

02:00:32.140 or was he lying? And so the trial became sort of like a referendum on like, is it believable

02:00:37.200 than Marie Antoinette would have wanted this disgusting necklace. And suddenly all of the,

02:00:41.620 everything, everything we talked about this episode, where it's just kind of like all of

02:00:44.360 the Jojo Siwa stuff, where it's just like, well, why does she have secret dinners? Why does she

02:00:48.080 wear this like dress you can have sex in? Why does she not let anybody come to her parties? 1.00

02:00:53.520 Why is she having orgies? It's like, of course she would want this necklace. Of course he would 1.00

02:00:56.760 think that she wanted this necklace. And, uh, the whole like blurring of like queen and sex worker 0.83

02:01:03.420 also came up because when DCL that came out during the saga, so the mastermind behind all

02:01:08.200 of it was not Rohan. He was just the dupe. The person behind it all was this like kind of badass

02:01:13.100 grifter called Jean de Lamont, who again, we talk about on Friday. Just look for that drop in your

02:01:18.880 podcast. Jean de Lamont had convinced Rohan that Marie Antoinette wanted this necklace. And the

02:01:24.080 reason that she like sealed the deal was she hired a sex worker whose whole thing was she looked a 1.00

02:01:28.820 lot like Marie Antoinette. So she hung out, the sex worker, I think her name was Olivia. She hung 1.00

02:01:34.540 out in the Ryan Phillippe mall area and just like wandered around looking like Marie Antoinette and

02:01:39.400 like one of the white dresses holding a rose looking like the portrait. So Jeanne de Lamont

02:01:43.720 hired her. So like under darkest night, remember anyone can go in Versailles. So this woman,

02:01:48.820 Olivia went into this like garden in Versailles. Jeanne de Lamont got Rohan to go there. And so

02:01:53.960 So like Olivia had kind of like a cloak hiding her face a bit, but she was wearing the white 0.81

02:01:59.260 dress.

02:01:59.600 She's holding the robe.

02:02:00.400 She looks exactly like the Elizabeth Viget-Libran portrait.

02:02:03.740 And she was like, it's me, Marie Antoinette.

02:02:05.640 I do want you to get this necklace.

02:02:07.360 Thank you.

02:02:08.300 And then she's like, you may kiss my dress, the hem.

02:02:11.080 And Rohan did.

02:02:11.720 So everyone's like, it's believable that Marie Antoinette would have done that.

02:02:15.820 That sounds like something Marie Antoinette would do, especially because we know that 0.97

02:02:19.200 that dress, the gall, is like a sex dress for nymphomaniacs. And so Rohan was found innocent. 0.94

02:02:27.960 Of all charges, the lower-class conspirators, Jean de Lamont and some others, were found guilty,

02:02:32.880 but so Rohan was found innocent, which ultimately meant like we, the jury, believe that he,

02:02:39.220 that it's believable that Marie Antoinette would have done this underhanded sneaky thing to get

02:02:44.360 this necklace and met him wearing a sex dress in the garden, which was kind of like pretty

02:02:49.780 devastating to her personally. She didn't realize that her reputation was actually that bad.

02:02:54.360 So he was one innocent. And then Marie Antoinette was just like, I need revenge. I need vengeance.

02:02:59.340 And so she got buried to punish him anyway, um, by banishing him for the crime of disrespecting

02:03:04.580 the sovereign. And as he was like journeyed on his way to exile outside of France, like crowds

02:03:10.140 lined the streets and cheered for him because they hated Marie Antoinette and saw him as some

02:03:15.700 sort of hero in this situation. And Marie Antoinette, this was like a mega wake-up call for

02:03:20.480 her about like how much she was actually hated. Her lady-in-waiting Madame Campan wrote a memoir 0.90

02:03:26.280 later and she wrote, the queen's grief was extreme, like after this verdict. I went to her and found

02:03:31.480 her alone in her closet. She was weeping. Come, said her majesty to me, come and lament for your

02:03:36.280 queen, insulted and sacrificed by injustice. And so this brings us to 1785 and the foreign loans,

02:03:43.920 remember they, Jack Necker was able to trick other countries to giving them loans. The foreign

02:03:49.040 loans are now due. France can't repay them, which leads France to a mammoth full-on Great Depression

02:03:56.260 size financial crash. What happens next to Marie Antoinette? We'll find out next week 0.99

02:04:03.120 um in this ongoing saga how do you solve a problem like marie antoinette so this is

02:04:10.160 the vulgar history podcast my name is ann foster and we're in marie antoinette month

02:04:16.100 oh i actually have an update for you so i wrote a book it's called rebel of the regency the

02:04:20.620 scandalous saga of caroline of brunswick britain's uncrowned queen it is available for pre-order in

02:04:25.220 canada and the u.s from any bookstore um you can find some links to some major bookstores

02:04:30.200 like the ones that anyone can buy from in Canada and the US

02:04:34.760 on my website, rebeloftheregency.com.

02:04:37.460 The update is that you can now pre-order the audio book of this book.

02:04:41.900 So if you want to listen to this book,

02:04:44.180 the same way you listen to this podcast,

02:04:45.700 I don't know if I'll be narrating it.

02:04:47.320 I hope I will be, but if it's not me, it'll be someone great.

02:04:50.100 So you can pre-order the book now on libro.fm,

02:04:53.040 on Kobo, on Audible, wherever you get your audio books from,

02:04:56.340 as well as you can order the book book

02:04:57.800 from anywhere you get your books from in Canada.

02:05:00.200 in the U S and I hope, I hope soon to have news for people in other countries, um, if, and when

02:05:05.940 you'll be able to pre-order this book as well. And when you do pre-order the book, there's a form you

02:05:10.320 can fill out to get some free stuff from me. So like, not only do you get the book when it's

02:05:14.780 published, but if you send me a copy of your receipt, you can get, um, one year free membership

02:05:19.040 to my Patreon, one year free membership to my sub stack and the Carolina Brunswick themed paper

02:05:23.620 doll, because she was just as much of a fashion girly as Marie Antoinette. And so I want to

02:05:28.700 celebrate that about her. I do also want to mention that on my Patreon, you can watch videos

02:05:34.940 of these episodes if you want to see my face and maybe my cat who's next to me, but you can't see

02:05:40.220 her. If you want to watch the videos of these episodes, you can do that if you join my Patreon

02:05:44.040 for $6 a month or more. You also at that level of Patreon, you get access to our Discord server

02:05:51.340 where we just like chat and have a nice time, should talk people from history. And also at

02:05:56.180 that $6 a month level on the Patreon, you get access to episodes of Vulgar Peace Theater,

02:06:01.160 which is a movie podcast, which I host with my friends, Alison Epstein and Lana Witt Johnson.

02:06:06.300 And we're going to be at the end of this month, at the end of September, talking about Sophia

02:06:09.980 Coppola's movie, Marie Antoinette. I'm excited to watch that. I haven't watched it since it came

02:06:14.720 out. I don't think now that I know who all these people are and what all these moments mean,

02:06:18.640 I think it'll be really exciting and I'll have fun talking about that. Anyway, if you want to

02:06:21.840 join the Patreon, patreon.com slash Anne Foster Writer. Pre-order my book. Wherever you get books,

02:06:27.100 there's links at rebeloftheregency.com. And also if you're looking forward to reading it,

02:06:31.880 add it on Goodreads, add it on Storygraph. If you're in NetGalley, you can request an advanced

02:06:35.820 copy of it. I hope you get one. And yeah, next week you're going to be back with more Marie

02:06:40.880 Antoinette stuff. Shit's getting real for our girl. And I'll tell you how that all plays out 1.00

02:06:48.520 next time. So until then, keep your pants on and your tits out. 1.00

02:06:51.840 vulgar history is researched scripted and hosted by ann foster that's me editor is christina lumagi 0.99

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Vulgar History - September 17, 2025

Marie Antoinette (part two)： Teenage Drama Queen

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