Marie Antoinette: Tender Cruelty

On the day of Marie Antoinette’s birthday, the court astrologer predicted her death on the scaffold—unless the princess was married off to Russia or China… The prophecy came true 37 years later: the unfortunate queen of France lay down on the guillotine. Her last words were addressed to the executioner Sanson, to whom she accidentally stepped on the foot: “Forgive me, Monsieur, I didn’t do it on purpose”…

Although more than two centuries have passed since then, the fate of Marie Antoinette still leaves no one indifferent—she is either adored, hated, pitied as an innocent victim of terror, or cursed as the intriguer who drove France to revolution. Her scandalous statement—“If the people have no bread, let them eat cakes”—was never forgiven. And still today people gossip about intimate details of family life (it’s no secret that her husband Louis XVI suffered from phimosis for many years and couldn’t fulfill his marital duty). So who was executed “in the name of the people” at the Place de la Révolution—an embodiment of hell in a woman’s form, or a poor, confused woman who became a victim of a merciless age?..