WHEN I WAS VERY young, my mother used to tell me how she had sobbed when she left the Hofburg Palace in Vienna, leaving behind her mother and family and all that was familiar, bound for a country she didn't know in order to marry a young man she'd never met.
I hadn't understood her sadness. My only thought was how exciting it must have been!
Now I understand. It has not been easy. For more than two years, since I left France, I have lived at the Viennese court of my cousin Emperor Francis II. I don't much like him—he didn't lift a finger to save my father or my mother. I don't think he likes me either. The members of my party who made the long, difficult journey with me have since been sent away. The French are not welcome here, for the two countries are still at war—the war my father was forced to declare. The Hofburg has turned out to be another prison for me. A gilded cage, but nevertheless a cage. I sometimes wonder if Versailles was not a gilded cage for my mother. She lived her whole life imprisoned by rules. Sometimes she tried to break out. I believe she must have been very lonely.
Today I am preparing to leave. My uncle the comte de Provence declared himself King Louis XVIII after the death of my brother. Czar Paul of Russia has offered him refuge in one of the Russian provinces, and I am to join him there. I know nothing of that part of the world, but my future has been decided: I am to marry my cousin Louis-Antoine, the duc d'Angoulême. Antoine is the son of my father's youngest brother, Artois. My parents always hoped I would marry him. I haven't seen Louis-Antoine since we were children. I wonder what he's like now. I suppose I'll find out soon enough.
My uncle Provence has written to me: My dear Marie-Thérèse, the monarchy will soon be restored, the Bourbons will take the throne, and as the wife of the duc d'Angoulême, you will someday find yourself queen of France.
Should that be my fate, I hope to do honor to the title. But my biggest hope is that the world will someday come to understand Queen Marie-Antoinette-Josèphe-Jeanne, to admire her for the good that she did, and, most especially, to forgive her for her wrongs.
Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte de France
Vienna, May 1798
THERE IS NO HAPPY ending to this story.
Marie-Thérèse left Vienna and began a lifetime of wandering. In June of 1799 she married her cousin Louis-Antoine, the duc d'Angoulême. That same year Napoleon Bonaparte, a young military officer, declared himself emperor of France. Bonaparte was in and out of power until his defeat at Waterloo in 1815 and the subsequent restoration of the House of Bourbon. Provence ruled as King Louis XVIII until his death in 1824, when Artois ascended the throne as King Charles X and Artois's son Louis-Antoine became the dauphin. Marie-Thérèse was now titled Madame la Dauphine.
In 1830 by means of an elaborate deception Louis-Philippe, son of the duc d'Orléans—who called himself Philippe Égalité, voted for the death of his cousin King Louis, and was then himself executed—now came onto the scene. Louis-Philippe replaced Charles X, declaring himself king of the French. Before being coerced into signing the abdication papers, Marie-Thérèse's husband held the title of King Louis XIX for less than a half-hour, and she was queen of France for those same few minutes. Rather than live under the usurper's rule, Marie-Thérèse, her husband, and her father-in-law went into exile one more time.
Louis-Antoine died in 1844. The marriage was childless and has been described as an unhappy one. In the years after she left the tower, Marie-Thérèse lived at various times in Russia, England, Scotland, France, Prague, and Italy. Another revolution ended Louis-Philippe's reign in 1848. In 1851 Marie-Thérèse died at the age of seventy-two at her small palace outside of Vienna. She ended her life as a sad and bitter woman. It's not hard to understand why.
One more unhappy note: Axel von Fersen died in Stockholm in 1810, beaten to death by a revolutionary mob. He kept his promise to Marie-Antoinette, the love of his life, and never married.
The French people were starving; there was no bread; and Queen Marie-Antoinette, dressed in expensive silks and diamonds and with her hair in a towering pouf, flicked her jeweled fan and pronounced the famously disdainful sentence.
That's how the story goes. In fact, she never said it. Arguments have raged for years about the source of the story—exactly who said what, the definition of cake, the circumstances under which the words were uttered, and if they were even uttered at all. The often-repeated remark is part of the myth of Marie-Antoinette as the cruel queen whose behavior sparked the French Revolution.
But was she as heartless as she is usually portrayed? I wondered about that, especially after I saw Sofia Coppola's 2006 movie Marie Antoinette. I was curious about who this bad queen really was and what she did that made her one of the most hated queens in history.
To answer my own questions, I read biographies and tried to learn about her, her family, her friends, and her life.
I visited Vienna, where she spent her childhood among brothers, sisters, and tutors under the critical gaze of her domineering mother.
I traveled to Versailles, where she went as a young bride to marry a boy she'd never met. I waited until the dozens of tour buses had left the parking lot, and in the hour or two before the enormous chateau was closed for the night, I walked through nearly empty chambers, including the spectacular Galerie des Glaces, the Hall of Mirrors. I walked around the Petit Trianon (it was closed for renovation), looked in at the little theater where she and her friends had put on plays, and strolled the lovely grounds of Le Hameau to imagine her delight in living what she believed was a simple life.
In Paris I visited the Grand Palais, where more than three hundred objects and paintings had been assembled to tell her story—including the seating chart for the young dauphine's wedding supper and a reproduction of the infamous diamond necklace. Leaving that exhibit area, visitors descended a spiral staircase to a lower level and confronted an enormous shattered mirror. It was a stunning reminder of the destruction caused by the mobs as well as a symbol of the end of the life she knew, and it took my breath away Beyond that powerful image lay a long, darkened gallery with an exhibit of the vicious pamphlets and caricatures expressing the hatred focused on the queen.
Finally, I peered into the cell at the Conciergerie where Marie-Antoinette spent her final weeks.
The more I read about her and the more I retraced her steps, the more she came alive to me as a flesh-and-blood person, seriously flawed, but not evil. She was not responsible for a single death. She may have worn her diamonds and called upon her couturière to make another fabulous gown when the people were going hungry—a serious mistake on her part, certainly, but not a crime. She was extravagant to a fault, but it was not her extravagance that brought France to the brink of ruin. She felt entitled to every luxury, but she did not perform the horrible deeds often blamed on her. And neither she nor her husband, an inept king who had no idea of how to govern, deserved to die.
***
The Bad Queen, like my other novels, is a work of historical fiction. I'm often asked if the books I write about famous queens—Bloody Mary, Anne Boleyn, Catherine de' Medici, and now Marie-Antoinette—are "true." The answer is that they are based on the known facts. But as anyone who has studied history has learned, the facts are often debatable or simply unknown. Many times there is no proof, just speculation and educated guesswork. The history in all my books is as accurate as my research can make it. I have not invented a single character in this novel. I have woven the actual historical figures and the known facts into a fictional framework. Much of the dialogue is based on quotations—translated from French, of course—found in historical accounts.
But I have used my imagination to bring certain events to life; I've also chosen to let Marie-Antoinette tell her own story, expressing her thoughts and feelings in a voice that I hope is much like hers. That is what makes The Bad Queen a work of fiction rather than a biography.
Carolyn Meyer
Albuquerque, New Mexico
2009
Chapman, Martin, et al. Marie-Antoinette and the Petit Trianon at Versailles (San Francisco: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, catalog, 2007).
Erickson, Carolly To the Scaffold: The Life of Marie Antoinette (New York: Morrow, 1991).
Fraser, Antonia. Marie Antoinette: The Journey (New York: Random House, 2001).
Levron, Jacques. Daily Life at Versailles in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (New York: Macmillan, 1968).
Weber, Caroline. Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution (New York: Holt, 2006).