Ellen Lloyd – AncientPages.com – Marie Antoinette is today known as the French Queen executed by the guillotine during the French Revolution. Much has been said and written about her, and modern historians agree her life was a mixture of pleasure and genuine horror.
There is no doubt Marie Antoinette was beautiful when she was young, but she was also naive, and her life in France was not a dance on roses. The French people hated her. She had to deal with evil gossips and horrible accusations, but what is the truth behind her dramatic life story? Was she a bad woman or rather a victim of manipulation she could not foresee?
Who Was Marie Antoinette?
Born on November 2, 1755, at the Hofburg Palace in Vienna, Austria, Marie Antoinette was the youngest daughter of Empress Maria Theresa, ruler of the Habsburg Empire, and her husband Francis I, Holy Roman Emperor. One day before she was born, a magnitude 8.5 earthquake felled Lisbon, killing 30,000 people. Later, when Marie Antoinette’s life became a struggle, it was said her birth had been foreshadowed by its evil omens.