Marie Antoinette (Radio Edit)

BBC-podkast on kirjoituksella. Energin albumu! Mellä on testissä Uusi Honomä, Cik kahdeksan litte puhelin. Ja tää on elämän kommeluksia kestävä puhelin. Siis tästä on jopa kolmen päivä akun kesto. Kestää myös kuumaan. Japa kasta. Jarmat kuulia. Telen nyt mahdollisuus voittaa tämä puhelii itsellenne. Kuntelen malla energgin albumu. Yhteistyössä energi ja Honor Magic Kasillite. Silkaa suorituskykyä, jopa kolmen päivän akun kestolla. Tomma vai vaalia. Kyllä. Keskellä kaikkea vai kaukana kaikesta. Kyllä. Pore alas vai laatu. Ehdottomasti kyllä. Just niin, miksi valita kun voi saada molemmat. Polidee kladilla talvilomia joka lähtöä. Polidee klad. Päivän käsitään. Päivän käsitää käsitää. Myös Greg Jenner. Tämä on käsitää käsitää. Täällä on jääntää käsitää. especially plays, prints and novels. She's the author of Narrative Responses, The Trauma of the French Revolution, is Professor Catherine Asprey. Welcome Kate. Thank you very much for inviting me. And in Comedy Corner, she's a stand-up comedian, actor and writer. You'll have seen her on all the TV, on Live at the Apollo, mocked the week, Frankie Boyle's New World Order, or maybe you heard her podcast WTB or her other podcast, Memory Lane. And you will definitely know her from our episodes on her nankotes and melinsin and on Emma of Normandy. It's Jen Bresta. Welcome back Jen. Thank you Greg, I'm delighted to be back. We have previously done, together, English histories, Spanish history, Mexican history. Obviously question, do you parlay who from size? And put you per. I don't want to get into it because I don't want to embarrass Kate. Or yourself Greg. Thank you. But I am very excited about this particular episode, not least because it is French history, what a joy. But because I actually know who this person is. And this is the first time I've been invited onto the show with a historical figure whose name I recognise, so I'm delighted. Marian Twinets, you know the name, so do you know some of the story? Look, I know the story that was told when I was a child and I think most of the myths around Marian Twinets are, as we learned later, as an adult, are completely lies. So I'm going to say almost everything I know about this historical figure is not true. So I'm really intrigued to hear the truth. So what do you know? This is the "So what do you know?" Where I guess what you, our lovely listener, might know about today's subject and I bet you all shouted, "Let them eat cake!" She didn't say it, come on. You may have seen Sofia Coppola's fabulous 2006 film Marian Twinets with a punk rock soundtrack starring Kirsten Dunst or the most recent Marian Twinets TV drama series on the BBC. Of course, you might also remember the shocking Grammy Award-winning performance by Heavy Metal Titans, Gojira, at the 2024 Paris Olympic opening ceremony, accompanied by numerous decapitated Marian Twinets in Blood Red Dresses. Marian Twinets is a modern pop culture icon. But what was her life really like? How did an Austrian princess become France's doomed queen? And how many dresses did she really own? Let's find out. Alright, Professor Kate, let's start at the beginning. When and where was Marian Twinets born and was that her name? So, the Arch Duchess Maria Antonia of Austria was born on the 2nd of November 1755, the 15th child of 16 of the Empress Maria Teresa, ruler of the Habsburg dynasty from 1740, and Father Emperor Francis I. Her mother, Maria Teresa, was a political powerhouse and played a huge role in managing military and diplomatic affairs. In 1756, she made a momentous alliance with Austria's age-old enemy France, reversing 200 years of hostility. At court in Vienna, they spoke German French and Italian, and Maria Antonia grew up sliding between being called Antonia and Antoine. All the girls in the family had Maria as a first name, so they tended to avoid that. They were all called Maria. They were all called Maria as a family tradition. The girls all had Maria as a family. How did you solve a problem like Maria? You used the second name. Because she was also one of the youngest in the family, she was also referred to as Antoinette, which is the French diminutive, meaning little Antoine. And in the end, that's the name that stuck. It's cute. Yeah. They did that in Spain as well. They have a little diminutive name. They're all called Maria. I feel like that 16 kids come on. Well, the boys weren't called Maria. Oh, yeah. What were they called? France. Leopold, Josef. Good. Good solider. Good solider. All of those names were going to war. And so she grew up in Vienna. She grew up in Vienna. Right. So there's Fact Numerouno that I did not know. I thought Maria Antoinette was French. So that's quite embarrassing. So we have a princess. We have an arch.s. You can presumably guess what her future is going to be, Jen, in terms of what mother is planning for her. Yes. I imagine she's planning a very prestigious marriage into a very prestigious court in France. Yeah, bang on. I mean, that's the plan, right? Absolutely. Got it in one. Yeah. So we're minutes into the episode already wedding bells. We're talking about a little girl here. Yes. Oh, wait a second. Hang on, rewind her. Obviously, we'll make it in the future. No, no. She had been betrothed as a child. She is betrothed as a child. Maria Teresa's plan is for her to marry the French king Louis XV's grandson, who's also called Louis. We've got all the girls. All the girls in Austria called Maria and all the boys in France called Louis. Little Louis's father has died and he becomes heir to the Throne in France who's known as the Dauphin. And at that point, Maria Teresa decides that this is going to be a great way of reinforcing this new alliance between the age-old enemies Austria and France. Louis is only a year older than Antoinette, but that's considered good because they're quite close in age. But he's described as a lanky, silent, nervous lad. OK. So. I'm all teenage boys. I was going to say. I was going to say it's quite a standard boy in a teenage boy. Is it quite usual then to get married before they're 16? Or is it? Oh, it is. It is normal, yes. For average people, no, but for princes, for denascents. For royalty. So she has got to that point now at the age of 13. She's going to now move away from her home in the Vienna court to go to Paris to live with her new husband who is 14. She's sent off to France aged 14, so cue the problematic marriage claxon, which we unfortunately have to punk a lot on this show. And so when she arrives in France, what are you imagining? Are you sort of thinking Harry and Meghan? Is it Kate and Will? You know, what kind of. What's the vibe? Is it fun? Are people happy, you know? Those are the only two options. That's it. That's all you got. OK. I'm going to sidestep comparing the wedding to either. She arrives in May 1770 and meets King Louis XV at Compien. She's then introduced to Young Louis, her future husband and the extended family. And two days later, the 16th of May, the pair were married at their side and she became Dolfiness, Dolfin of France. That's not the end of it, because Jen, on the wedding night, things get awkward. Do you know why? Why would it be awkward for the new married couple? Well, they don't know what they're doing. Not just that. They don't know what they're doing with an audience. Why do they. They have to make sure that she's. There's a going to bed ceremony. I'll come on. It's hard. I mean, we've all. Oh, remember our first time. Can you imagine with an audience that anything worse? Kate, just talk us through it. So, the archbishop blesses the bed. That's definitely going to get you in the mood. That's really going to get you in the mood. Louis XV then hands the Dolfiness night shirt with grandfather is there, offering advice. They then have to lie down in front of the king and the entire court to prove that they have shared the same bed. The king's advice. Was it useful, Kate? Did Louis rise to the occasion, so to speak? Louis did not rise to the occasion. The marriage was unconsumated for seven years. Ah, Kate, surprise. You see, Kate. Or traumatised. He's keeping traumatised. Right. There's a lot of. There's a lot of discussion over why was the marriage not consummated for so long? Seven years was a long time. We don't know if it was personal hesitation, whether it was health-related. Maybe some things are just best lost in history. We don't know why seven years will just sort of write that off. Okay, so with the unconsumated marriage already proving an issue in 1774, so this was still four years into there, not sleeping together problem. Suddenly, Louis was the king of France, because Louis XV died, making Mary Antoinette the queen of France. So she was 19, just about? About 19. Okay, just her 19. So the age in which we would normally maybe get to university, or maybe get your first job. Her first job. Queen. Yeah, that's a lot. What's the first thing she does, Kate, in terms of court politics? How does it go? Not perhaps as well as it might have done. Okay. Is that the only thing? I mean, they're both still very young. They're very inexperienced. She has nothing to do, because the marriage isn't consummated. She's not going to get pregnant, and therefore her sole reason for being at court can't exist. So she fills her time with gambling, with balls, with going incognito into Paris, to balls, to the theatre. She gathers around her group of young people near her own age. Right. She's not interested in being polite to the older members of court. She hates the really strict etiquette of court. So she does all she can to sort of sidestep that. She'd rather have a little bit of privacy. She doesn't want to spend all her time in the public eye. And really, she carries on living the life she'd left whilst she was the wife of the heir to France, rather than changing her behaviour once she's become queen. So Jen, how do you think she's doing on ratemymonica.com? Do you think the people of France are pleased about their new queen? I'm guessing the people of France, and they are very vocal as a people, are not at all happy with their new queen, who appears to be just having a big old jolly, and ignoring the needs and wants of the people, particularly the working people of Paris, and of France, rather. So I would imagine there's a lot of resentment and anger building. The problems that will later arise in the French Revolution, they're already there, right? They are already there, yes. Okay. Jen, how would you turn things around if you were marrying into a net? What's your policy to get people to love you? Well, I would think I would do something for the people and make a really big gesture that was like, you know, "Oh, guys, I've got this great big party and I'm going to put it on for you." Of course, I love you and I really want you to know that I care about you. So you'd say, "Let the meat cake." I would say. Because I'm really sorry that you're in poverty, but have you had jelly and ice cream before? Okay, the most important thing, of course, she produces an air. That is what matters. That's really what makes it different. She does. She does. Finally, she has a daughter, Maritere's Charlotte born in 1778. Another Marie. Another Marie. She has Louis Josef in 1781, that he will die aged seven just before the start of the French Revolution in 1789. Louis Schall, who is born in 1785, and Sophie Ellen Beatrice in 1786, who dies aged one. So she has four children, two of whom will die in her lifetime. It did help her popularity, but because of the gap between the marriage and the first child being born, there are a huge number of rumours about who the father of each of these children is. Okay, Kate, here's my question, because as a historical figure that I certainly don't know great in about, what I do know about her is that it's very too dimensional and she has been given a really hard rap. Other than you redeeming equalities to Marie Antoinette, other than she's a party girl that is very self-involved, suffered a lot of losses as a mother. Anything else going on for her? We can give her a little bit of cheerleading for. Okay, we can certainly try. How about her being an important figure in the patronage of arts and culture? Okay, so particularly decorative arts and music. She uses her influence to move public tastes to a more modern cosmopolitan style of music. She sets the agenda in the theatre. She certainly sets the agenda when we come to fashion as well. And what about politics? So the way that the French court had developed over the 18th century was that the mistress of the king was the one who had the king's ear and could be the one to sort of get favors and advantages from. Because Louis isn't interested in taking a mistress, people expect Marie Antoinette to gain them favors, but she has a very fine line to trade because she can't be seen to be overstepping her. Overstepping her mark, exactly, her role as consort, her role as to bear children. So she's in a slightly awkward position and accused of meddling because there isn't anyone else to take the flag. So she's effectively queen and mistress because she has the king's ear. So it's all concentrated down onto her. We did just talk about Antoinette and fashion. She's renowned for it. There's a new exhibition coming to the VNA Museum soon about her sort of amazing clothes. Jen, do you know how many new dresses she ordered per year from her favourite dressmaker? Oh, I'm imagining in their hundreds. Yeah, it was 300. 300 a year. 300 a year, brand new dresses. So that's almost a new dress for every single day. Yeah. Can you tell us more about fashion and Marie Antoinette sort of role within it? One of the things that lots of people know about Marie Antoinette is her extravagant clothing. She was accused at the time of spending too much money on dresses. Although in her defence, she is supposed to be promoting the superiority of French culture. She represents the nation and is keeping dozens, if not hundreds of people employed, as a result of being the face of France in that sense. So again, Marie Antoinette finds us how criticised, you know, WWE don't. She's criticised for spending too much on over the top outfits. But then she's also criticised when she tries wearing simpler clothes. So there's a really famous dress that's called the Shumis Alleren, which was made out of white muslin rather than French silk. And it's seen by the standards of the time as a really casual garment. The formal French court dresses, you've got the tight corsets, you've got the giant skirts. This is much, much looser. It's a sort of neoclassical. We're heading towards Jane Austen sort of style. It's almost a slip, isn't it? It's almost a slip. It looks like an underdress. We must look completely bananas when you compare it to what everyone else was wearing. It must have thought, "Are you wearing your night dress?" It was, exactly. And meanwhile, another huge scandal breaks out. This one involving a very famous necklace. It's called the Diamond necklace affair. What happens? A corn artist tries to persuade the former French ambassador to Vienna to buy a necklace to get him back into Mario Toneck's favour. This is a necklace that Louis XV had ordered for his mistress, but never bought. And Mario Toneck had turned it down. The former French ambassador, Rohan, thought that it was a good way of getting back in the Queen's good books, buys it and then finds that he's been completely duped by the corn artist who's taken the jewels and done a runner. Yeah, and he's hired a sort of an actress to perform as the Queen, right? So there's a sort of con in there. And Paul Marion's with net is sort of left going, "Hang on, what? I've never heard of this guy." Yeah, the Queen, Rohan's thought that he was meeting the Queen when he was actually meeting a look-alike sex worker. Right. And everyone believed that that was entirely plausible that he might meet the Queen in the gardens of our site at night. And therefore nobody thought that that was anything out of the ordinary. So far, had her reputation slumped by then. Oh, dear. That's the irony is that she never wanted them. She thought they were inappropriate amount of money to be spent and she's still got completely hung out to drive. Yeah, story of her life. So here's where I think maybe she's getting a hard rap because it doesn't sound to me that within the world that she lives in in that sort of aristocratic sphere, that she is working particularly outside of that in terms of luxury spending, a huge amount of money on clothing. It all seems to be fitting in within the parameters of what is expected of a Queen. Why does she get such a hard rap from the French people? I think the key to the answer to that question is that it's not initially the French people. It's those at court that she's alienating because she doesn't want to be with any of the old guard. She wants to be with young people. And there's a very substantial group who are anti-Austrian. So she's still foreign. She's not politically astute enough. And she's been made a patsy for this sort of diamond heist. And we start getting much more aggressive attacks on her in the media. These are forms of attack against Mary Antoinette, that are designed to humiliate her, to scandalise her. She's cheating on the king. She can't be trusted. All of the above. From the early 1770s onwards, she's accused of nighttime sexual encounters in the palace gardens from before she's even queen, they become increasingly pornographic throughout the 1780s. She's frequently depicted in lesbian relationships with her friends. She's often shown with Louise Brother, younger brother, the comp d'Ahtua, they're trying to destroy her reputation and with it the reputation of the French monarchy. I mean, this all happens now to women, isn't it? I mean, the misogynies of the scale. And how effective was it? I mean, this sort of stuff works. It really works. The king tries to have copies seized and burnt, but it's very hard, you can't control all print outlets. Does she don't need many of them to answer? You only need one to survive. But she was cheating on the king. We believe, what was the name of the real lover? The love of her life was a Swedish officer called Axel von Fesson. That is quite a hot name, actually. It is a hot name, it was von Fesson. I immediately in my head, I'm just seeing a kind of Sweden, a kind of Shemese shirt, just like, hello. I think the jury is still out as to how far they went. Oh, interesting. I think now most people will say she probably did have a physical relationship with him. He's the kind of fancy man, but all these other kind of rumours and scandals are, you know, are false and designed to destroy her. So you've got this kind of real rising anti-monarchist. The movement is growing bigger and bigger against the monarchy, but also personally against Mary Antoinette. So, okay, obviously, Mary Antoinette's political career is in the context of what will become the French Revolution, which is caused by many factors, but what do we need to know? The state was left virtually bankrupt after supporting the American War of Independence. Louis XVI called a meeting of the state general to ask for permission to raise emergency funds, but instead they declared themselves a National Assembly, and the people of Paris, worried that the king will suppress this new Assembly, stormed the state prison, the Bastille on 14 July 1789, and that marks the beginning of what we now call the French Revolution. But the obvious snapshot is the French Revolution comes to the palace and what happens to Mary Antoinette and her family and her husband? In October 1789, a group of women marched to Versailles, demanding bread and the king. At this point, the people of Paris still think that the king can save them. They're starving. The king has been misled by his courtiers over in Versailles, bringing back to Paris and all will be well. They're relocated to the Toulier et Palace in Paris, and over the next two years face increasing demands for constitutional reforms, so that the revolution is a trying to make a constitutional monarchy along the lines of the British system. But Louis reluctant to sacrifice any of the notion of kingship that he feels is inherited from Louis XIV. And in the end, on 20 June 1791, the royal family tried to flee France. We know how this ends. The king is executed first. And then there's 1792, isn't it? 1793. He's executed first. He's accused of treason. He's found guilty of treason. He is executed. That is an incredibly serious thing. Mary Antoinette, it's not the same day. It's not the same week. They clearly have a bit of a pause. So, are they debating what to do with her? There is debate about what to do with her. They consider putting her on trial. They consider sending her into exile. They wonder about exchanging her for political prisoners. I think part of the background to the discussion on what to do with her is the years of propaganda that have made much of her sexual appetites. So, in the end, in October 1793, she's given a two-day show trial in effect. She's accused of planning a massacre of the National Guards, liaising with foreign enemies, Austria, obviously. So, writing to her brother to say help. Writing to her brother to say help. She hasn't behaved brilliantly. She's very spoiled and has literally done nothing for the people of France. However, she's not guilty of any of those things. All those people that were putting out all of this stuff about Mary Antoinette and this kind of like, really indulging on how the aristocracy have no morals and have no sort of values system kind of backfired on all of them because they all got their heads taken, didn't they? They're all killed. More ordinary people are killed during the period of the terror than members of the nability. And her children, the two surviving children? The son will become, became Louis XVII on his father's death. The king is dead longly of the king. So, child became king. He dies shortly afterwards in prison, having been looked after, looked after in a vertical as by the revolutionaries. Not a well child, he dies. Marie Terez will survive. She will become the Duchess of Angulem and will help Louis younger brother become Louis XVIII. Napoleon famously said of her she was the only one in the family to wear trousers. So, Mary Antoinette was executed 16th of October 1793. Her last words rather extraordinarily, do you want to tell us what they were, Kate? Allegedly. I don't know how much to do that in actually her words. Allegedly she said to the execution, "A pardon me sir, I did not do it on purpose after she stepped on his foot." Oh, that's heartbreaking. That's so heartbreaking. So, she was executed, do you want to guess how old she was at this point or her death? So, she's 17, I don't know, so she's like young, well, is she 20, you know, 20s? No, 37. Oh, she's just 37. Oh, my gosh. It's an extraordinary life, I think. As you said at the beginning of the episode, Jen, a lot of the things we know about her are not true, but actually a lot of the things that the French people knew about her were not true. It's, you know, she was the victim of scandal and rumor and gossip. Yeah, and a very deliberate and successful smear campaign, which really undid all of the nobility to a degree and the French court as a whole. Yeah. It's weird, isn't it? How the more you learn about these people, the more you give them, like a third I mentioned. I can see that she's incredibly flawed human being, but also she was a product of what the court created. Yeah. Thank you. I really enjoyed that, I thought it was fascinating. The New Ones Window! It's time now for the New Ones Window. My stopwatch is ready, okay, to take it away. It can be tricky to untangle myth and reality with Marie-Antoinette, because what we know largely come from things others wrote about her rather than from her own words. Opinions then and now are contradictory. Was she a monster or a martyr? Was she thoughtless and frivolous or a scheming villain? Was she depraved or a devoted mother? Did she bring down the French monarchy with her extravagance? Or is she a proto-theminist influencer and role model? Versi was a palace of mirrors and multiple reflections. Marie-Antoinette reflect back at us, our own biases, so to different people she will mean quite different things. It is important though to distinguish more clearly between the teenage Marie-Antoinette and the person she was 20 years later. It will be prepared to become Queen Age 19. She did end up taking on more political responsibilities when Louis was paralyzed by depression and indecision. But the task of modernising the monarchy and solving the economic crisis without impinging on the privileges of the nobility was an impossible one. During the revolution she tried to save the monarchy, writing a huge number of letters to revolutionaries as well as her brother on the throne in Vienna to try to effect change. She would have seen herself as acting in France's interests, when in fact it's the point in her life when she's most actively working against them, just another of the many contradictions that make up her life. Her most tangible legacy is the impact she had on interior design, one of her most enduring passions. Furniture and obje d'ar from this period are usually labelled Louis XVI, but it would be much more accurate to call the Marie-Antoinette style, as her interest in fabrics and furniture very much marked the late 18th century. Her taste is now appreciated as elegant and refined, a marketable brand for everything from tea to tote bags. Our collective fascination with her riches to rag's storage has no sign at all of fading. Given that powerful women in society are still seen with suspicion and that tensions between privacy and celebrity have taken on a new urgency in a social media age, Marie-Antoinette's life will undoubtedly continue to be relevant and generate debate for years to come. Two minutes on the dot, incredible, thank you. Wow, that's impressive. I've spread up because I was about five seconds over when I practiced it yesterday. Oh well done, Kate, thank you so much. That's fascinating. The idea of the mutability, the fact that she was all things to all people. Really interesting, Jean, isn't it? Yeah, and also the parallels about celebrity now that you can see them clearly, especially with social media, because the printing press existed and think people were able to get things out and so much easier and it was much easier to augment your celebrity, but it was much easier to pull you down as well. Exactly, exactly. People will believe what they want to believe. And still do. Yeah. Well, thank you so much, Professor Kate, thank you, Jean. And listen, if you want more from Jean, we've got episodes on Emma of Normandy. And of course, we did her name Cortez Amelinsson. That was very interesting. And for more controversial French queens, listen to our episode on Catherine de Medici. That one was a fun hoot. And remember, if you've enjoyed the podcast, please share the show with your friends. Subscribe to your debt to me on BBC Sound in the UK to get episodes 28 days early. But I'd just like to say a huge thank you to our guests in History Corner. We have the incredible Professor Catherine Asprey from the University of Warwick. Thank you, Kate. Have pleasure. And a comedy corner. We have the brilliant Jen Brista. Thanks again, Jen. Oh, what a treat, Greg. Thank you. And to you, lovely listener, join me next time as we engage in some more historical myth-busting. But for now, I'm off to go and get my hands on my own delicious sweet. Keep it classy, people. I'm talking about the root vegetable. Bye! That's a good one. Thank you. Your debt to me is a BBC Studio's production for BBC Radio 4. Hi, guys. This is Riley. And I'm here to tell you about how to be in love from BBC Sounds. Now, as a single devolce, I feel ready to find love again. But I want to see if there's a better way of going about it. In this series, I'm going to sit down with 12 incredible guests who are really going to help me rediscover what love truly means and how I can find it again. People like Stephen Fry, Louis Thru, Matt and Emma Willis and many more. So join me on this journey as I explore how to be in love. Listen on BBC Sounds. I'm Sally Helm, host of the podcast History This Week from the History Channel. For our latest episode, we spoke to Ken Burns. I think the American Revolution is the most important event since the birth of Christ. 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