Back to basics with the doomed relationship of Marie Antoinette and King Louis the XVI of France! Our dear Marie was just a child when she was shipped to France to marry the future king. It takes a long time for her to have a baby, so she has an excellent time in the meantime. There are many diamonds, chateaus, literal big-wigs, gambling, operas, and even a pretend French village. All on the grounds of Versailles. Until, of course, she is executed for crimes against the nation. Learn more about this fascinating window into pre-revolutionary lavish life! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: doomedtofailpod@gmail.com
Back to basics with the doomed relationship of Marie Antoinette and King Louis the XVI of France! Our dear Marie was just a child when she was shipped to France to marry the future king. It takes a long time for her to have a baby, so she has an excellent time in the meantime. There are many diamonds, chateaus, literal big-wigs, gambling, operas, and even a pretend French village. All on the grounds of Versailles.
Until, of course, she is executed for crimes against the nation.
Learn more about this fascinating window into pre-revolutionary lavish life!
Pics via AI and Creative Commons
Some sources:
Marie Antoinette: The Journey by Antonia Fraser | Goodreads
Marie Antoinette: The Last Queen of France - Évelyne Lever
Marie Antoinette (2006) - IMDb
Moberly–Jourdain incident - Wikipedia
What did Marie Antoinette Really Look Like? Her Portraits and Death Mask Brought to Life.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod
Email: doomedtofailpod@gmail.com
Hi Friends! Our transcripts aren't perfect, but I wanted to make sure you had something - if you'd like an edited transcript, I'd be happy to prioritize one for you - please email doomedtofailpod@gmail.com - Thanks! - Taylor
on Wednesday hi Taylor hello Faris how are you I'm doing very
very well it is a continuation of our Sunday and we are going to just trotting on them
um welcome to Doom to fail today we are covering the historical side of our Doom
to fail relationship event slash thing and Taylor is drinking an entire slice
of chocolate cake mixed within and blended with milk
and ice cream why do you think I well do you think I'd be doing that because you said you were doing that
20 minutes ago dang use your context clues who do you think I'm talking about
oh God okay so we're talking about Chicago um we're not talking about Chicago we're
not we're talking about cake oh oh you really threw me
uh oh I did oh it's okay um so it's got to be either Taft
um oh let them eat cake is it Marie Antoinette
yes wow really yeah good job well yeah
um so okay we're going back to apparently my favorite time period which is The Enlightenment and we're talking
Marie Antoinette and her husband Louis XVI this is a long and a good one and
there's so much stuff it's pretty fun so awesome um I I yeah I'm excited so I in 2020 I
read a ton of books because I had nothing else to do but I read Marie Antoinette the journey by Antonio Fraser
then and then this week I read Marie Antoinette the last queen of France by Evelyn levay and then I also watched the
Sophia Coppola movie from 2006 have you watched that 2006 no
with Kirsten Dunst I you know what's funny is whenever you mention it I pictured Kirsten Dunst but
I think it was because I was picturing Romeo and Juliet not Marie Antoinette she's she's not in that that's clear
days oh my God that is wait who's Kristen Dunson oh okay yeah no no clear clear
Danes man what happens she was in that show about the Middle
East and stuff that everybody loved with them
anyway I hope she's doing well I think she's fine she's married she's married to the guy who actually she's married to
the guy who played the cop in the TV show Hannibal
no way every story comes back to you she has nothing to that's not true because she
has nothing to do with this [Laughter]
and yet again yet again I've derailed another episode [Laughter]
um but anyway I remember seeing it in the theater and I was it ended and I was like what I was like
so mad and like I didn't love it but watching it again and knowing more about Marie Antoinette as a person I like it a
lot more Christian Jones did a great job because I'm showing her humanity and the things that she was really really good at and kind of her situation so I'll
talk a little bit more about what that means but I also um people other websites that if I told you
about them right now it would spoil so I'll put them in the show notes so when I'm researching like I've said
before and getting super into things I want to like think like that person for the week when I'm doing my lifetime worth of research in a week and do you
have you ever seen this I've seen it on Instagram it's like a Kurt Vonnegut quote about buying envelopes
um tell me the quote and I might know it so am I I'm not even looking up but the idea is that like he's like oh I need an
envelope and his wife is like you can go buy an envelope online and he's like no I want to go to the store I want to see people I want to
like romanticize little things in my life you know yeah makes sense um so like making the Small Things special
and if you are Marie Antoinette everything is special including you you
know yeah everything's a little bit magical everything is special so that's sort of the the vibe that she gives off
so Maria Antonia was born on November 2nd
1755 at the hoffburg palace in Vienna Austria so for reference Louis the 16th
um he was born on August 23rd 1754 so they're like he's a year older than her they're roughly similar in ages
um Marie Antonia that was her name before she was French she was the last daughter of Maria Theresa so Maria
Theresa was a one of the last hopsbergs in like that line of hopsbergs
who've talked about before and she ruled over Austria in like a bunch of different ways it's complicated they're
a war of Austrian secession all these things happening um when I was a dad isn't really in these
stories because her mom is so prolific she's just like someone who's trying to get her kids married off and she's doing
all these deals and she's really interested in like Austria and keeping that part of Europe strong she had 16
children three of them died in childhood and Marie Antoinette was the 15th
which is a lot of [ __ ] children um Maria Theresa said that if she was
not always pregnant she would have gone into battle herself which is cool and fun so that's the kind of mom that she
had yeah so this is similar to Kathleen the great um I'll bring her up a little bit more but Kathy mcgrade's mom was
very similarly trying to get her daughters married off and and you know grow the line and it's somehow the Holy
Roman Empire and Austria-Hungary and this is why like Napoleon could do things like have a sister be queen of
Naples because there's always a queen of Naples which is fun so Maria Theresa Marie
Antoinette's mom was married to Francis the First Holy Roman Emperor of all of their kids there were several Arts Arch
duchesses two Holy Roman emperors an Archduke
um and then Maria Carolina the Queen of Naples and Sicily there was a Duke of
baraskow and then there was Marie Antoinette who was the queen of France so she did pretty well for someone
trying to get her kids to have like good jobs yeah she seems uh
she really she had a plan for her kids yes exactly so a lot happens and Maria Antonia is
Promised Louis XVI when she is 14 and 1770. so her childhood was like
obviously very nice she lived in these like palaces in Vienna and she also met
Mozart when she was a child which is cute they were both kids when they met she was hard to teach and didn't really
want to learn but she could sing and dance so she was kind of like a spoiled rich kid for the most part but like not her fault
so a little bit more about like why what happened to Marie Antoinette
happened to Marie Antoinette and why what happened to Catherine the Great happened to Catherine the Great Catherine the Great was a little bit older she was born in 1729 but it's the
same idea you send your European wife to another European Russian whatever place to marry the the Monarch or the next in
line to hope to like preserve your line and move it on Marie Antoinette was like
very very young and she didn't really have that like political Acumen that Catherine the Great had Catherine the
Great went in and she was like I want to be Russian I want to learn the language I want to upgrade the society I want to
help the people she was smarter than her husband
were great yeah she did obviously killed no they didn't Kevin died when she was
old wait who is Sir Nicholas's wife no no that's way way way later oh okay
all right I also don't know history yeah keep going sorry oh my God it's our first episode we listened to our
episodes first so um so Marina Marie Antoinette has none of the qualities that Catherine the
Great had which is fine like people if if a 99.9 of people in the situation
would be like fine I'll like live in this Palace forever and kind of be sad but not worry about it when Catherine
the Great was like I'm going to be the ruler you know she has something special that Maria I have so there's a bunch of
people in this story um I'm gonna bring them up this is not in order but I'm just going to pull out some of the interesting Parts I think
the Doom to fail part is that arranged marriages during revolutions can go either way so either you're cathum the
great and you get your husband killed so you can rule or you marry Antoinette and you both die
this is like the time when people were like just sick of monarchies you know yeah yeah it's it seems like you just
have to pick the right husband either the guy that you can seam roll and take over or the idiot who gets you and your
kids killed or you're just like living a boring life at court forever which I don't know
okay I'm down with that I'd like to lay around and read all day yeah yeah so in 1770 Mariano is on her way to
France so she's still Maria on Antonia when she steps into France she's Marie Antoinette she has a little portrait of
Louis XVI and he's a little one of her so they like don't they haven't met obviously they have these little pictures of each
other a little paintings of each other um Louie is the next in line because his dad died and his grandfather is the king
his grandfather is like this guy who has like this like flamboyant mistress and he like loves
women and that's like a big thing and everyone knows it which is important that's just a grandpa so Maria today has
taken through the woods into a literal like a tent in the woods between Austria
and France it's on the border so she walks in as an Austrian and leaves French while she's in the tent they
change her they get rid of everything Austrian that she had on her and change her into all French clothes then she
walks through and she is French you know yeah it's very um
it's very ceremonial it sounds like yeah and everything is in the story
so which walks on the tent the king and Louis are there they say hello for the first time she is very formal in doing
the right thing she's like I'm so happy to be here like thank you everyone I'm so happy this is amazing she's 14. you
know she's being told to say these things he's a little bit indifferent probably a little scared but um
that's when they meet for the first time and they're married really quickly afterwards so
when after they get married they live at Versailles have you been to Versailles no no my cousin literally just came back
from France and went to Versailles said it was like it was stunning but I think you just had to say that it's like when everybody goes to the Louvre and says oh
my God the Mona Lisa was life-changing it's like was it or is it just like another thing that you have to say socially to be cool
I don't know I think Versailles actually stunning so I haven't been there either but we should go I we talked about this
a little bit with Lizzie Borden I think I brought it up because Lizzie Borden at her house there were no hallways like there are no hallways of
Versailles just like room after room after room you know yeah um when I was when I was just in Seattle
um I visited a co-worker's house and it was interesting because like his he was
doing a tour and like his bedroom had like a door to another room that
adored the stairs and I was like when was this thing built because I remember that they build houses that didn't have
hallways it looked like it was designed like that it looked like it was like two rooms that were supposed to be separate
that you had to walk through to get from one side of the next and then the house you know like the 1960s I was like I
didn't know it was like that weird of a concept I have hallways back then but maybe it was I don't think so yeah
that's weird yeah but yeah but that's what that's what it's like in Versailles everything is very public you have to walk through everyone's stuff so
yeah it's a lot it used to be a hunting lodge which is like in air quotes it was
always like very beautiful palace and then um Kings as they as they were living there they built more things on it and
it got bigger and bigger it's 11 miles from Paris so it's not very far from Paris it's kind of close and
it has 2 300 rooms and it's 679
784 square feet she's very big yeah
um so and it has to be big because like a [ __ ] ton of people live there there's courtiers who have small apartments that
are like worse than their apartments in pal in Paris but they're like grateful to have them there's dukes and such that
have a larger set of rooms then there's an infrastructure to keep that so if I'm like fars Duke of Austin come stay with
me at Versailles you're like totally that sounds great here are my 10 people I'm bringing with me you know like the
dude who dresses me the dude who Shines My Shoes the dude who does this you know so there's so many people involved and
you have to feed everyone and there's kids everywhere so it's very crowded in there it's like it's like a city it's so
wasteful in Versailles yeah well yes exactly so it's not like there isn't any
pump and ceremony in Austria there totally is it's also very beautiful she also lived in the palace but France is
something different it's like really like high high high pomping ceremony so one of the people
that she meets almost immediately is and annoy and listen I'm gonna try my best with these so I listen to the book so I
have a kind of idea how they pronounce them but denoi is d e
so she's the contest de denoi there we go she's a first lady and
waiting for the queen so she knows all the rules so in the morning when Marie Antoinette wakes up there's like this
crazy dressing ceremony where there's like 20 women in the room and the hand her each piece is closing clothing one
by one because it's like an honor to do that like oh some iron handed your sock you know things like that so there was
no privacy in Versailles everyone was there um become test annoy was
kind of a covering over over everything Marie Antoinette called her Madame etiquette because she knew all the rules
and like really really stood by all the rules um just to mention later she will be
guillotined this place this place like it reminds me of like the warmth and comfort you'd
experience at the beast's mansion and Beauty and the Beast like it is it's exactly that yeah stupid over the top
like yes not cozy at all no it's not cozy absolutely I feel like
you're pretty uncomfortable because your clothes are uncomfortable there's people everywhere there's dope smells like [ __ ]
everywhere too it definitely smells terrible there is I didn't write this down but there is one
thing that um one dude goes to America and he comes
back and he's like hey do you guys know that the women in America wash themselves with soap he's like this they
smell pretty good what on Earth are you talking about horses everywhere you know yeah so
Versailles crazy um on their wedding night after the wedding like ceremony party itself
everyone's in the in the bedroom with them so like tons of people Duke duchesses courtiers everyone's there the
ceremony is the king gives a pair of pajamas to Louis the 16th and then well
I guess he's not the 16th yet but to Louie and then the top lady in the in the monarchy gives pajamas to Marie
Antoinette they get to change in private then they get to sit in the they sit in the bed together in their PJs and
everybody sees them and the King's like good luck and everybody cheers and then they have to see them together in bed
like that's a huge part of it and then they close the curtains and everybody leaves and continues to have a party and now they're left alone
these two like a 14 year old and a 15 year old in bed together were they supposed to do it or
yes they're supposed to have kids like immediately and um they do not they do not have sex on that first night they
don't have sex for a while um it's weird with guys like this like with Peter III with a Catherine mcgrade's husband like
they also didn't have sex for a while and it sounds like everyone around them was having sex like maybe not in front
of them but like his friends all knew what was going on but maybe they were like pretending maybe they embarrassed
these guys and like they didn't ask the right questions because they just like don't
necessarily know what to do you know yeah
they're kids they just assume that they would know how so it sounds like there might have been I think this is the same
for Peter III that it is for Louis that like an operation might have helped like a little bit of like a foreskin
operation that would have made them be able to like excuse me like actually have sex but
either way they just like don't know what they're doing um so Louis he like loves
um locks and keys he does all his like nerdy stuff he doesn't really talk to her but he's nice to her
um and he could be worse he could be Peter III who's like actively the worst remember he was a wet noodle from a long time ago so
um while she's waiting to be useful meaning have a baby she wants to go to Paris so she sneaks out and goes to like
masked balls in the city she loves the theater she does little performances so she like will put on a play she put on
um The Marriage of Figaro sometime later in in her life so she sings and she dances she loves to party she loves to
gamble so Marie Antoinette will play cards until dawn um so she'll Gamble and she has all this
money and she just has like jewels and stuff and Louie's okay with that he like he like loves her in his way he's like
this is my wife it's not like he's sleeping with anybody else he gives her gifts he's just like not really into her or maybe anyone that
way she buys things like she buys diamond bracelets that cost the same as like a mansion in Paris there's a lot of
diamonds in this story crazy um this is also it's so stupid and this is also when she meets Leonard a twee
who's the hair guy he's the guy who with her together they invented the big hair big hair big hair thing which is great
so like the higher and higher hair stuff that's like obviously that you think of when you think of her she did it with this hairdresser guy it's called the
beach beehive right no it's like way more than a beehive like a beehive is something you can do
with like your own hair in the 60s but her thing it's like you know three feet above your head that's like and
everyone's hair was like powdered and white you know because it's still the um you know like how like at the same
time as like George Washington his hair was powdered you know like the big wigs
if these pictures do are just us I think they're close and I'll tell you
how I know that later but um she another thing with the hair that I was thinking as an aside is like have
you ever done like a exfoliating face mask on your face
what what do you think of the answer of that what do you think the answer to that is just out of curiosity every
night every night um so if you do once I've done them before like some different colors you know depending on what's in it you know
what I mean but when you put on like a white clay mask and you smile your teeth look terrible because you're like my
teeth ever your teeth against actual Pure White like they're not white you know yeah and I'm just imagining that
like they don't talk about this but like everyone's teeth which have just looks yellow and terrible because they have like powdered white skin and powdered
right here and these beautiful dresses but they're like Teeth must have been like gross yeah I can imagine for the most
part that's what I'm imagining so eventually
Louis and Marie Antoinette do have sex and it is
um getting awkward because his brother has a baby with his wife the contest de Provence and that's her sister-in-law so
that baby is next in line so everyone's really really mad at Marie Antoinette and she's like I don't know what to do
I'm in bed with this man like nothing's happening and he does tell someone that he does have he does manage to
get hard and then like be with her for like two minutes
but then he like pulls out and doesn't ejaculate that's not how babies are made
yeah it's not going to cut it so whatever happens guess how long it took them after they got married to finally have sex
uh uh seven years that's not a happy marriage
no it's a long time so she's finally she's super happy she's like writing to her mother because her
mom was like you have to have a baby you know so she's like we finally had sex and she gets pregnant she has a baby
it's a girl her first baby which you know is a bummer but another like ridiculous pump and and ceremony thing
is when she has a baby everyone is there because they need to see the umbilical cord attached to the baby attached to
the mom to prove that he's like there you know so crazy like when I had my babies I was like I would
like the nurse of the doctor and my husband please like nobody else I know but if people like want to have their families there which is fine but like
50 people crowding in the room that's bad but if flow was the heir to like California
you know you'd have to then I guess I guess and be like she's mine oh yeah that's
right you know yeah physically see it um she does she Branch passes out and
they make everybody leave the room and then later Louis changes it where you don't have to have that many people in the room which is very nice because you
know 850 people in the room to do that her life seems Seems fun but also a nightmare
yes exactly so other stuff is happening but eventually she does have four children
so Marie Therese is her first daughter she's born in 1778. she
actually lives until 1851 so she lives to be to be a little bit older then there is she has a son named Louis
Joseph Xavier Francois he dies in childhood childhood he dies when he's
about eight years old he was a very sickly and then she has another son who's Louis the 17th and he also died
when he was young he died when he was about 10 and she had another daughter who was born in 1786 who died after a
year so two of her boys live into childhood one infant dies and then her
first daughter does live for a long time so a lot of babies die during this time the
French Revolution definitely had a part of this as well so it's in the Marie Antoinette movie it
was like wrong about the number of kids she had which is weird because it's like a difference of three and four and
the ending was also like oversimplified it but still like um one thing that the movie with Kirsten
Dunst I think does that like I didn't appreciate the first time I saw it's like Maria it was a really good mother she really wanted a youth her kids she
wanted to you know feed them herself and spend time with them usually in this
time like you just didn't do that so she really was a good mom so
before and during this time it was like 10 years we're just having kids here is a non-sequential list of interesting
[ __ ] that happened during this time so the current King was a grandfather to Louis XVI he has a mistress
named Madame Dewberry and there's an interesting tension between Madame DeBerry and Marie Antoinette Dewberry
was from a poor family she was a sex worker but the king liked her so much that he had her marry someone at court
so that she could be around wow which is ridiculous her husband was like you need
to be nicer to the king so that we can have more stuff so it was definitely like she would be with the King and then the husband yeah all the things So
eventually she was presented at court as a king's mistress and the first time
they tried to present her she was so nervous she broke her ankle running away but eventually she lived in apartments
with a secret tunnel to the King which happens a lot in Versailles there's like secret tunnels to different people's
apartments different people's rooms so she's living in apartments with tunnels to the king she ends up living a really
fancy life she's friends with Voltaire she's sort of just like at court having a blast and
Marie Antoinette when she gets there she's like I don't want to talk to her like she's like a harlot she's not
someone that I want to associate with right and the king is like you you have to talk to her she's my girlfriend and
it's like creating a lot of tension in the palace So eventually on New Year's Day 1772 Marie Antoinette goes up to
Madame Dewberry and says there are many people at Versailles today and then walks away but that was enough to make
her happy right so she wouldn't be like as exiled so the king he dies in 1774. he died of
smallpox he didn't think he had smallpox because he thought he had it when he was young so they thought that like he was
immune to it and then also later like Louis XVI gets inoculated to small box they're doing that now and he gets like
the vaccine quote but the king is like gosh if I didn't know any better I think I had smallpox
but like no one tells him he has smallpox because they're like embarrassed because he thought that he
had he was a kid and he eventually dies of that and Marie Antoinette becomes the king of France and Louis becomes Louis
XVI the king of France yeah so you just said Marie Antoinette Marie
becomes the queen of France okay yep got it got it yeah so King Louie has some metals and metal
some ants um in the movie they're like it's Molly Shannon and then another lady who played
um Moaning Myrtle in Harry Potter and they're just like one was gossiping and you know tons of tons of Gossip they're
cute but they um one of the ants dies having her tenth child and they described it as like there was just
blood everywhere which is wow gross and terrifying so politically and socially
France is falling apart so you might remember there's been this is a revolutionary time France gives Aid to
the Americans people are starting to say things like maybe we should share the wealth the way the king spent money is
crazy like Marie Antoinette had a coffer of money that was like her allowance but she overspent it constantly and it was
like you know having like a million dollars a month it's like when you see these celebrities get divorced and the
um alimony is like 600 000 a month and you're like it's crazy what yeah I just
did that I think yeah that's that's bananas you shouldn't that much but that's how much money she
is she's spending just so much money there's also a weird thing which or a surprise surprise rich people are not
taxed so that makes poor people really mad because it should
um the French people are starving so they're in 1775 there's a flower War
flower like f-l-o-u-r war and people like they can't
price of bread is going up they are just like literally Starving in the streets this is where they say
that she said let them eat cake and the idea of being like them being like you know your majesty
the people of France of France are starving they don't have any bread and she looked around and her room is like full of cakes and she's like well let
them have cake you know okay I was gonna say I heard there's a
little rumor yeah she didn't really say that but that's the idea that she's like so just drowning in food you know while people
are starving and like doesn't really understand so people are starving and pissed um also just as an aside she's very
Catholic and she's still going to mass all the time so she's really like stays really religious her family from her brother's a Holy
Roman Emperor they're in Austria they are trying to keep their power and grow their power so there's some people that
are like kind of scheming to have Marie Antoinette have
more of a political leaning kind of like Catherine the Great but she just doesn't have that like bone in her body
um this entire time there is a man named constant mercy and he has been by Marie
Antoinette's side the whole time he came from Austria he whispers things to her she confides in him and he is in
constant contact with her mother and so sometimes she'll like tell him a secret and he'll tell her mom so there's this
person who always has Austria on his you know on his brain trying to do stuff for Maria Therese and
she just trusts people because she doesn't understand these political deals and this thing that she's a part of like she doesn't understand what's going on
in Europe she doesn't really like just she doesn't really think about it you know right it's just kind of being used
by a lot of people her brother Emperor Joseph II is the Holy Roman Emperor he's very involved in like her and Louis not
having sex he's like you have to do this you have to have a baby and um he needs to do things for Austria
there's a war of Austrian secession in this time but he visits Marie Antoinette everside she's always really happy to
see him so he's like The Sibling that she's like again after this I don't think she sees maybe any of her others
um she also has a couple girlfriends like her ladies in waiting so there's the princess Dylan ball who's her best
lady in waiting um there she's always around they're partying together they're gambling they're going to Paris they're creating
their plays and musicals they're like always together she also has a friend named The Duchess of polyak and so she's
a little bit sassier people don't really love her being with um being with her but she's like no she's so fun I'd like love to be around
her so she's one of her favorite friends as well so she has these friends she has her
family kind of meddling in her business she does really really love her kids I think I
said this before I jumped my gun but she wants to be with her kids more a lot of
the tradition in this time was like you'd have a child and you kind of like give it to tutors until it was like 10
you know and then you would like take it and get to know it but she really wanted to be with them she also adopted some
kids to be with her kids adopted in air quotes as well basically
a hundred percent she had like a poor girl follow her her daughter around and they would do all the same things they would like wear the same clothes and
learn the same things to keep her humble which is weird um she also had an enslaved child named
John emilkar and she really he was from Senegal and she
sent him to boarding school and paid for him to go to boarding school until when she died then they couldn't pay for that
anymore and he ended up like on the streets and he became an artist and he died pretty young but so she had like a bunch of kids around
um her daughter did not like her she's like a very very haughty and like not very nice to her so
there's like a story where someone was like oh your mother like she's you know could be
um something could happen and she could die and my daughter was like I wouldn't care you know and they were like what do
you know what death is and she's like yeah it means you don't see them again I wouldn't care my dad loves me more than my mom so even though
yeah I think that she you know really I truly believe she wanted to be a good mother um so but her daughter was kind of a
brat so her first son he died when he was like five or he was eight but when
he was eight he weighed 16 pounds which is huge no big oh when he was eight
years old yes yeah
my eight-year-old was 50 pounds and she's small you know like he was super sick like super wasting away and he
passed away when he was young so she's you know she has another son who who's going to be her son for who's gonna be
around until he's 10 but he does like later so she's still spending money at one point this is fun ambassadors from
India come to visit and so they never really seen like they've never seen people dressed like this that people of
Versailles have never like smelled Indian food cooking before and like no
one will try it they're scared we're just like makes sense and fun yeah and so she really really like loves
the way these ambassadors from India look and so she has Madame Tussaud like of the wax
museum make um like Wax mannequins of them so she can keep that Versailles and always see them
pretty cool like the real Madame Tussaud is in the story yeah she was that old
yeah um so it seems like everything was pretty
hectic she gets at one point I mean people in France are starving and Louis buys a chateau for her which is like you
know a bigger house than like you've ever seen so she can like go somewhere and be calm and get away from Versailles with her kids
she also on the grounds of Versailles makes a fake French Village in 1777.
it's part of the garden yeah they built houses and had Farms they were real gardeners real animals
she would wear simple dresses and kind of like walk around her little town there's like defense that she wasn't
like pretending to be poor but she was like trying to have like the Simplicity of it I don't know and like
it definitely wasn't real like there was a barn but inside the barn it was a ballroom you know and she
would like be like oh let's get some goats let's have them all be brown with one dot you know she could like pick
things that like a farmer can't pick you know what I mean I thought the reason why she did that was because that was her only way to try and experience what
normal life was like I don't know if she was trying to like experience a life of a normal person
I think she's trying to simplify her life but maybe that's the same thing yeah maybe
I don't know so spent a lot of time there I now have a side quest for us
this is one of my favorite Side Stories did you say boo to a side quest no I
said ooh let's see oh okay so
okay perfect so I'm gonna tell you about the time skip of the Moberly Jordan incident have you
ever heard of this probably not uh it sounds like a haunting but I doubt it is
kind of so on August 10 1901 two British teachers Charlotte Ann Moberly and
Eleanor jourdain went to Versailles they were living in they were British school
teachers one of them was living in Paris and they were like you guys should get to know each other because you're going to work together so she went to visit
they went to Versailles itself and it was they were like like you said like
yeah yeah we get it it's pretty they didn't love it and they decided to go to another building but it was closed so
they're kind of wandering around The Gardens of Versailles and then one of them said quote everything suddenly
looked unnatural therefore unpleasant even the trees seemed to become flat and lifeless like Woodworks in a tapestry
there were no effects of light and shade and no wind stirred the trees so they're walking and things are like kind of
feeling weird then they see a little cottage and a woman is in the window waving a handkerchief at them they see two men
dressed like really really nicely and they told them to like oh continue on walk down this
path they ended up in a part of a garden and there was a bench and on the bench was a man and he had like a face that was
pockmarked from smallpox and he looked at them and they felt like crazy Terror like he was evil and then
they kept walking past him and they walked over a bridge and there was another man with another fancy hat and he showed them away to the house they
were looking for on their way over the bridge one of them saw a woman with like big blonde hair and a white
dress sketching in the garden so when they got back
but I kind of talked about it like that was weird you know like what was all that what did we see and they went back
to Versailles again and they couldn't find the bench and they couldn't find the bridge so they
they wrote a book about it called an adventure and they published it like under pseudonyms but they said that like
they saw ghosts like that was Marie Antoinette and that was like people from the 16 the 18th century like being there
and so obviously people like critique them and thinks that they're lying or they accidentally walk into a costume party or something but I think it's fun
to think that maybe they like accidentally walked into Mariano like in her little village um one of the critiques called it a a
lesbian foliado which made me laugh because like
I don't even know who knows if they're lesbians but a lesbianfolio is hilarious two women do together that
was like where the lesbians they're too expensors living together so
maybe they were you know like they were roommates that means they were lesbians but either way that's not the point the point is that it's funny to call people
that it could have been a fancy dress party but anyway I hope it's true that'll be fun they'll be really cool
yeah I love it anyway so that's that time skip so
the French people are getting mad they're seeing all this money that she's spending there's an affair with a
diamond necklace where there's this really really expensive necklace that has like 600 diamonds on it it's like
more expensive than anything ever Madame Dewberry had wanted it at one point but someone dressed like a fancy person
goes to these Jewelers and says Marie Antoinette wants this necklace but it has to be a secret so she could pay you
in installments but she definitely wants it but don't tell anyone because everyone's mad and then that woman also gets a cardinal
from the church whom Marie Antoinette does not like to help her with that so the woman is like cardinal let's go meet
the queen in the garden he meets this woman who says she's Marie Antoinette mangarden and says please get
this necklace for me I promise I'll like help I'll pay for it but it's not her it's all like a scam and so I don't know
what anybody looks like really yeah and it's like dark and like whatever it could have been anyone you
know so everyone loses money the Jewelers are like what do we do like we have to be paid for this you know and they like go to the queen and she's like
I don't know what you're talking about and there's a trial and she's really mad because she's like going to ruin my reputation and it totally does people
like think that she did the same to like try to discredit this Cardinal and all these things it's not good
it was interesting so sentiment is bad because of that
because of the village because of the Chateau because of all these things another thing that's happening is she does have an affair with a Swedish
um dude or dude but he's like a military guy named Axel Von ferson the younger
AKA found person count ferson so I'm calling person he had been to America from to help in the Revolutionary War in
1774 he went to Versailles and at a party he and Maria Antoinette talked for a while he didn't know who she was so
that's like he was like this woman's great and like they just like he didn't realize that she was the queen and he
came back four years later and and she saw him and she said oh you're an old friend like she remembered meeting him you know
because he was cute and like he made her feel sexy and he would be in and out of her life forever for the rest of her
life some people think that her last two kids are actually ferson's kids and not Louis XVI some people are like oh yeah
some people are like oh they're just really good friends which is so stupid because like who cares like it's been 300 years you
know so but um like he had rooms below hers that
were connected so tons of tunnels connecting him to her in the 1800s his family had a bunch of his letters and he
sold them but they were heavily edited like people had crossed out like big paragraphs of them which you don't do as
not a love letter you know right and um he tried to save her a few times there's
Letters From First into his sister that are like ugh I just love this woman so much I don't know what to do he also was
like a real Pro monarchy guy he thought that like kings were appointed by gods just like being around her was like
magical for him as well you know yeah um the king knew or
whatever but I don't but he you know I don't think he like particularly like cared
too much he just was like content to like do his do his own thing and he was also
sleeping with other people no he wasn't but he just wasn't into it
okay yeah it wasn't to it yeah I think he was asexual you know he just like it just
was it wasn't his Jam which is fine he didn't so he was like okay I know my wife needs needs this so
After the Revolution people found his rooms under his bed and they were like under her under her bed under her her
rooms like the secrets and stuff and they were like oh interesting you know it was very clear that they were like he
was sneaking around um other things that happened Lafayette is there so uh Lafayette who was you know
the French guy who came to America to help George Washington he goes back to help with the French Revolution but he wants to compromise he's like you know
the the friend France is like we want to totally abolish the monarchy Lafayette is like we think we can make compromise
have a constitutional monarchy like Britain like let's try to figure this out in 1789 in July the best deal is
stormed so yeah yeah a lot of that but there's like a ton of um unrest a ton of riots this
is an Insurrection they storm the best deal which is a jail in Paris and they let everybody out so this is like the
regular folks who are who are having the revolution from the Bastille and in that like they're killing people and putting
their heads on sticks so it's like a very brutal day um in October 1789 they come in a storm
Versailles so this sounds like very very scary like so it's the middle of the night and they do this in in the film I
think well because you have a feeling it's the middle of the night she doesn't know who her kids are she doesn't know where Louie is because everyone's in separate bedrooms there's all these
corridors there's all these secret passages and people are starting like running up to Versailles they even have
a hard time closing the doors because the Versailles had never been closed people would just
kind of welcome to come in and out you know so they like try to lock the doors it's chaos
everyone's crying Lafayette comes and tries to help them but they get end up getting taken to Paris so but while
they're still at Versailles kind of the last time that she's there the the crowd yells they want to see the queen because
she goes out in the balcony with her children and they say no children we just want to see you so she sends the
kids back in and she does a bow to them and a couple people are like bring her to Paris and look at some people are
like long live the queen because they kind of like that like bow that she did to them but bringing the Bears killer
though yes but not for a few years since she's
essentially under arrest for um treason and conspiracy and for
spending all of the country's money spent a lot of money she contributed
yes so they have a few chances to escape but they like
don't they don't want to leave France that would be seen as like terrible nobody trusts her because of her Austria
connection so I don't know how much she actually knew that she was like passing information to Austria but she was constantly doing that because the people
around her were like kind of betraying her and sent telling stuff to other countries in Europe
they have a plot to escape where they um at one point they like dress like
their peasants and get into a carriage and they ride for a couple days under the countryside and then they eventually get caught and have to go back but
before they left Louis XVI wrote a letter on his desk that was on his desk that said like [ __ ] you I never would
have compromised with you I hate you all or something really hilarious um and then when he got caught and brought back he was like I didn't mean
that letter which is so funny
um this whole time person is like helping her trying to help her um get out of it um he thinks that she dies a
couple times she sends them a letter that just says I exist and I love you you know just trying to do it they try to skip a couple times
definitely they're prisoners they have to um you know things are starting to change
like she does have obviously she has her ladies and waiting there with her Louie's sister is there with them so they're not alone yet but things are
like drastically different so at one point Marie Antoinette is in like her room in this prison which is probably like more beautiful than any room I'd
ever be in but one of the guards is talking to her and he kind of gets tired and he sits on the edge of her bed to talk to her and she's just like what is
happening you know that's just something that would be like you would get your head cut off for doing that ever Psy so it's just things are starting to change
it goes on for years and the people taunt her whenever she's out like they like bring her from building the building to like question her people
will like run past the carriage with like little tiny Guillotines and like wave them in the air at her
this is dork dark the king won't succeed
um secede they're like he's like no I can't like he can't do it he had opportunity issue he could have saved his family but he like didn't because he
wanted to save the monarchy so while they're still living together as a family in this prison Madame lumbal
which is her first lady in waiting she was like Marie Antoinette's best friend is taken in guillotined so here's what
they do to her they take her head and they put it on a stick and they bring it to the jail to show Marie Antoinette the
head of her friend so some people say that insane so that they say they heard a
scream from the window but it was actually the jailer's wife and Marie Antoinette never actually saw the head some say that the head had like her her
hair was just like matted and covered in blood and you couldn't really tell it was her so there's a rumor that they took the head to a hairdresser and had
her hair fixed so that Marie Antoinette could know could recognize her somehow that's even more of a task
no it's gross and then her body they ripped off all of her clothes left her
naked body on the street and ripped her heart out Jesus like Jesus okay so like when we talk about
like people in like the ancient past being brutal like this was not too long ago
yeah it did this to her so other people that were they were with died um other
people who were guillotined Madame Dewberry was the the past King's mistress the contest denoi was she was
the one that was the band of etiquette um reachment sister-in-law Elizabeth de
France she was guillotine as well so a lot of people are dying they get sent to a dungeon there's no
servants she wants to be with her children she tries to teach some things um eventually the king knows that it's
over so you know lots of reasons where they get to it but the king is going to be going to be killed obviously robes
Pierre is there he's the guy who like loves the guillotine and was like responsible for tons of beheadings and
he spends the king spends an evening with his family he says he'll come back in the morning but he doesn't he changes
his mind because someone tells him it'd be too hard for him to go back and see them again so he doesn't he leaves her a ring and he has a lock of her hair and
by 10 a.m on September 21st 1792 he is killed by guillotine yeah when she heard
the when Marie Antoinette from jail Heard the Bells announcing that he had been killed she bowed to her son who was
technically the new king but um he was never officially King it's like you don't want that roll
now son yeah I think things are bad
so then they took her kids which is so sad because she really loves her kids like I just she like they would take her
son and she could hear him but she couldn't see him so she would spend all day trying to like peek to the bars of
her prison just to like see her son she just like missed him so much um her daughter was eventually sent away
after all the deaths and she was exiled in the back and then exiled again like I said she lived to be like 60. but
this son for [ __ ] sake is what I wrote so this second son of hers the one who was Louis technically Louis the 17th of
France but he was never actually um King he was 10 years old when they're in this prison
and his he gets this tutor who's this like they call them an alcoholic cobbler
which is not the kind of person you want to be teaching your child and he sort of
hold the the boy to like say bad things about
his mom so he wanted to say like he said he was like say horrible things about your mother and I guess the jailers
caught the boy like touching himself because he's like a 10 year old boy and they
made him say and like made him believe essentially that his mom and his aunt
would like watch him masturbate and like lay in bed with him when he did that which is not true so Marie Antoine was
like that's not true like you can make a kid say anything you know and they were like telling him these terrible things about his mother but they made they kind
of spread that rumor which also made one of her um charges incest jeez
and yeah and so maybe he believed that it happened but like he was a kid and like they asked his sister did it happen
and she was like it absolutely didn't happen but then she also like is
part of this like real world so she's like if my brother said it happened maybe it did because he it was more than
me because he's a boy you know like stuff like that like so I was like believe believe children of course but
also they made him do this and also like in a situation where
the entire country and now everybody in power is saying that like you and your
family are the bad ones you're gonna align yourself with power right
yeah exactly so in her last letter um she did she forgave her son she was
like they can he's just a child you know she loved him so much um now she's alone in a dungeon for a
while um she has a girl named Rosalie who is her like only servant she doesn't
servant she reads books she prays she cries she doesn't eat she loses like a bunch of weight she
um is 37 but they say that she looks like she's like 60. you know her hair turns Gray she's kind of wasting away in
there um count ferson tries to help her but he can't he just cannot help her um there's a thing that happens where
She's accused of sending messages via flower petal that she was writing like messages in a flower to someone else
it's called the Carnation Affair so she was like being you know told about other things or kind of accused other things
in the in the interim So eventually the three big things that Marie Antoinette
is tried on are conspiring with foreign powers the the depletion of the State
Treasury and of committing high treason by acting against the security of the French state so she was kind of kind of
incest but not really she said I'm a mom I would never do that and then all the women who happen to be there were like
oh my God totally so they threw it out because it actually got her some sympathy because she was like look what they're trying to do to my son you know
right trying to do that um she might have Commit she might have actually committed treason so like one
book says that she did it's kind of complicated so like she was they were trying to save their version of France
so they were like trying to get help from foreign powers to save the monarchy so that's treason against the revolution
technically you know you would expect them to do because if
they're not successful to get beheaded yes exactly so she had no no chance in
this so on October 17th 1793 she's convicted and sentenced to death she writes a
letter to her sister-in-law who isn't dead yet asked for forgiveness she's wearing a simple white dress and a bonnet when they come to get her they
cut off her hair all the way to the neck so they cut her hair really short which makes sense because I feel like hair will get in the way of guilloting
someone and be gross so they cut her hair they put the Bonnet back on and they take her to the scaffolds where
this is gonna happen the Executioner his name is Charles Avery Sanson he's someone who is an
executioner I think he also guillotined the king and on the way up the steps she
accidentally steps on his foot and she looks at him and she says pardon me sir I didn't mean to and those are her last
words well she was taken to the scaffold at 12 15 she was
beheaded but held up her head and yelled long live the republic she was buried in a poor section of
Paris but before she was buried be people who worked at the at the um
Cemetery were on lunch break and badam to sew snuck in and took her death mask
so we do technically know what she looked like because we have the death mask of Marie Antoinette The Madame
tussa herself made it's super cool I know you asked me
about this is what she really looked like so if you compare the death mask to the paintings there's a little bit of
obviously stylization in the paintings with her nose a little more like hooked than it is in the paintings but it's
pretty close and there's a website called royalty now that takes like death masks and paintings and descriptions
into account and tries to say like what people really did look like um so I think the I think that the
paintings are pretty close yeah I would say so looking at the depth mask
yeah um after the the revolution Louie's brother becomes king and he moves her
body which is just bones and a little bit of hair and clothes to to The Basilica Cathedral of Saint Dennis and
Saint Denis I'm sure Saint Denis St Denis France and it is 18 miles from
Versailles and that's where she is buried today with Louise so is she a tragic figure or
I think she's tragic and that she was just a little girl put into a she didn't know any better you know and then you
can say like sure she should have known better but also everyone's telling you that you're super special everyone is confiding you with things everyone's
kind of keeping her in a I don't know they're kind of keeping her
in a Perpetual state of like do this oh just oh you just eat you just drink you
just have fun you just do these things no big deal without kind of scheming around her to do other things and things are happening that she doesn't
understand and she doesn't take interest in them so like that's her fault she
could have taken more interest in them but also like you know what you know yeah
you feel like super dialed in I think to even know what's pay attention yeah
yeah you have to be Catherine the Great and she wasn't Catherine the Great but like no one is so yeah yeah
I've always uh kind of looked at it as a kind of like a probably an unfair telling it is a story of excess that it
is nice to look at and say oh well the rich ones are the shitty evil horrible people and that's true in a lot of cases
but there's people who are kind of born into things and circumstances and they're no more at fault for their
ignorance than someone who was born into poverty is for their property yeah
yeah I agree she's not she's not that that's a meat cake villain for sure exactly exactly yeah
awesome yeah let's uh that was a really well researched well done episode and I'm
gonna also call out of the Marines Antoinette piece of it so they're again that other show that I always harp on um
you're wrong about also did like a three-part series on Marie Antoinette as well and that's outside of this episode
that's the only other place I've like learned about her in her history um so that's also a good good listen too
for more historical context in case spokes yeah
totally and the books I read are actually great like the Marie Antoinette the journey by Antonio Frazier is so
good it's like I minute by minute you're you're terrified when she's in the jail you
know she's gonna die the next day and you're so sad for her and you're so worried and like all these things so it
really is it really is great um would you link to that and I have a
would you go by um guillotine I actually think yes it sounds it sounds
kind of nice because it happens so fast I think much rather Guillotine than like a dude with
an ax like you know you don't you don't see it right because you're head down
yeah your head's out I think both cases your head's down but your head's down and it happens like in half a second and your head falls
into the basket you know but like the ax guy can like [ __ ] up and like it's
cut your shoulder or like maybe it takes six times you know what I mean if you get a bad ax guy so I think I think a
guillotine I mean that's what it was made for right to like speed up that process right
here ended up being guillotined himself good I'm not sad this is the guy who
yeah Maximilian Robespierre the man who loved being guillotined
oh he doesn't love people yeah there you go yeah he loved Guillotines I think he I
think he gets canteen anyway he's someone we could talk about later at length as well because he is crazy
yes yes the French luckily has a rich history of crazy crazy people
um well Taylor thanks for thanks for sharing do we have any listener mail
um no I have a couple people have reached out and said they've been listening which is super fun and
I sent some stuff about our email list so hopefully people can join that you
know if you don't get the push notifications if you just want to like know what we're up to and kind of pick what you what your what you're um
listening to um you can do that and that's all going to be in the show notes and on our website and everything so yeah please
continue to listen give us ideas we love them and thank you so much right doom
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gmail.com sweet awesome thanks everyone thanks Taylor have a safe trip to San Diego
oh thank you [Music]