Was Marie Antoinette the cause of the French Revolution or its most famous victim?
She was certainly a rallying point for the mobs. She lived a decadent lifestyle, and you’ve seen the way people will attach themselves to a Princess (even a princess with the title of Queen). Look at the way people venerate Diana. She didn’t really have enough power to actually be responsible for the state of France. The people were VERY poor and the upper classes were VERY rich. The people didn’t have bread, and whether the flighty Marie ever actually told them to eat cake is immaterial. The people were in a position to believe that she said it. Not her fault that they were poor, but she both benefited from the class war and was ultimately undone by it. An interesting case study is the original novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses. The book was written in 1782, before the revolution. Neither the characters nor the author knew what was to come, the extermination of the entire class of people. It makes a dark book even darker to realize what would happen to even the survivors and relative goo
