Marie Antoinette/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Alternative Character Interpretation: The film portrays Marie Antoinette as a lonely and unhappy young woman, who immerses herself in food, clothes, and material possessions in order to distract herself from her problems.
  • Everybody Remembers the Stripper: Chances are that you remember the film for the famous scene, where Marie Antoinette is all naked on a couch aside from some stockings, holding a hand fan and covering her... tracts of land. There are posters for only that scene, even!
  • Tear Jerker: "Pardon me, monsieur; I did not do it on purpose." -- Her last words before being executed, after accidentally stepping on the foot of her executioner.
    • Even more so, she was publicly accused at her trial of personally masturbating her son, the Dauphin -- no more than 8 when he was taken from her by the Revolutionaries. As Carlyle tells it:

Scandalous Hébert has borne his testimony as to many things: as to one thing, concerning Marie-Antoinette and her little Son, -- wherewith Human Speech had better not further be soiled. She has answered Hébert; a Juryman begs to observe that she has not answered as to this. "I have not answered," she exclaims with noble emotion, "because Nature refuses to answer such a charge brought against a Mother, I appeal to all the Mothers that are here."

  • Vindicated by History: Many historians agree that, for all her faults, she was not the lustful wastrel her enemies painted her. She did have some extravagances, but not only were many of them exaggerated or made up, many of her genuine ones were actually expected for someone of her station.