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A review by takumo_n
Marie Antoinette: The Journey by Antonia Fraser
5.0
Marie Antoinette did not say "Let them eat cake" nor she was promiscuous or spent all the money in luxury more than anybody else in the royal court or her private society, nor she was illiterate or had ADHD. What she was was a smart woman who had her education delayed from her mother, the mighty Maria Teresa of Austria, not being her main concern, she was incredibly sympathetic to everyone in any social class making her understand the complaints of the common people, she had a remakable maternal instinct making her a better mother than most queens, she was a people pleaser surprising everybody who ended up knowing her, she never escaped from France when she had the opportunity when the result would be leaving her husband and/or children, she never had anything but love for France her brothers and sisters abroad, she had a great sense of duty so even though her husband couldn't perform for the first seven years of their marriage she waited and waited and tried to get involved in politics the last few years of her life even though she was never interested. For all these virtues she was the political tool of her mother and older brother (Joseph II emperor of Austria), and the scapegoat for the problems of France and the opportunists who wanted her death long before the revolution. She did nothing but suffer humiliations and torture for the last four years of her life, and even though this remakable book makes you care for everything that's happening Marie Antoinette is always in the background, until the last three chapters where you can't feel anything but empathy for this woman who had her destiny already set by France and disgust for this world knowing full well that when we talk about "politics" in the dinner table with the family or friends is nothing more than gossip and charitable reforms that we happened to believe in, knowing full well that to actually talk about politics we need to understand complex structural reasons from a anthropological, philosophical, historical and cultural perspective of the contemporary problems that haunt us every day, but God knows we haven't change. Anyway this book is incredible, please read it. Bye.
Her was an uncommon story but did not begin with an uncommon situation. Where she was exceptionally unlucky was to be shunted off to France in order the cement a Habsburg-Bourbon teatry, entered into after the Seven Years War, which reversed traditional alliances. Yet this treaty was purely one of convenience for the great ones involved; it carried with it neither the hearts not the minds of the French court. She was, after all, l'Autrichienne long before she appeared in France.
Her was an uncommon story but did not begin with an uncommon situation. Where she was exceptionally unlucky was to be shunted off to France in order the cement a Habsburg-Bourbon teatry, entered into after the Seven Years War, which reversed traditional alliances. Yet this treaty was purely one of convenience for the great ones involved; it carried with it neither the hearts not the minds of the French court. She was, after all, l'Autrichienne long before she appeared in France.