A tale of two Queens-Part I

"If they don't have bread, let them eat cake"… This statement attributed to Marie Antoinette is apocryphal. She never did utter these words… The Austrian born, Queen of France, wasn't even aware of the state of affairs in France outside her luxurious, opulent royal palace at Versailles. All she probably cared for was her jewels, her dresses, her husband and her children…

France detested her… The Parisians, tired of the rising prices of bread and the apparent impoverishment of the once magnificent nation, called her L'autre chienne (the other bitch!), a pun on the word "L'Autrichienne (The Austrian)… There were stories on the extent of debauchery within the royal household… There were tales that called her a whore...and a drunken whore at that. Frankly, France had never taken a liking to this Austrian princess who had married into French royalty. The wedding, albeit, a political masterpiece that ended centuries of hostility between France and Austria, had failed to impress the masses…She remained too distant, too aloof for the masses to even attempt to like her…

France, for all that Marie cared, could rot in hell. She never did like the formal, aristocratic court culture in Versailles. She didn't like the continuous intrusions into her private life. She didn't like it that she was constantly told to behave like a Queen of France. She did not like the restrictions that were placed on her. And she did not like it that her own Husband would not indulge her… While France alleged that the Queen was barren, when she failed to produce a heir for several years after marriage, she knew that the fault lay with the King of France. Her personal life, probably had more in common with the life of her subjects outside Versailles- impoverished, unhappy and frustrating. What she couldn't find in her husband and the royal court, she found in jewels and dresses and later, in her own children.

France, in the meanwhile continued to smolder... Dissatisfaction gave way to full blown mutiny...Marie was shocked at the extent of disenchantment and discontentment with which the masses greeted her when the French Revolution broke out… Evicted from Versailles, the royal family lived under the vigilant eyes of revolutionary Parisians. The Austrian invasion against revolutionary France, coupled with the threat that Paris would be obliterated if any harm came to the royal couple did not endear the Queen to her captors. The revolutionaries came to regard L'autre chienne as the traitor of the worst order. Her life, they reasoned would imply death for revolutionary France...

And so, even though the revolution had already devoured her husband, the King, it proceeded to try the Queen. She was accused of being an Austrian spy, of having sold out the wealth of France to Austria, of having done disservice to her adopted nation and the most ridiculous of them all, of having indulged in incestuous relationship with her children. Marie, who had so far listened to the charges, with her head bowed low, with an acceptance of the fate that awaited her, now broke her silence. Trembling with rage, it was the mother and not the Queen who now addressed the court. She accused the revolutionaries of having dishonored her, of having taken her children away from her, of having reduced her to a wretched existence, of having made her a widow and probably having already murdered her children too. She looked at the common womenfolk who had assembled to watch the trial and asked them what her crime was. She demanded compassion, she demanded justice… She demanded liberty…

There was a collective gasp from the assembled womenfolk… The revolutionary court would not permit the revolution to be unravelled in its very own presence. The judgment was swift and crisp. Marie knew the outcome…She was to be guillotined.

A wooden cart used to transport criminals to the Guillotine awaited the former Queen of France. Her "revolutionary" captors thought this would befit a former Queen who had now been reduced to a citizen. She was marched through the streets of Paris. Among boos and jeers, she tried to maintain her dignity. She remained calm. She had hated behaving like the Queen of France all her life, but she was ready to greet death as nothing less than the Queen of France.

The Guillotine came down with a loud thud. Marie Antoinette never did get a chance to like France.