When Marie Antoinette, after a happy and relatively free royal family upbringing, left Austria to marry the dauphin Louis, she vowed to become completely French and, as a future queen, joint guardian of the interests of everything French. She was only fourteen. Despite the stultifying formality of the Versailles court and the gradual demonising of her when queen, culminating in trial and execution, she never betrayed that trust. This riveting account is both illuminating and heartbreaking.
(James Baker - bwl 10 August 2001 ) |
