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Sketch of Marie Antoinette on her way to the guillotine, by Jacques-Louis David

On October 16, 1793, Marie-Antoinette, Queen of France was guillotined in the Place de la Revolution before thousands of people. Her husband had died a similar death a few months before; her children had been taken from her, and her eight-year-old son tormented into accusing his own mother of incest. She had undergone a grueling trial in which she defended herself with panache. In her mind was the memory of how her friend Princesse de Lamballe had been torn to pieces by a mob. When she saw the garbage cart, she thought a similar fate might be hers.

—Elena Maria Vidal October 15th, 2006; Eve of the anniversary of the death of Marie-Antoinette

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I have been trying to ignore the Sofia Coppola film since I think it has nothing to do with the real Marie-Antoinette; it is a fantasy about "teenagers at Versailles," as Miss Coppola herself has reportedly said. It is a work of art, not a historical piece, and whether it succeeds as art is not within my competency to judge.

Whether I like it or not has nothing to do with the film's artistic merits, but is my own opinion, which I am at liberty (or not) to express. I have not yet even decided if I want to see the movie when it debuts here, since I find historical liberties to be annoying, especially when taken with people such as Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, who have already been egregiously misrepresented.

However, I have seen the cover of Vogue and the magnificent Annie Liebovitz photos, better than any of the stills from the movie. I was glad to see that they have done something to give Kirsten some cleavage. Miss Dunst is not very ample, which works well for the early part of the film, since Marie-Antoinette looked like she was twelve when she arrived at Versailles, a bride of fourteen. However, as she matured she became increasingly buxom and acquired a voluptuous hour-glass figure.  Miss Dunst is a lovely young lady but she has the wrong body type to be Marie-Antoinette. Scarlett Johansson would have been better.

The hair is all wrong. The queen's fair hair was fine and frizzy with auburn glints. And Marie-Antoinette was not one to wear wigs. Even when her hair began to thin from childbirth and miscarriages, she wore her hair short and teased rather than wear wigs. The towering poufs that she wore in the 1770's were achieved with her own hair, embellished with hair extensions, wire, powder and plumes. For more detail on Marie-Antoinette's clothes and hairstyles I recommend Carrie Weber's new best-selling book Queen of Fashion.

Copyright © 2006, Columbia Pictures

The biographical information is regurgitated from Antonia Fraser and Stefan Zweig, but the descriptions of the clothes are fascinating. Also, Dr. Weber surmises that Marie-Antoinette's perceived frivolity in becoming a fashion plate early in her husband's reign was not mere thoughtless extravagance but a means of consolidating power. The queen dressed stylishly as only the mistresses of previous kings had done, not like the former dowdy, devout queens, in order to show the world that she was her husband's mistress as well as his wife. And in the French court, a mistress traditionally wielded more influence with the king than did his queen. Displaying herself as her husband's mistress was also intended to quell the rumors about the problems the young couple were said to be having in consummating their marriage.

So here we come to another rehashed error that is promulgated by the Coppola film and the Vogue article, that Louis XVI was sexually indifferent and refused to consummate his marriage for seven years. In the beginning of the marriage, as I said above, Marie-Antoinette looked as if she were twelve. Louis should be praised for not wanting to rush upon a child.

Furthermore, Louis belonged to the political clique at Versailles that had been against the Austrian alliance. Austria was the traditional enemy of France, and had leveled a humiliating defeat upon the Bourbons in the Seven Years War. The defeat was blamed upon the mistress of Louis XV, Madame de Pompadour, who had also been behind arranging the marriage with the Habsburg Archduchess Antonia. Louis' aunt and godmother, the feisty old maid Madame Adelaide, daughter of Louis XV, never let him forget that his bride was not only an enemy of France, but that she had been brought over by a courtesan, Madame de Pompadour, who also had auburn hair and was named "Antoinette."

With visions in his mind of the notorious Pompadour, who had led both his grandfather and his country astray, Louis approached his Austrian bride with caution and reserve. (See Vincent Cronin's Louis and Antoinette.)

Copyright © 2006, Columbia Pictures

As for consummating the marriage, author Simone Bertiere in her superb biography L'Insoumise, maintains that Marie-Antoinette had a "narrowness of passage" which made consummating the marriage difficult and painful. (L'Insoumise is a biography which I hope is soon translated into English.) I personally find the queen's relationship with her husband to be very intriguing, especially how it developed from the shy, hesitant affection of two adolescents to the devotion of a married couple who courageously faced tragedy together.

There is always the myth of the Fersen affair which continually is added to books and films to give Marie-Antoinette's life that spark of romance, as if she would not be interesting enough for herself. The Coppola film has a sexual sequence of the queen entertaining her lover which one of my European friends told me reminded her of a brothel scene. How very degrading to a woman who had a reputation for purity within her circle of close friends!

Many historians (Seward, Webster, Bertiere, Chalon, Delorme, Belloc) not only doubt that the queen ever slept with the handsome, brooding Count Axel von Fersen, who was a representative of Louis and Antoinette's ally the King of Sweden, but there is scant evidence that she was even in love with him. If one over-analyzes the few remaining lines of correspondence that exist, in which she addresses the count in a gushing and loving manner, one must keep in mind that she wrote in a similar florid fashion to all of her friends and family.

In an age of expressive and poetic letter-writing, Marie-Antoinette's style was excessively emotional and sentimental, always covering everyone with kisses and expressing the pain she felt at separation from those she loved. Count Fersen was a loyal friend of Louis XVI as much as he was a friend of the queen's. He risked his life to save the royal family, an attempt that failed, and he spent the rest of his life, until his grisly murder in Stockholm in 1810, spreading the legend of himself as the queen's lover. (See Kermina's biography.)

The myth of the Swedish lover is among many tired clichés and total falsehoods about Marie-Antoinette that will only be driven deeper into the public consciousness by both the Vogue article and the Coppola film. Another error is that the Duc d'Angouleme, who later married Louis XVI's and Marie-Antoinette's daughter, is portrayed as the son of the king's brother the Comte de Provence, later Louis XVIII. No, Angouleme was the son of the handsome playboy brother, the Comte d'Artois (Charles X). Provence and his wife were unable to have children, which made their plotting against Louis and Antoinette all the more intense. But at least the Vogue article describes the death of the queen and the dignity and courage she displayed until the end.

The Coppola film ends when the Revolution begins, at the moment when as Marie-Antoinette came into her own as the daughter of a great empress and as a queen who would not forsake her husband or her duty, even when to do so cost her her life. The new generation of movie goers will be deprived of such an inspiration that would be so powerful on screen. Antoinette's Christian fortitude is ignored and her personal tragedy is trivialized amid a movie of froth. Without the spiritual depths, the depiction is shallow and incomplete. I do not begrudge people their enjoyment of an art film about decadent adolescents romping at Versailles, surrounded by pastries and champagne, but the real Marie-Antoinette seems to be missing.

—Elena Maria Vidal September 24, 2006; Feast of Our Lady of Mercy

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Some biographers, in seeking to change public opinion about Marie-Antoinette, attempt to redeem her at the expense of her husband, King Louis XVI. Louis-Auguste is portrayed as a repressed, impotent, dull-witted, indifferent husband, who drove his wife to gambling, dancing and spending exorbitant amounts of money as an outlet for her thwarted impulses. Stefan Zweig, a disciple of Sigmund Freud, was one of the first to impart to the public the image of the sexually frustrated teenage princess, which successive authors continue to promote to this day.

The drawback of the Freudian theory is that is that is does not explain why others at the French court, who were enjoying unmitigated pleasures of the flesh, were spending much more money than eighteen year old Marie-Antoinette. In vindicating Marie-Antoinette, still falsely perceived as the queen who took lovers and danced while the people starved, it is necessary to gain a true perspective of her spouse, beyond the archetype of the fat, indolent husband spoiling a wife he could not satisfy. One must look behind the myths, deliberately propagated and perpetuated in order to sell books and movies about alleged extramarital love affairs, as well as to justify the excesses of the French Revolution. The reality about this tragic royal couple may not be as sensational as some biographies tell it, but it is as exciting, heart-rending and beautiful as any make-believe romance.

Louis XVI is systematically shown as being ugly, obese, smelly, and stupid. By contemporary standards, however, he was considered handsome, with his aquiline nose, deep set blue-grey eyes, and full sensual mouth. As a youth he was tall and thin, the tallest man at Court, and enjoyed intense physical exercise, such as hunting and hammering at his forge (he was a locksmith by hobby.) His physical strength was legendary; he could lift a shovel to shoulder height with a young boy standing on the end of it. Possessing the hardy Bourbon appetite, he developed a paunch as he approached his thirties. He was awkward and shy in his manner although not without royal dignity in his bearing. The efforts of his detractors to make him unattractive and therefore unlovable serves the purpose of giving his wife an "excuse" for chronic infidelity, another highly-popularized myth.

Likewise, Louis is presented as being dirty and malodorous. Granted that he was an active man, not a powdered and pampered courtier, and working with metal was not clean work; neither was his daily riding and hunting, as anyone who has ever been around horses will agree. However, he had two tubs which he made use of regularly, one for washing and one for rinsing.

As for his intellect, all one has to do is read anything he wrote to see that Louis XVI was an intelligent man. He could read and speak several foreign languages, knew Latin as well as his native tongue, was a skilled amateur cartographer, enjoyed the tragedies of Shakespeare as well as of the great French dramatists Corneille and Racine. He was fascinated with scientific inventions, which he encouraged, and with geography, outfitting a sea voyage of discovery in the Pacific ocean. He would read his mail as his ministers delivered their reports, without missing a word of what his ministers said. He subscribed to several international newspapers, as a means of keeping informed of events and of the opinions of others.

Louis XVI is always portrayed as politically inept and indifferent, and yet he built up the French navy and army so that Great Britain was defeated in the war for American independence. The ships and soldiers outfitted by King Louis were later used by Napoleon Bonaparte to conquer Europe. During the Revolution, he tried to avoid bloodshed at all costs and would not escape because he did not want to abandon his people to the fanatic minority which had seized power. His calm in the face of the calamities is usually interpreted as phlegmatic indifference, but by remaining composed, he was often able to regain control of situations where the mob was thirsting for blood.

Louis was a dedicated Roman Catholic, keeping track of his regular Confession and Communion days in his journal. After the French revolutionary government seized control of the Church. he refused to receive Communion from a priest not in union with Rome. He also vetoed the law forcing priests to be deported for not denying the papal supremacy, even though it brought the angry populace upon the palace in June 1792. As Simon Schama points out in his book Citizens, Louis XVI was more and more torn between his duties as father of his people and father of his family. He tried early in the Revolution to try to persuade the queen to escape with their children, but she refused to leave his side, much to her credit.

Since so many books have speculated about the details of Louis' intimate relations with his wife, I did not touch upon it in my novel, wanting to respect the sacred privacy which should exist between spouses. Let it be made clear, however, that Louis was not impotent, nor did he have any physical defects which would have prevented him from consummating his marriage, according to his medical records and affirmed by scholars Bernard Fay, Vincent Cronin, and Simone Bertieres.

Since his bride was fourteen years old but looked as if she were twelve, I think it speaks well for Louis that he did not rush to deflower a child. He waited for her to mature and their first child was born when Antoinette was 22, the first of four, including a few miscarriages. Louis XVI was a devoted husband and father, who mingled tears of joy and sorrow with his wife at the births and deaths of their children. Their marriage had problems just like any marriage, but they strove for it to work, and it did work. Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette were forged into a devoted couple who would be separated only by death.

—Elena Maria Vidal, July 25, 2006; Feast of St. James

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The French trailer of Sofia Coppola's "Marie-Antoinette" (2006) is now online. I would post a link to it except that I have come to the conclusion that the film really has nothing to do with Marie-Antoinette. Yes, they use her name; it is filmed at Versailles; there are eighteenth-century costumes and plenty of awful wigs.

Nevertheless, Kirsten Dunst with her Valley Girl accent, atrocious diction and bored, vapid expression could not even portray a courtesan like Madame du Barry, much less "la reine-martyr." The inner radiance is lacking, as well as the charm and the grace. It seems that the film is going to be a sort of vaudeville farce, a comic interpretation, relying on heavy-handed vulgarity, all dressed-up in silks and surrounded by chemical rose-pink.

One of the most tragic queens in European history, and the dramatic events that swirled around her, are debased and trivialized. One almost expects balloons to appear above the actors' heads with trite phrases such as "Madame, this is Versailles." It is looks like a bad remake of the 1938 version, with the same historical inaccuracies but without the redeeming talent of Norma Shearer. Not even Judy Davis can save such a debacle.

It is a waste and a shame. Marie-Antoinette deserves better than a two-hour MTV music video.

—Elena Maria Vidal, May 15, 2006; Mother's Day

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† In Hoc Signo Vincit †

The Cathars in the Middle Ages, the philosophes of the Enlightenment, the Nazis, the Communists and the radical feminists of our era, have all had their own version of gnosticism, the basis of which is the unreality, destruction and desecration of the human person.

The finding of this ancient manuscript of the "Gospel of Judas" proves that Dan Brown is not new or original, the attacks on the Church are not new or original. Such attempts to shake us make us love our Faith and Our dear Savior all the more.

—Elena Maria Vidal, May, 2006