Marie Antoinette has historically been associated with the privileges and excesses of the French Bourbon monarchy leading up to the French Revolution. While this interpretation is not entirely without basis, it also basically accepts the propaganda of the French Revolutionaries. Still, Marie Antoinette lived in such a different world, and in such different circumstances, that it is difficult to imagine anything that she would have to teach people today. Perhaps one thing she could teach or inspire in people is individual courage and dignity in the face of terrible adversity. Marie Antoinette's world collapsed around her during the French Revolution. She and her husband, King Louis XVI, were imprisoned and ultimately executed. During her ordeal, she faced ridicule and scorn from the people she would have seen as literally beneath her. Yet there is evidence that she faced these horrors with a dignity that she would have seen as befitting her station. She refused, for example, to dignify the scurrilous claims made about her at her trial, which included baseless and propagandistic charges of incest. She displayed what many French aristocrats called sangfroid, or calm composure, as she faced a gruesome death on the guillotine. She always refused to betray her family, particularly her husband, who preceded her in death. So whatever Marie Antoinette's many flaws, she could have a thing or two to teach modern public figures about dignity and courage in the face of adversity. Indeed, after being captured along with her husband as they tried to flee the country, she wrote in her journal that "tribulation first makes one realize what one is."
http://en.chateauversailles.fr/discover/history/great-characters/marie-antoinette
https://www.biography.com/royalty/marie-antoinette
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/marie-antoinette-134629573/
Thursday, April 11, 2019
What would Marie Antoinette want to teach or inspire others to do today?
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