Ever since her death by guillotine in 1793, writers have been sticking their hands up inside Marie Antoinette’s bloody stump to use her pretty head as a puppet, shaping her one way or another. For a long time her depictions fell squarely in either the “devil” or “saint” camps, but since Lady Antonia Fraser’s sympathetic biography in 2001, the overwhelming tendency has been to portray the young queen as an innocent girl caught up in a gilded world and doomed by forces beyond her comprehension or control. And so it is in the glut of new Antoinette idolatries found in bookstores... More >>>