The Wicked Queen

by Thomas, Chantal

The Wicked Queen is not a biography of one of the most infamous queens in all history. Rather, Chantal Thomas presents the history of the verbal and visual representations of Marie-Antoinette, a history of her mythification. Almost as soon as Marie-Antoinette, archduchess of Austria was brought to France in 1771 as the bride of Louis XVI, she was smothered in images. In a monarchy increasingly under assault, the charm and horror of her feminine body and her destructive political power as a foreign intruder turned Marie-Antoinette into an alien otherthe bestial "archtigress of Austria." Working as a historian and writing as a novelist, Thomas reveals how Marie-Antoinette came to symbolize the marginalization and negation of women in French society before the French Revolution.