Berly

Marie Antoinette Berly

Presses Universitaires de France and Fremeaux & Associates offer this biography of Marie-Antoinette by Cécile Berly, specialist of the eighteenth century and the French Revolution. An Austrian, Marie-Antoinette becomes Dauphine of France in a context that is unfavorable. The last queen of the Ancien Régime, she behaves like a favorite. She is powerful, scandalous and hated. Her taste for excess has also left her mark on a style and lifestyle that are her own and that have forged her reputation. But Marie Antoinette is also and above all, the queen of the Revolution. Cécile Berly proposes a new approach to Marie-Antoinette's journey, freed from the many presumptions of frivolity and treachery that have been associated with "the Austrian" for too long.