Database: Marie Antoinette

Marie Antoinette (1755-1793) was by many accounts the most hated woman in the kindgom. "Petty, frivolous, mocking", she more than made up for her matrimonial boredom with parties and lavish spending. "She's rushing towards her ruin" predicted her mother, Empress Maria Theresa. In fact, it was the war of America that would ruin France's finace, not her frivolity. * -- * To be fair, it would take quite some party to ruin France's finances all on its own. That'd have to be a hell of a bar tab. Mind you, it is France... -- In the spring of 1789, she encouraged the king towards a faltering and contradictory policy, believing that only foreign intervention would be the salvation of the crown: in fact it would be its loss. She refused the support of La Fayette and Mirabeau, pressed on with the plan for a royal escape, which resulted in the capture of the entire royal family at Varennes. On August 13, 1792, she was imprisoned in the tower of the Temple with her family after the invasion of the Tuileries. On August 1, 1793, she entered the Conciergerie. She was tried by the Revolutionary Tribunal on October 14. On October 16, she was sentenced to death for "high treason." The sentence was carried out later the same day.