Was Marie Antoinette good or bad?

Answer 1

Marie Antoinette was a misunderstood queen as Louis XVI showered her in gifts she did not even want. She wanted to help her people but sometimes didn't know how. This led to her being seen by the public as a bad queen. The diamond necklace scandal, which she had nothing to do with, made the public think she was a terrible person when in reality she was not. She was quite young.

Answer 2

Some people thought she was a wicked queen but actually she was very misunderstood. Louis gave her extravagant gifts she never wanted and the public thought she wanted them. This made her look bad but actually she really wanted to help but didn't know how.

Answer 3

That is a very difficult question.

France had very strict etiquette rules for Queens. Queens (or queens to be, called "dauphines") did not have any rights. They were not allowed to meddle with politics and it was considered unladylike for them to even talk about politics. They were to be obedient to their husbands all the time, they were to be beautiful (but not too beautiful, they had to be very religious and attend mass every day (!), they had to live very secluded and quiet lives, knitting and sitting up straight and their main task was to produce heirs.

Marie Antoinette was the first very young dauphine to come to France in a long time (she was 14, being a teenager) and she was drop dead gorgeous. Most of all.... she was Austrian. So no matter what she did of said, everything was talked of in a very ill matter. Everything she did and everything she said was turned into scandal. The French never wanted an Austrian woman as their Queen, so they figured that if they could not make them divorce and have her sent back, they would gossip her to death.

Gossip and rumors have it that she was a bad queen, but in fact, she was a very good one. When her husband fell into a deep depression, she was the one that tried to save the French economy by meddling into politics. Only because she couldn't bare the country to go bankrupt. When the people accused her of overspending and living an extravagant lifestyle, she tried to show them how much she had spent, which was twice as little as former Queens of France! She also gave a lot of money to charity, but this the people conveniently forgot.