Marie Antoinette in popular culture
Encyclopedia
Marie Antoinette
Marie Antoinette
Marie Antoinette ; 2 November 1755 – 16 October 1793) was an Archduchess of Austria and the Queen of France and of Navarre. She was the fifteenth and penultimate child of Holy Roman Empress Maria Theresa and Holy Roman Emperor Francis I....

, Queen of France, is best remembered for her legendary extravagance and for her death: she was executed by guillotine
Guillotine
The guillotine is a device used for carrying out :executions by decapitation. It consists of a tall upright frame from which an angled blade is suspended. This blade is raised with a rope and then allowed to drop, severing the head from the body...

 during the Reign of Terror
Reign of Terror
The Reign of Terror , also known simply as The Terror , was a period of violence that occurred after the onset of the French Revolution, incited by conflict between rival political factions, the Girondins and the Jacobins, and marked by mass executions of "enemies of...

 at the height of the French Revolution in 1793 for the crime of treason
Treason
In law, treason is the crime that covers some of the more extreme acts against one's sovereign or nation. Historically, treason also covered the murder of specific social superiors, such as the murder of a husband by his wife. Treason against the king was known as high treason and treason against a...

. Her life has been subject of many historically accurate biographies, as well as subject of romance novels and films.

In biographies

As were many people and events involved with the French Revolution, Marie-Antoinette's life and role in the great social-political conflict were contingent upon many factors. Many have speculated as to how influential she actually was on the nature of the revolution, and the direction it eventually took. In light of the varying contingencies surrounding her life that made her a hated and despised figure in the eyes of the revolutionaries, it is interesting to note that during her tenure as Queen of France, these factors caused her to be viewed as a genuine model of the old regime, perhaps even more so than her husband, the king. Due to her frivolous spending and indulgent royal lifestyle, as well as her well-known desire to promote the Austrian empire, her caring, motherly nature was overshadowed, and revolutionaries only saw her as an obstruction to the Revolution.

The view on Marie Antoinette's role in French history has varied widely throughout the years. Even during her life, she was both a popular icon of goodness and a symbol of everything wrong with the French monarchy, the latter being a view that has persisted to this day far stronger than the former. However, there are some that would argue that the common historical perspective on Marie Antoinette is that she was yet another tragic victim of the radicalism of the Revolution, rather than a great symbol of French royal inadequacies. This view tends to sympathize with the plight of Marie Antoinette and her family and focus more on the documentation surrounding the last months, weeks, and days prior to her execution, where she is more clearly seen as Marie Antoinette the penitent, caring French mother rather than the defiant Queen of France.

Some contemporary sources, such as Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft was an eighteenth-century British writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights. During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children's book...

 and Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence and the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom , the third President of the United States and founder of the University of Virginia...

, place the blame of the French Revolution and the subsequent Reign of Terror
Reign of Terror
The Reign of Terror , also known simply as The Terror , was a period of violence that occurred after the onset of the French Revolution, incited by conflict between rival political factions, the Girondins and the Jacobins, and marked by mass executions of "enemies of...

 squarely on Marie Antoinette's shoulders; others, such as those who knew her (her lady-in-waiting Madame Campan and the royal governess, the Marquise de Tourzel, among them focus more on her sweet character and considerable courage in the face of misunderstanding and adversity. According to Campan, the queen was totally mis-understood by not only her subjects, but also by the nobility at Versailles. Campan describes a number of people who upon spending time with the queen left with a more positive opinion of her. One such visitor, M. Loustonneau, first surgeon to the king, was humbled when the queen remarked that “if the poor whom you have succored for the past twenty years had each placed a single candle in their windows it would have been the most beautiful illumination ever witnessed.”

Immediately after her death, the picture painted by the libelles of the queen was generally held as the "correct" view of Marie Antoinette for many years, as the news of her execution was received with joy by the French populace, and the libelles themselves did not stop circulating even after her death.

However, she was also considered to be a martyr by royalists both in and out of France, so much so that the Tower was demolished by Napoleon in order to get rid of all symbols of the oppression of the royal family. The view of the queen as a martyr was a generally held view in the post-Napoleonic era and through the nineteenth century, though publications were still written (such as by the ultra-republican work of Jules Michelet) portraying the queen as a frivolous spendthrift who single-handedly ruined France; This view is not widely accepted as accurate by most modern historians, though it is important to note that even the less biased contemporary sources were quick to point out that the queen did have faults which contributed to her condition.

The end of the nineteenth century brought about some more changes in how the queen was viewed, particularly in light of the (heavily censored) publication of Count Axel Fersen's Journal intime by one of his descendants; theories about a torrid decade-long love affair between queen and count has become an area of debate since then. In particular, the popular theory is that Louis Charles, the second Dauphin (who would ultimately die at the age of 10 from maltreatment) was actually Fersen's child, and that the king was aware of it. Those who argue in favor of this theory point to the words of insiders who knew of the queen's alleged affair and the words of Fersen himself regarding the child's death, which indicate it to be a possibility. Others argue that the queen had a liaison, but that it produced no child; others do not believe that an affair took place at all.

The twentieth century brought about the recovery of some items that belonged to the queen, thought lost forever, as well as a wave of new biographies, which began to show the queen in a somewhat more sympathetic light; even those that were critical of the queen were more balanced than their eighteenth and nineteenth century predecessors. Public perception was also aided in the twentieth century with the advent of movies based upon biographies of the queen, the most famous of them including the Oscar-nominated 1938 Norma Shearer
Norma Shearer
Edith Norma Shearer was a Canadian-American actress. Shearer was one of the most popular actresses in North America from the mid-1920s through the 1930s...

 feature, Marie Antoinette
Marie Antoinette (1938 film)
Marie Antoinette is a 1938 film produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It was directed by W. S. Van Dyke and starred Norma Shearer as Marie Antoinette...

, based upon the 1932 book Marie Antoinette by Stefan Zweig
Stefan Zweig
Stefan Zweig was an Austrian novelist, playwright, journalist and biographer. At the height of his literary career, in the 1920s and 1930s, he was one of the most famous writers in the world.- Biography :...

 and the 2006 Kirsten Dunst
Kirsten Dunst
Kirsten Caroline Dunst is an American actress, singer and model. She made her film debut in Oedipus Wrecks, a short film directed by Woody Allen for the anthology New York Stories...

 feature based upon the 2001 book Marie Antoinette: The Journey
Marie Antoinette: The Journey
Marie Antoinette: The Journey is a sympathetic 2001 biography of Marie Antoinette, the Queen of France by Lady Antonia Fraser. It is the basis for the 2006 Sofia Coppola film Marie Antoinette....

by Lady Antonia Fraser. The latter author's book is considered, by some modern historians, as the most thorough and balanced biography of the queen, though it naturally builds upon earlier biographies, first hand accounts, and even the infamous libelles which destroyed the queen's reputation. Another book was written by famous American novelist Upton Sinclair
Upton Sinclair
Upton Beall Sinclair Jr. , was an American author who wrote close to one hundred books in many genres. He achieved popularity in the first half of the twentieth century, acquiring particular fame for his classic muckraking novel, The Jungle . It exposed conditions in the U.S...

 in the form of a play titled Marie Antoinette.

In film

Date Title Director Actress
1934 Madame Du Barry
Madame Du Barry (1934 film)
Madame DuBarry is a 1934 American historical film directed by William Dieterle and starring Dolores del Rio, Reginald Owen, Victor Jory and Osgood Perkins. The film portrays the life of Madame Du Barry, the last mistress of King Louis XV of France...

William Dieterle
William Dieterle
William Dieterle was a German actor and film director, who worked in Hollywood for much of his career. His best known films include The Devil and Daniel Webster, The Story of Louis Pasteur and The Hunchback of Notre Dame...

Anita Louise
Anita Louise
-Life and career:Born Anita Louise Fremault in New York, New York, she made her acting debut on Broadway at the age of six, and within a year was appearing regularly in Hollywood films...

1938 Marie Antoinette
Marie Antoinette (1938 film)
Marie Antoinette is a 1938 film produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It was directed by W. S. Van Dyke and starred Norma Shearer as Marie Antoinette...

W.S. Van Dyke Norma Shearer
Norma Shearer
Edith Norma Shearer was a Canadian-American actress. Shearer was one of the most popular actresses in North America from the mid-1920s through the 1930s...

1956 Marie-Antoinette reine de France Jean Delannoy
Jean Delannoy
Jean Delannoy was a French actor, film editor, screenwriter and film director.Although Delannoy was born in a Paris suburb, his family is from Haute-Normandie in the north of France...

Michèle Morgan
Michèle Morgan
Michèle Morgan is a French film actress, who was a leading lady for three decades.- Career :Morgan was born Simone Renée Roussel in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine, a western suburb of Paris....

1989 La Révolution française
La Révolution française (film)
La Révolution française is a two-part film, co-produced by France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom and Canada. The first part, titled La Révolution française : les Années lumière was directed by Robert Enrico. The second part, La Révolution française : les Années terribles, was directed by...

Robert Enrico
Robert Enrico
Robert Georgio Enrico was a French film director and scriptwriter.He was born in Liévin, Pas-de-Calais, in the north of France.-Filmography as director:* Fait d'hiver...

, Richard T. Heffron
Richard T. Heffron
Richard T. Heffron was a film and television director.He worked on many television series such as The Rockford Files and films including Futureworld , Foolin' Around , the 1982 Mike Hammer film I, the Jury, Pancho Barnes , and La révolution française .-External links:...

Jane Seymour
Jane Seymour (actress)
Jane Seymour, OBE is an English actress best known for her performances in the James Bond film Live and Let Die , East of Eden , Onassis: The Richest Man in the World , and the American television series Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman...

2001 The Affair of the Necklace
The Affair of the Necklace
The Affair of the Necklace is a 2001 American historical drama film directed by Charles Shyer. The screenplay by John Sweet is based on what became known as the Affair of the Diamond Necklace, an incident that helped fuel the French populace's disillusionment with the monarchy and, among other...

Charles Shyer
Charles Shyer
Charles Richard Shyer is an American film director, writer and producer. Shyer's films are predominantly comedies, often with a romantic-comedy overtone...

 
Joely Richardson
Joely Richardson
Joely Kim Richardson is an English actress, most known recently for her role as Queen Catherine Parr in the Showtime television show The Tudors and Julia McNamara in the television drama Nip/Tuck...

2006 Marie Antoinette
Marie Antoinette (2006 film)
Marie Antoinette is a 2006 biographical film, written and directed by Sofia Coppola. It is very loosely based on the life of the Queen consort in the years leading up to the French Revolution. It won an Academy Award for Best Costume Design...

Sofia Coppola
Sofia Coppola
Sofia Carmina Coppola is an American screenwriter, film director, actress, and producer.In 2003 she received the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for Lost in Translation, and became the third woman to be nominated for an Academy Award for Directing...

Kirsten Dunst
Kirsten Dunst
Kirsten Caroline Dunst is an American actress, singer and model. She made her film debut in Oedipus Wrecks, a short film directed by Woody Allen for the anthology New York Stories...


In television

Elizabeth Berrington played Marie Antoinette in the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

 sitcom Let Them Eat Cake
Let Them Eat Cake (TV series)
Let Them Eat Cake is a British sitcom that aired on BBC One in 1999. Starring Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders, it is one of the few programmes in which French and Saunders have appeared which they did not create themselves.-Plot:...



Sue Perkins
Sue Perkins
Sue Perkins is an English comedienne, broadcaster, actress, and writer.-Education:Perkins was educated at Croham Hurst School, an independent school for girls in Croydon in South London, at the same time as the BBC Breakfast News presenter Susanna Reid...

 portrayed in the third episode of the second series of The Supersizers Eat (aired BBC One
BBC One
BBC One is the flagship television channel of the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It was launched on 2 November 1936 as the BBC Television Service, and was the world's first regular television service with a high level of image resolution...

, 9:00pm Monday 6 July 2009)

Marie appeared in an episode of Johnny Bravo
Johnny Bravo
Johnny Bravo is an American animated television series created by Van Partible for Cartoon Network. The series stars a muscular beefcake young man named Johnny Bravo who dons a pompadour hairstyle and an Elvis Presley-like voice and has a forward, woman-chasing personality...

, where she spoke with a French accent.

In The Addams Family
The Addams Family (TV series)
The Addams Family is an American television series based on the characters in Charles Addams' New Yorker cartoons. The 30-minute series was shot in black-and-white and aired for two seasons in 64 installments on ABC from September 18, 1964, to April 8, 1966...

, Wednesday Addams
Wednesday Addams
Wednesday Friday Addams is a member of the fictional Addams Family, created by cartoonist Charles Addams for The New Yorker.-Wednesday:In Charles Addams's cartoons, Wednesday and other members of the family had no names...

 has a headless doll named Marie Antionette.

In Toy Story
Toy Story
Toy Story is a 1995 American computer-animated film released by Walt Disney Pictures. It is Pixar's first feature film as well as the first ever feature film to be made entirely with CGI. The film was directed by John Lasseter and featuring the voices of Tom Hanks and Tim Allen...

, Buzz
Buzz Lightyear
Buzz Lightyear is a character and the main deuteragonist of the Toy Story franchise. Buzz is a space ranger action figure and the co-leader of Andy's Room. He has also appeared in the movie Buzz Lightyear of Star Command: The Adventure Begins and the television series spin-off Buzz Lightyear of...

 has tea with a headless doll named Marie Antionette.

Casual media references

Marie-Antoinette has been referenced in numerous motion pictures, sitcoms and television shows, usually as a figure to denote extravagance or doomed beauty.

Some of the more notable examples include the movie adaptation of Gone with the Wind
Gone with the Wind
The slaves depicted in Gone with the Wind are primarily loyal house servants, such as Mammy, Pork and Uncle Peter, and these slaves stay on with their masters even after the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 sets them free...

,
in which a portrait of the Queen hangs above Scarlett O'Hara
Scarlett O'Hara
Scarlett O' Hara is the protagonist in Margaret Mitchell's 1936 novel Gone with the Wind and in the later film of the same name...

's bed in her new mansion in Atlanta and more recently, in the CW American drama Gossip Girl
Gossip Girl
Gossip Girl is an American young adult novel series written by Cecily von Ziegesar and published by Little, Brown and Company, a subsidiary of the Hachette Group. The series revolves around the lives and romances of the privileged teenagers at the Constance Billard School for Girls, an elite...

, a sketch looking very much like Kirsten Dunst
Kirsten Dunst
Kirsten Caroline Dunst is an American actress, singer and model. She made her film debut in Oedipus Wrecks, a short film directed by Woody Allen for the anthology New York Stories...

 in the role of Queen Marie-Antoinette decorates the bedroom of the main character, Blair Waldorf
Blair Waldorf
Blair Cornelia Waldorf is the main character of Gossip Girl, introduced in the original series of novels and also appearing in their television and manga adaptations. Described as "a girl of extremes" by creator Cecily von Ziegesar, she is a comical overachiever who possesses both snobbish and...

. In The Addams Family Values, Wednesday Addams
Wednesday Addams
Wednesday Friday Addams is a member of the fictional Addams Family, created by cartoonist Charles Addams for The New Yorker.-Wednesday:In Charles Addams's cartoons, Wednesday and other members of the family had no names...

 dresses up her new baby brother as Marie-Antoinette and attempts to guillotine him for crimes against the Republic.

Marie-Antoinette as a reference point in popular culture has also been found in television shows such as Sex and the City
Sex and the City
Sex and the City is an American television comedy-drama series created by Darren Star and produced by HBO. Broadcast from 1998 until 2004, the original run of the show had a total of ninety-four episodes...

,
Queer as Folk and Desperate Housewives
Desperate Housewives
Desperate Housewives is an American television comedy-drama series created by Marc Cherry and produced by ABC Studios and Cherry Productions. Executive producer Cherry serves as Showrunner. Other executive producers since the fourth season include Marc Cherry, Bob Daily, George W...

.
In Series 2 of Sex and the City
Sex and the City
Sex and the City is an American television comedy-drama series created by Darren Star and produced by HBO. Broadcast from 1998 until 2004, the original run of the show had a total of ninety-four episodes...

,
when the character of Charlotte York criticises one of her friends for dillusionally believing that we live in a classless society, the main character of Carrie Bradshaw
Carrie Bradshaw
Carrie Preston is the fictional narrator and lead character of the HBO sitcom/drama Sex and the City, portrayed by actress Sarah Jessica Parker. She is a semi-autobiographical character created by Candace Bushnell, who published the book Sex and the City, based on her own columns in the New York...

 refers to her as a Marie-Antoinette. During the wedding of Melanie and Lindsay in Queer as Folk, a decadent French dessert is given as an option for their dinner by a French caterer, to which Melanie sarcastically quips, "And just how much for Marie-Antoinette's last meal?" When the character of Katherine turns up to a Halloween party in Series 4 of Desperate Housewives
Desperate Housewives
Desperate Housewives is an American television comedy-drama series created by Marc Cherry and produced by ABC Studios and Cherry Productions. Executive producer Cherry serves as Showrunner. Other executive producers since the fourth season include Marc Cherry, Bob Daily, George W...

thrown by a young gay couple who have just moved to the neighbourhood, one of the hosts quips that it is appropriate that the domineering Katherine has come as a "self-important queen who lost all her power." In the novel Popular
Gareth Russell (author)
Gareth Russell is a British author, best known for writing the novel Popular. Born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, he attended Down High Grammar School from the age of eleven to eighteen. He later studied Modern History at the University of Oxford, attending St. Peter's College from 2005 to 2008...

, one of the novel's lead characters throws a sweet sixteenth birthday party with a Marie-Antoinette theme, but is upstaged by one of her guests, when she arrives in a costume worn by Kirsten Dunst
Kirsten Dunst
Kirsten Caroline Dunst is an American actress, singer and model. She made her film debut in Oedipus Wrecks, a short film directed by Woody Allen for the anthology New York Stories...

 in the 2006 movie.

In fiction

The most famous historical fiction which features Marie Antoinette is the Alexandre Dumas, père
Alexandre Dumas, père
Alexandre Dumas, , born Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie was a French writer, best known for his historical novels of high adventure which have made him one of the most widely read French authors in the world...

 novel Le Chevalier de Maison-Rouge
Le Chevalier de Maison-Rouge
Le Chevalier de Maison-Rouge was written in 1845 by Alexandre Dumas, père as part of a series referred to as the Marie Antoinette romances...

(The Knight of the Red House,) which centers on the Carnation Plot. It is actually the first of a series of six books written by Dumas with Marie Antoinette featured, called the "Marie Antoinette novels", in which the queen is shown in a sympathetic light, particularly during the "Diamond Necklace Affair".

Some of the more famous historical novels that have portrayed Marie Antoinette in more recent years includes Carrolly Erickson's 2005 novel The Hidden Diary of Marie Antoinette, as well as Elena Maria Vidal
Elena Maria Vidal
Elena Maria Vidal is a historical novelist and noted blogger living in Easton, Maryland. She was born in Florence, Oregon and grew up in Frederick, Maryland...

's 1998 book Trianon. A 2000 book in the young adult Royal Diaries
The Royal Diaries
The Royal Diaries is a series of twenty books published by Scholastic Press from 1999 to 2005. In each of the books, a fictional diary of a real female figure of royalty as a child throughout world history was written by the author. The Royal Diaries was a spin-off of Scholastic's popular Dear...

 series is about Marie Antoinette's journey to France as a teenager.

The two best known movie portrayals of Marie Antoinette have been in the 1938 film
Marie Antoinette (1938 film)
Marie Antoinette is a 1938 film produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It was directed by W. S. Van Dyke and starred Norma Shearer as Marie Antoinette...

 directed by W. S. Van Dyke
W. S. Van Dyke
Woodbridge Strong "Woody" Van Dyke, Jr. was an American motion picture director.-Early life and career:...

, in which the Norma Shearer
Norma Shearer
Edith Norma Shearer was a Canadian-American actress. Shearer was one of the most popular actresses in North America from the mid-1920s through the 1930s...

 played the queen, and the 2006 film
Marie Antoinette (2006 film)
Marie Antoinette is a 2006 biographical film, written and directed by Sofia Coppola. It is very loosely based on the life of the Queen consort in the years leading up to the French Revolution. It won an Academy Award for Best Costume Design...

 directed by Sofia Coppola
Sofia Coppola
Sofia Carmina Coppola is an American screenwriter, film director, actress, and producer.In 2003 she received the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for Lost in Translation, and became the third woman to be nominated for an Academy Award for Directing...

 and starring Kirsten Dunst. The Affair of the Necklace
The Affair of the Necklace
The Affair of the Necklace is a 2001 American historical drama film directed by Charles Shyer. The screenplay by John Sweet is based on what became known as the Affair of the Diamond Necklace, an incident that helped fuel the French populace's disillusionment with the monarchy and, among other...

 was a 2001 film in which Hilary Swank
Hilary Swank
Hilary Ann Swank is an American actress. Swank's film career began with a small part in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and then a major part in The Next Karate Kid , as Julie Pierce, the first female protégé of sensei Mr. Miyagi...

 played Jeanne de Valois-Saint-Rémy and Joely Richardson
Joely Richardson
Joely Kim Richardson is an English actress, most known recently for her role as Queen Catherine Parr in the Showtime television show The Tudors and Julia McNamara in the television drama Nip/Tuck...

 played Marie Antoinette.

Marie Antoinette features prominently in The Ghosts of Versailles
The Ghosts of Versailles
The Ghosts of Versailles is an opera in two acts, with music by John Corigliano to an English libretto by William M. Hoffman. The Metropolitan Opera had commissioned the work from Corigliano in 1980 in celebration of its 100th anniversary, with the premiere scheduled for 1983...

, partially an operatic adaptation of Beaumarchais
Pierre Beaumarchais
Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais was a French playwright, watchmaker, inventor, musician, diplomat, fugitive, spy, publisher, arms dealer, satirist, financier, and revolutionary ....

' La Mère coupable
The Guilty Mother
The Guilty Mother subtitled The Other Tartuffe is the third play of the Figaro Trilogy by Pierre Beaumarchais; the first two plays of the trilogy are The Barber of Seville and The Marriage of Figaro. It is rarely revived these days...

with score by John Corigliano
John Corigliano
John Corigliano is an American composer of classical music and a teacher of music. He is a distinguished professor of music at Lehman College in the City University of New York.-Biography:...

 and libretto by William M. Hoffman
William M. Hoffman
William Moses Hoffman is an American playwright, editor and educator.- Biography :Born in New York City, New York, United States, Hoffman's earliest works either were mounted in small, experimental off-off-Broadway theaters in New York City or remain unproduced.It was not until 1985 that he...

.

In the film Amadeus
Amadeus (film)
Amadeus is a 1984 period drama film directed by Miloš Forman and written by Peter Shaffer. Adapted from Shaffer's stage play Amadeus, the story is based loosely on the lives of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Salieri, two composers who lived in Vienna, Austria, during the latter half of the...

 she is mentioned twice by her brother, Emperor Joseph II
Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor
Joseph II was Holy Roman Emperor from 1765 to 1790 and ruler of the Habsburg lands from 1780 to 1790. He was the eldest son of Empress Maria Theresa and her husband, Francis I...

 as "Antoinette", and her eventual downfall is foreshadowed when the emperor tells Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...

 why he has banned the play Figaro
The Marriage of Figaro (play)
The Marriage of Figaro ) is a comedy in five acts, written in 1778 by Pierre Beaumarchais. This play is the second installment in the Figaro Trilogy, preceded by The Barber of Seville and followed by The Guilty Mother. The Barber begins the story with a simple love triangle in which the Count has...

.

In the 2007 film Shrek the Third
Shrek the Third
Shrek the Third is a 2007 American animated film, and the third film in the Shrek series. It was produced by Jeffrey Katzenberg for DreamWorks Animation, and is distributed by Paramount Pictures. It was released in U.S. theaters on May 18, 2007...

,
Princess Fiona wears a dress at one point in the film that closely resembles Marie Antoinette's oversized dresses.

In the Japanese manga series My Hime, Marie Anoinette is one of two QUEEN Hime who descend to the Earth to remake it. She is associated with roses and possesses a very aristocratic air about herself.

She is also one of the most prominent characters of the Japanese metaseries . In this series of works, she is portrayed as a very sweet and gentle woman, a loyal friend of Oscar and a loving mother, but also as an easily influenced and irresponsible queen. Her voice actress was Miyuki Ueda
Miyuki Ueda
, is a Japanese actress and voice actress. She is married to singer Isao Sasaki and is a childhood friend of fellow voice actor Katsuji Mori.-TV anime:*Weiß Kreuz *Space Battleship Yamato **Space Battleship Yamato: The New Journey...

.

Her popular quote "Let them eat cake
Let Them Eat Cake
"Let them eat cake" is the traditional translation to English of the French phrase "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche", supposedly spoken by "a great princess" upon learning that the peasants had no bread...

" was referenced in the 39 Clues
The 39 Clues
The 39 Clues consists of two series of adventure books, The Clue Hunt and Cahills vs. Vespers, combining reading, online gaming, and card collecting...

 book "One False Note
One False Note
One False Note is the second book in The 39 Clues series. It is written by Gordan Korman, and was published by Scholastic on December 2, 2008. Following the events of The Maze of Bones, the protagonists Amy and Dan Cahill learn about Mozart and travel to Vienna, Austria to search for the second...

".

In music

Jucifer
Jucifer
Jucifer is a two piece sludge metal band signed to Relapse Records. The band's members include Gazelle Amber Valentine on lead guitar and vocals, and her husband Edgar Livengood on drums. They travel in an RV and are "nomadic in nature", preferring to tour constantly, living in their tour vehicle,...

's 2008 album L'Autrichienne
L'Autrichienne
L'Autrichienne is the fourth album by the American metal band Jucifer. It was first released on March 18, 2008.- History :L' Autrichienne, which is Jucifer's fourth album, was recorded in July 2007 at Bakery Studios by Andy Baker...

is a concept album about the life of Marie Antoinette, leading up to her death.

Queen
Queen (band)
Queen are a British rock band formed in London in 1971, originally consisting of Freddie Mercury , Brian May , John Deacon , and Roger Taylor...

 also referred to her in "Killer Queen" from their 1974 album Sheer Heart Attack
Sheer Heart Attack
Sheer Heart Attack is the third album by the British rock group Queen, released in November 1974. It was produced by Queen and Roy Thomas Baker and distributed by EMI in the United Kingdom, and Elektra in the United States....

.

Richard Adler and Jerry Ross included a mention of her as one of the devil's own, in their song "Those Were the Good Old Days," from the musical comedy Damn Yankees
Damn Yankees
Damn Yankees is a musical comedy with a book by George Abbott and Douglass Wallop and music and lyrics by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross. The story is a modern retelling of the Faust legend set during the 1950s in Washington, D.C., during a time when the New York Yankees dominated Major League...

.

Darryl Way and Sonja Kristina Lockwood wrote a song for their prog rock
Progressive rock
Progressive rock is a subgenre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s as part of a "mostly British attempt to elevate rock music to new levels of artistic credibility." John Covach, in Contemporary Music Review, says that many thought it would not just "succeed the pop of...

 band, Curved Air
Curved Air
Curved Air are a pioneering British progressive rock group formed in 1970 by musicians from mixed artistic backgrounds, including classic, folk, and electronic sound. The resulting sound of the band was a mixture of progressive rock, folk rock, and fusion with classical elements...

, titled "Marie Antoinette."

Wayne Shorter
Wayne Shorter
Wayne Shorter is an American jazz saxophonist and composer.He is generally acknowledged to be jazz's greatest living composer, and many of his compositions have become standards...

 wrote a jazz tune of the same name; it was recorded by Freddie Hubbard
Freddie Hubbard
Frederick Dewayne "Freddie" Hubbard was an American jazz trumpeter. He was known primarily for playing in the bebop, hard bop and post bop styles from the early 1960s and on...

.

Michael Kunze and Sylvester Levay wrote a musical play
Marie Antoinette (musical)
Marie Antoinette is a stage musical with music by Sylvester Levay and lyrics by Michael Kunze, the authors of Elisabeth, Mozart! and Rebecca. The Libretto was written in English and then translated into Japanese. The premiere took place on November 1, 2006 in Tokyo, Japan at the Imperial Garden...

, in English but premiering in Tokyo, about the parallel lives of Antoinette and a fictional Margrid Arnaud.

The portrait of Marie Antoinette entitled "Marie Antoinette à la Rose" features as the front cover of the US alternative rock group Hole
Hole (band)
Hole is an American alternative rock band that originally formed in Los Angeles in 1989. The band is fronted by vocalist/songwriter and rhythm guitarist Courtney Love, who co-founded Hole with former songwriter/lead guitarist Eric Erlandson...

's 2010 album Nobody's Daughter
Nobody's Daughter
Nobody's Daughter is the fourth studio album by alternative rock band Hole, released worldwide on April 27, 2010 through Mercury Records. The album was originally conceived by Hole frontwoman Courtney Love as a solo project titled How Dirty Girls Get Clean, following her poorly-received solo debut...

.

The Charlie Sexton
Charlie Sexton
Charles Wayne Sexton is an American guitarist, singer and songwriter best known for the 1985 hit Beat's So Lonely and as the guitarist for Bob Dylan's backing band from 1999 to 2002 and since 2009...

 song "Impressed" references Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette

In the Japanese song, The Daughter of Evil, made by the producer AkunoP, otherwise known as mothy, the evil princess is based on Marie Antoinette.

Marie Antoinette is referenced by name in the song The Headless Waltz, by artist Voltaire

One of the boss songs of Beatmania IIDX
Beatmania IIDX
is a series of rhythm video games and the sequel to Beatmania that was first introduced by Konami in Japan on February 26, 1999. IIDX has since spawned over 19 arcade releases and over 13 console releases on the Sony PlayStation 2...

 Empress
Beatmania IIDX 16: Empress
Beatmania IIDX 16: Empress is the 16th game in the Beatmania IIDX series of music video games. It was released in arcades by Konami on November 19, 2008 . The game features over 50 new songs, some of which are unlocked over Konami's e-Amusement platform...

 has its name Marie Antoinette, made by Marguerite du Prê
Tomosuke Funaki
is a Japanese composer who has contributed to the Bemani series of music video games. He has produced songs for Beatmania, Beatmania IIDX, Pop'n Music, Dance Maniax, Guitar Freaks, DrumMania, Mambo a Gogo, and Dance Dance Revolution...

.

In Video Games

Marie Antoinette is one of the several bosses in Midway Games
Midway Games
Midway Games, Inc. is an American company that was formerly a major video game publisher. Following a bankruptcy filing in 2009, it is no longer active and is in the process of liquidating all of its assets. Midway's titles included Mortal Kombat, Ms.Pac-Man, Spy Hunter, Tron, Rampage, the...

' arcade shooter CarnEvil
CarnEvil
CarnEvil is a rail shooter arcade game using a light gun. Released by Midway Games on October 31 , 1998, the game focuses on the protagonist fighting their way through a supernatural carnival that features horror-themed twists on many familiar amusement park elements.- Plot :CarnEvil is set in the...

.
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