Marie Antoinette

The upcoming Sofia Coppola film has prompted this New Yorker piece on Marie Antoinette. My own thoughts (on the queen, I haven't seen the film): she wasn't as bad as what they said but her insensitivity and selfishness (which she shared with all royals) meant she deserved to have her head chopped off. The thing is she and Louis XVI would have made perfect powerless constitutional monarchs: Marie all into fashion and being silly, Louis into hunting and clocks. The media and public would have loved them in those roles. It was just when they were expected to actually do something...