Lucy Worsley's Royal Myths & Secrets

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Host

France, in the late 1780s was a tinderbox of dissatisfaction. (crows cawing) Cold winters and two disastrous harvests left the peasants starving. The country was bankrupt. Taxes were high and one member of the royal family was getting the blame. (dramatic music) Marie Antoinette was an Austrian princess. For decades, France and Austria had been enemies but at the age of 14, Marie Antoinette had been married to the French crown prince to forge a political alliance but her foreignness would always make her unpopular in France as would her lavish lifestyle. It is a devilish scene to be bored. I fear it more than anything in the world. Ah, presents! -

Host

Marie Antoinette was notorious for her love of shoes and dresses and parties. Beautiful, a dress with a bow. (upbeat classical music) Exaggerated, ludicrous accounts of Marie Antoinette's self indulgence was circulating everywhere. She's become a sort of poster girl for everything that's wrong with the discontented and starving France. In fact, the U.S. Ambassador who's Thomas Jefferson, will come to say this about her, "Had there been no queen, "there would have been no revolution." (upbeat classical music) Marie Antoinette is supposed to have come up with one of the most famous phrases in history. She addressed her hungry subjects and proclaimed, "Let them eat cake." (upbeat classical music) The words are still taught to almost every school child in the world. (upbeat classical music) They're used to prove the Queen's indifference to her people but did she really say, "Let them eat cake"? For a start, the phrase in French is qu'ils mangent de la brioche meaning brioche, a kind of an eggy bun but let them eat a kind of eggy bun isn't quite so catchy in translation but there's a more fundamental cake fib than that. There's absolutely no evidence that Marie Antoinette ever said those words. No documents, no eye witness reports, no nothing!