Marie Antoinette

Marie Antoinette, born an Archduchess of Austria as the youngest daughter of Empress Maria Theresa, became one of the most vilified and tragic figures in world history. Married at fourteen to the future Louis XVI to cement the historic Franco-Austrian alliance, the teenage queen struggled amidst the rigid, suffocating etiquette of Versailles, seeking refuge in lavish fashion, high-stakes gambling, and her rustic pastoral retreat at the Petit Trianon (the Queen's Hamlet).

Unfairly accused of empty extravagance and falsely branded with the callous phrase 'Let them eat cake' (which she never uttered), she became the convenient scapegoat for France's economic misery in revolutionary pamphlets. During the Revolution, she showed immense personal courage during the mob assault on Versailles and their subsequent imprisonment in the Tuileries. Following Louis XVI's execution, she was separated from her children and transferred to the damp, rat-infested cells of the Conciergerie. Tried during the height of the Terror, she stood before the tribunal with unwavering royal dignity. Accompanying the cart to the guillotine on October 16, 1793, her famous last words were an apology to the executioner after accidentally stepping on his foot: 'Pardon me, sir; I did not do it on purpose.'