Marie Antoinette

Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna was born in Vienna in 1755, the fifteenth child of Empress Maria Theresa of Austria. At age fourteen she was married by proxy to the French Dauphin, the future Louis XVI, as part of a diplomatic alliance between France and Austria. She arrived in France as a virtual stranger, stripped of her Austrian clothes and attendants at the border.

As Queen of France from 1774, Marie Antoinette became famous for her elaborate fashion, her circle of favourites at Versailles, and her spending on the Palace of Versailles's Petit Trianon estate. Nicknamed 'Madame Deficit' by a hostile press and public, she became a symbol of royal extravagance -though many charges against her were exaggerated or entirely fabricated.

The French Revolution transformed her world utterly. After the royal family's failed flight to Varennes in 1791, public opinion turned sharply against her. She continued to correspond secretly with foreign courts seeking military intervention to restore the monarchy -correspondence that, when discovered, sealed her fate.

In 1793, after months of imprisonment in the Temple and then the Conciergerie, Marie Antoinette was tried by the Revolutionary Tribunal on charges of treason and other crimes. She was guillotined on 16 October 1793 at the Place de la Révolution, at age 37. She remains one of history's most debated figures -victim, symbol, and icon in equal measure.