Marie Antoinette on France's Debt, Her Trial and Final Days

They called me Madame Deficit. They painted me as a monster in their

pornographic pamphlets, a foreign traitress who devoured France's

wealth.

But let history speak the truth. I was never the cause of this

bankruptcy. It was the one point three billion livres

sent to fund the

American Revolution that emptied the treasury.

Yet, it was easier to blame my dresses than

their own wars.

I was only fourteen when my mother, Empress Maria Theresa, a

staunch opponent of the Freemasons, sent me to Versailles as a diplomatic

pawn to seal an alliance. I left my home, my language,

and my youth to enter a cold, unforgiving court.

Yes, I sought escape in gambling and music, not out of

cruelty, but out of sheer suffocating loneliness.

But their ultimate cruelty came at my trial.

To ensure my death, they forced my eight-year-old son to sign

a monstrous

lie, accusing me of incest. I will never forget

that moment. I stood up and cried out to every mother in

that room,

"Does nature not revolt against such an accusation?" For a brief

moment, the propaganda shattered. They wept for me.

But the architects of this revolution had already written my end.

As I walk towards the guillotine today, dressed in plain white,

my hair shorn, I leave behind the illusions they

manufactured.

I am not a monster. First and foremost, I am a

mother. I was a Duchess of Austria.

I became Queen of France, and I became a victim of the history they

rewrote.