This history shows the truth that contradicts the legends.

These two were victims of circumstance instead of the ignorant fools they have been portrayed as in popular history.

After the megalomaniac Louis XIV and the pleasure seeking Louis XV, these two were painted with the same broad brush. Louis actually tried many reforms to better the lot of his people; and in doing so he angered the nobility. The nobility consequently started a smear campaign to demonize him; they were behind the early scandal sheets that made both Louis and Marie Antoinette into the stereotypes that fueled the revolutionary ire.

While it is true that Marie Antoinette was foolish and spendthrift early in their marriage.....she was a teenage girl.....and she behaved like one. Once the marriage was finally consummated and she became a mother, her thoughtlessness and immaturity disappeared. Of course, by then it was too late to stem the bloodthirsty tide.

One wonders what the traitorous nobility thought about their pot-stirring and calumny while awaiting their own doom during the reign of terror. Did they realize how their own actions were the cause of their fate? Those who let loose the ravening beast cannot hope to not be devoured themselves. There was plenty of comeuppance for all, including Robespierre, consumed by the conflagration he fueled.

This book is a lesson in politics, reform and the perfidious nature of humanity that many would do well to read and learn from. ( )