X-Nico

16 unusual facts about Marie Antoinette


Aglaé de Polignac

Aglaé Louise Françoise Gabrielle de Polignac (7 May 1768 – 30 March 1803) was the daughter of Gabrielle de Polastron, the favourite and confidante of Marie Antoinette, and her husband, the 1st duc de Polignac.

Allen Kurzweil

The titular "grand complication" is a 200-year-old timepiece commissioned for Marie Antoinette and stolen from a Jerusalem museum in 1983.

Antoinette Blue

The title is a reference to Marie Antoinette, who was famous for having a grey-blue diamond ring.

DeLauné Michel

Helene DeLauné was in the court of Marie Antoinette and her husband, Jules André Dubus, fought in the French Revolution.

Duncan Macpherson

One of Macpherson's most celebrated cartoons featured John Diefenbaker as Marie Antoinette saying "Let them eat cake," after Diefenbaker cancelled the Avro Arrow project and its 14,000 jobs.

Eglinton Castle

Lady Susanna Montgomerie, wife of the 9th Earl of Eglinton, was a renowned society beauty and her husband built for her at Kidsneuk a copy of the Hameau de la Reine 'cottage orné' that Marie Antoinette had famously possessed at Versailles.

Emmanuel-Armand de Richelieu, duc d'Aiguillon

After the death of Louis XV he quarrelled with Maupeou and with the young queen, Marie Antoinette, who demanded his dismissal from the ministry (1774).

John Crosdill

During his prime, Crosdill made many sojourns to Paris where he was a favourite of Marie Antoinette.

Killer Queen

The song, in the second line, mentions the phrase "Let them eat cake", a phrase (mis)attributed to Marie Antoinette: "Let them eat cake," she said, Just like Marie Antoinette.

Lord Ronald Gower

He also created a sculpture depicting Marie Antoinette on her way to the scaffold and another of a member of the Old Guard at Waterloo.

Princess Maria Antonia of Parma

Contrary to what has been frequently stated, she was not named after her aunt, Queen Marie Antoinette of France, who was not her godmother.

Residence organ

Several such purpose-built residence organs survive from centuries past, including Claudio Merulo's organ in the Conservatory of Music in Parma, and the residence organ of Marie Antoinette that is preserved at Versailles.

Shantanu Goenka

The innovation & creativity was personified with a muse like Marie Antoinette in terms of both style and design.

St Mary's Church, Hampstead

Marie Thérèse de France (19 December 1778–19 October 1851), the eldest (and last surviving) child of King Louis XVI of France and his wife, Queen Marie Antoinette, also known as the Duchess of Angoulême, was recorded as visiting the Abbé Morel in Hampstead on one occasion when in exile in England.

The Penny Dreadfuls

This takes place during the French Revolution and covered an imagined meeting in prison between Maximilien Robespierre and the imprisoned Marie-Therese, the 16-year-old daughter of King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.

Wild Over You

Later on, Pepé wanders into a wax museum finding the wildcat posing as a boa around the neck of a wax sculpture of Marie Antoinette and he himself poses as a coonskin cap on a sculpture of Daniel Boone.


Antoine Barnave

Much evidence indicates that, because her closest friends, including Count von Fersen (who had organized the flight from Paris), were absent, Marie Antoinette was attempting to influence Barnave and his fellow Feuillants as a way to ensure her family’s safety.

Arvfurstens palats

In the room are two 17th century desks by Gottlieb Iwerson and Georg Haupt, the latter featuring an ornamental inkstand originally intended to be a gift to Marie Antoinette.

Bernd Brinkmann

In 2000, Brinkmann together with Jean-Jacques Cassiman used DNA testing to prove that Louis XVII of France who died in captivity as a 10-year-old was indeed the son of Louis XVI of France and Marie Antoinette.

Boston Baroque

First period instrument recording of Luigi Cherubini's long neglected Requiem in C minor, which premiered on January 21, 1817, in a memorial concert below the abbey church of St. Denis to commemorate the anniversary of the executions of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.

Champagne stemware

Legend has it the shape of the glass was modelled on the breast of Marie Antoinette, Joséphine de Beauharnais, Madame de Pompadour, or one of several other French aristocrats, although this is almost certainly false.

Deborah Cadbury

Her 2003 book The Lost King Of France telling the tragic story of Marie Antoinette’s favourite son is to be developed as a film by Lynda La Plante.

Elizabeth Monroe

While in France, the Monroes' daughter Eliza became a friend of Hortense de Beauharnais, step-daughter of Napoleon, and both girls received their education in the school of Madame Jeanne Campan, who had been an advisor on court etiquette to Marie Antoinette.

Évelyne Lever

In particular, she focuses on certain people, including Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette and Madame de Pompadour.

Lady Mary Coke

Emily Barry (née Stanhope, Countess of Barrymore, and wife of the 6th Earl) was even accused by Mary of luring away her previously faithful servant whilst she was in Paris in 1775, in order to aid an alleged assassination plot against her by Maria Theresa's daughter Marie Antoinette and her underlings.

Louise Marie Adélaïde de Bourbon

In the 2006 film Marie Antoinette, Marie-Adélaïde had a minor role played by the French actress Aurore Clément.

Madeleine Cemetery

One of the first decisions of Louis XVIII when he acceded to the throne of France at the time of the Bourbon Restoration, was to move the remains of his brother and sister-in-law, King Louis XVI and his Queen Marie Antoinette, to the necropolis of the Kings of France, the Basilica of St Denis.

Musée du Barreau de Paris

Further items reflect legal history from the 17th century to the present, including manuscripts and exhibits from the trials of Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, Émile Zola at the Dreyfus affair, Michel Ney, Pierre Cambronne, Villain (assassin of Jean Jaurès), and Alexandre Stavisky.

Nicolas Chamfort

In 1776, his tragedy, Mustapha et Zeangir, was played at Fontainebleau before Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.

Pauline de Tourzel

Pauline de Tourzel, was the Daughter of the Marquise de Tourzel, Louise-Félicité-Joséphine de Croŷ d'Havré, the last governess of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette's children, who later, as Comtesse de Bearn, became a lady-in-waiting to the only survivor of the immediate royal family, Madame Royal, Marie Thérèse.

Pauline was present during the final traumatic months of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, observer to the French Revolution and survived to see their daughter return twice during the Bourbon Restorations.

Polly Young

While on tour, Young sang in her husband’s oratorio Jefte in Florence and gave concerts before Marie Antoinette and her sister Maria Carolina of Austria, the de facto Queen of Naples.

Richard Mique

He is most remembered for his picturesque hamlet, the Hameau de la Reine — not particularly characteristic of his working style — for Marie Antoinette in the Petit Trianon gardens within the estate of Palace of Versailles.

Sophie Piper

Sophie was also the closest confidante of her brother Axel, known as a favourite and possible lover of Marie Antoinette - for reasons of caution the letters between Axel and Sophie make numerous references to that relationship, but out of caution Marie is never referred to by name but always as "She" or "Josephine" ; the Swedish historian Alma Söderhjelm has demonstrated that these are aliases for Marie Antoinette.

The Hollow Needle

In the Arsène Lupin universe, the Hollow Needle is the second secret of Marie Antoinette and Alessandro Cagliostro, the hidden fortune of the kings of France, as revealed to Arsène Lupin by Josephine Balsamo in the novel The Countess Of Cagliostro (1924).

The Tender Hook

The Tender Hook is the second feature by writer/ director Jonathan Ogilvie (Emulsion, Despondent Divorcee, This Film Is a Dog), and stars Hugo Weaving (Little Fish, The Lord of the Rings, The Matrix), Rose Byrne (Marie Antoinette, Casanova, Troy) and Matthew Le Nevez (Emulsion, Peaches).