Except that statement wasn’t said by royalty, it’s a misattributed mistranslation of a snippet from Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Confessions.
It was written 9 years before Marie Antoinette became queen and while she was still a child and had not yet traveled to France.
This is a classic case of the victors writing history. This quote has been used countless times to try to illustrate that the royalty was out of touch (which I’m neither arguing for nor against here,) however there’s no evidence it was ever spoken by the Queen - indeed it wasn’t attributed to her at all for many years after her death.
Maybe she did. Doesn’t change the fact that using misattributed quotes tends to diminish the perception of the preceding opinion in the eyes of readers.
I think in this case the quote actually paints her in a better light the reality. You can forgive someone for being sheltered and naive, but you have to be a monster to abduct children from their families.
Except that statement wasn’t said by royalty, it’s a misattributed mistranslation of a snippet from Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Confessions.
It was written 9 years before Marie Antoinette became queen and while she was still a child and had not yet traveled to France.
This is a classic case of the victors writing history. This quote has been used countless times to try to illustrate that the royalty was out of touch (which I’m neither arguing for nor against here,) however there’s no evidence it was ever spoken by the Queen - indeed it wasn’t attributed to her at all for many years after her death.
Marie Antoinette abducted children from peasant families.
Maybe she did. Doesn’t change the fact that using misattributed quotes tends to diminish the perception of the preceding opinion in the eyes of readers.
I think in this case the quote actually paints her in a better light the reality. You can forgive someone for being sheltered and naive, but you have to be a monster to abduct children from their families.