Marie Antoinette
STORY PREFACE
Portrait of Marie Antoinette painted by Vigée-Lebrun in 1779. Maintained by the Palace of Versailles. Image online, courtesy Wikimedia Commons.
Maria Theresa, mother of sixteen children, had the best interests of her country in mind when she selected her daughter’s husband. A meaningful political alliance, not a love match, was most important to the Empress as she determined the future of her youngest girl. At fifteen - the average age of a highschool sophomore - Marie Antoinette (then called Antoine) left her family’s home in Vienna to solidify an Austro-Hungarian alliance with France (previously longstanding enemies). Within four years, the young foreigner would become queen of her adoptive country. Had she lived to learn her child’s fate, Antoinette’s mother - the daughter of Charles VI and the only woman to be Empress of the Holy Roman Empire - would surely have regretted her political-marriage decision.
Original Release Date: October, 2006
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Table of Contents
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Biographies
History
- American Colonies
- American Revolution - Highlights
- Assassination of Abraham Lincoln
- Assassination of John F. Kennedy
- Auschwitz: Place of Horrors
- Book Burning and Censorship
Disasters
- America Attacked: 9/11
- Black Death
- Challenger Disaster
- Columbia Space Shuttle Explosion
- Deepwater Horizon: Disaster in the Gulf
- Fatal Voyage: The Titanic
Philosophy
- Bagger Vance and and the Bhagavad Gita
- Bonhoeffer: Martyr of Faith
- C.S. Lewis
- Dead Sea Scrolls
- Easter Story
- Freedom of Religion