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.
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