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Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, is best remembered for her legendary extravagance and for her death: she was executed by guillotine during the Reign of Terror at the height of the French Revolution in 1793 for the crime of treason. Her life has been subject of many historically accurate biographies, as well as subject of romance novels and films. == In biographies == As were many people and events involved with the French Revolution, Marie Antoinette's life and role in the great social-political conflict were contingent upon many factors. Many have speculated as to how influential she actually was on the nature of the revolution, and the direction it eventually took. In light of the varying contingencies surrounding her life that made her a hated and despised figure in the eyes of the revolutionaries, it is interesting to note that during her tenure as Queen of France, these factors caused her to be viewed as a genuine model of the old regime, perhaps even more so than her husband, the king. Due to her frivolous spending and indulgent royal lifestyle, as well as her well-known desire to promote the Austrian empire, her caring, motherly nature was overshadowed, and revolutionaries only saw her as an obstruction to the Revolution. The view on Marie Antoinette's role in French history has varied widely throughout the years. Even during her life, she was both a popular icon of goodness and a symbol of everything wrong with the French monarchy, the latter being a view that has persisted to this day far stronger than the former. However, there are some that would argue that the common historical perspective on Marie Antoinette is that she was yet another tragic victim of the radicalism of the Revolution, rather than a great symbol of French royal inadequacies. This view tends to sympathize with the plight of Marie Antoinette and her family and focus more on the documentation surrounding the last months, weeks, and days prior to her execution, where she is more clearly seen as Marie Antoinette the penitent, caring mother rather than the defiant Queen of France. Some contemporary sources, such as Mary Wollstonecraft〔Wollstonecraft, 33–35.〕 and Thomas Jefferson,〔Fraser, 457–458.〕 place the blame of the French Revolution and the subsequent Reign of Terror squarely on Marie Antoinette's shoulders; others, such as those who knew her (her lady-in-waiting Madame Campan and the royal governess, the Marquise de Tourzel, among them) focus more on her sweet character and considerable courage in the face of misunderstanding and adversity.〔Fraser, 129, 291.〕 According to Campan, the queen was totally mis-understood by not only her subjects, but also by the nobility at Versailles. Campan describes a number of people who, upon spending time with the queen, left with a more positive opinion of her. One such visitor, M. Loustonneau, first surgeon to the king, was humbled when the queen remarked that "if the poor whom you have succored for the past twenty years had each placed a single candle in their windows it would have been the most beautiful illumination ever witnessed."〔Campan, Jeanne-Louise-Henriette (2006). The Private Life of Marie Antoinette: A Confidante's Account. 1500 Books, LLC, p. 125〕 Immediately after her death, the picture painted by the ''libelles'' of the queen was generally held as the "correct" view of Marie Antoinette for many years, as the news of her execution was received with joy by the French populace, and the ''libelles'' themselves did not stop circulating even after her death.〔Fraser, 442.〕 However, she was also considered to be a martyr by royalists both in and out of France, so much so that the Tower was demolished by Napoleon in order to get rid of all symbols of the oppression of the royal family.〔Fraser, 382.〕 The view of the queen as a martyr was a generally held view in the post-Napoleonic era and through the nineteenth century, though publications were still written (such as by the ultra-republican work of Jules Michelet) portraying the queen as a frivolous spendthrift who single-handedly ruined France;〔Fraser, 455.〕 This view is not widely accepted as accurate by most modern historians, though it is important to note that even the less biased contemporary sources were quick to point out that the queen did have faults which contributed to her condition. The end of the nineteenth century brought about some more changes in how the queen was viewed, particularly in light of the (heavily censored) publication of Count Axel Fersen's ''Journal intime'' by one of his descendants; theories about a torrid decade-long love affair between queen and count has become an area of debate since then. In particular, the popular theory is that Louis Charles, the second Dauphin (who would ultimately die at the age of 10 from maltreatment) was actually Fersen's child, and that the king was aware of it. Those who argue in favor of this theory point to the words of insiders who knew of the queen's alleged affair and the words of Fersen himself regarding the child's death, which indicate it to be a possibility.〔Hermann, chapter 6.〕 Others argue that the queen had a liaison, but that it produced no child; others do not believe that an affair took place at all.〔(【引用サイトリンク】 publisher =Elena Maria Vidal ) 〕 The twentieth century brought about the recovery of some items that belonged to the queen, thought lost forever, as well as a wave of new biographies, which began to show the queen in a somewhat more sympathetic light; even those that were critical of the queen were more balanced than their eighteenth and nineteenth century predecessors. Public perception was also aided in the twentieth century with the advent of movies based upon biographies of the queen, the most famous of them including the Oscar-nominated 1938 Norma Shearer feature ''Marie Antoinette'' (based upon the 1932 book ''Marie Antoinette: The Portrait of an Average Woman'' by Stefan Zweig) and the 2006 Kirsten Dunst feature (based upon the 2001 book ''Marie Antoinette: The Journey'' by Lady Antonia Fraser). The latter author's book is considered by some modern historians to be the most thorough and balanced biography of the queen, though it naturally builds upon earlier biographies, first hand accounts, and even the infamous ''libelles'' which destroyed the queen's reputation. Another book was written by famous American novelist Upton Sinclair in the form of a play titled ''Marie Antoinette''. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Cultural depictions of Marie Antoinette」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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