Author Description

"In Marie Antoinette Evelyne Lever tells the story of the last - and most infamous - queen of France. Married off at fourteen by her ruthless mother for political purposes to the unprepossessing Dauphin, the future Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette was immature, brazenly self-indulgent, impetuous and wholly unprepared for the role history cast for her. Her sad attempts to consummate her marriage read like bedroom farce, and she did little to quell the rumors of her increasingly dangerous liaisons. Bolstered by the staged receptions that she mistook for popular approval, she was willfully out of touch with the nation's dire economic troubles, the seething social and political climate of prerevolutionary France, and eventually retreated - from both her husband and the public - behind a wall of courtiers and into a world of opulent fantasy - until it was too late.". "Based on diaries, letters, court documents and memoirs, Marie Antoinette paints vivid portraits of the Queen, her inner circle and the lavish court life at Versailles."--BOOK JACKET.