How was Marie Antoinette viewed as the queen of France?

Answer:
In the beginning, when she came to France as dauphine and married Louis XVI she was loved and very popular because of her grace and beauty. Though, very soon after her arrival she became less and less popular because she disliked and made fun of etiquette and uttered some silly comments about members of the nobility. She was young and naive and was raised very freely in Vienna. Now she had to live her life by the fierce etiquette rules of the old regime of France, and she found that very hard.

When she became Queen of France at the age of 19, she already had quite the reputation of being careless and frivolous. Her popularity made a short comeback when she gave birth to an heir to the French throne, but vanished again quite fast. The French blamed her for everything that went wrong in the country and accused her (besides all of her charity work) of not caring for the French and spending all of their tax money (eventhough she spent far less money than all French queens had done before her). Also she was Austrian, and Austria was the country that France had been in war with for several years, the French did not want a foreigner on their throne, especially not an Austrian one. She became the scapegoat of France.

First answer by Mascha. Last edit by Mascha. Contributor trust: 254 [recommend contributor recommended]. Question popularity: 1 [recommend question].