Historical figure Marie Antoinette is on people’s minds right now, and naturally, a Twitter debate erupted because of it.
Was Marie Antoinette a victim or a villain? Twitter users expressed compelling arguments for both cases on Tuesday (March 28), which made “Marie Antoinette” a trending topic on the platform.
One person said, “Marie Antoinette was married at 14 solely to bring peace between two countries & form an alliance. She was a pawn.”
They added that she was “doomed from the get-go.”
Someone else defended Marie Antoinette based on her young age.
“Marie Antoinette hate is weird to me sorry she was a 13-year-old child forced into marriage and ripped from her home country to be thrust in front of a public that hated her from the beginning and falsely accused her of horrible things that people still believe today,” they said.
On the other hand, others pointed out that Marie Antoinette was apparently not so innocent.
“Her & her friends had a portion of the royal estate turned into a mock poor person village so they could simulate poverty together for fun,” one person tweeted.
Another person expressed disbelief that people thought she was an “innocent silly girly” who did no wrong.
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Hollywood has told the story of Marie Antoinette several times, including the 2006 Sofia Coppola classic starring Kirsten Dunst, Marie Antoinette, much-beloved by film Twitter and Pinterest.
Now, she seems to have reentered the public’s consciousness due to a new series produced by the BBC and Canal+, which airs on PBS in the U.S. The series has already been renewed for a second season.
According to Biography, the show explores Marie Antoinette as a feminist icon and “rebel” who was “modern, emancipated, and fought for equality and for her personal freedom.”
However, one historian, author Melanie Clegg, said that the historical icon “absolutely wouldn’t have regarded herself” as a feminist.
But the show’s executive producer, Claude Chelli, told Biography, “We’re all aware that ‘feminism’ is a modern concept, and Marie Antoinette’s actions were not abiding by any theoretical corpus, but what she did was conducted by self-awareness and free will, which is very modern and could be assimilated to feminism.”
See more Marie Antoinette tweets, below: