Marie Antoinette Stamp

------- Using this stamp ------------
Feel free to use this stamp, feel free to post it on other sites even! I made this stamp to spread the truth not for any personal gain or "glory" XD
Though, if you use it on another site, it would be awesome if you could link back here ^^ though I wont/don't require it.
The only thing you can't do is claim you made this stamp or say that it is yours.
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This is one of my biggest historical pet-peeves, but contrary to popular belief Marie Antoinette never said "let them eat cake."


This statement was actually propaganda spread to hurt the image of the royal family prior to the French Revolution. It was then perpetuated by pro-revolutionary historians, which is why so many people still attribute it to Marie Antoinette today. Lies like these ones, which unfortunately is sometimes still repeated even by some historians,  are the reason she is often depicted as a villainous and vain woman.  


UPDATE [6/21/2014] -
Found this really nice video about Marie Antoinette by the Smithsonian Museum. At the time 0:36 to 0:49 they quickly address the issue of her infamous quote and say it's not true: www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFJ2vf…




Short semi-bio/details of Marie Antoinette's life:

Marie Antoinette was born an Archduchess of Austria and was married into the French Court before the age of 18. At this point it's important to note the differences between life in the Austrian Court versus life in King Louis XV's French Court: The Austrian Court was more strict than life in Versailles, which consisted of frequent parties, shopping, and great extravagance. 

So imagine being a young girl who grew into her teens under the close supervision of her mother and suddenly moving into an entirely new country where she is allowed to do whatever she wants. During her short life in Versailles Marie Antoinette was never taught how to be a queen, only how to how to look pretty and throw parties. The same goes for her husband, Louis XVI, whose education focused mostly of a mixture of religion, morality, and humanities, and most of his free time was spent hunting or his hobby of locksmithing.

Now imagine after several years of this lifestyle, at the age of 18, suddenly becoming the new king and queen. Just imagine an 18 year-old ruling your country today. It simply wouldn't work, not because they are malevolent people but because they aren't mature enough to rule. They simply lacked the knowledge and skill to make the right choices. It didn't help that Louis XVI picked very poor advisers, which consisted primarily of his close friends. This choice reflects on his immaturity and lack of leadership skills. Also, Marie-Antoinette did try to help the French people, by making donations to the poor for example, but she wasn't a good politician and often didn't know what to do.

Furthermore, the aid given by France to American (during the American Revolution) is a perfect example of the poor advice given to the young rulers. While as an American I have to admit I'm glad they helped us, the reality is that this was a horrible choice for France. This was money they simple didn't have to throw into an unnecessary war, which only further angered French citizens.

So where does "Let them eat cake" comes from?:

While this saying is often attributed to Marie Antoinette, there is in fact no record of her ever saying it. It actually first appears in "Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Confessions, his autobiography (whose first six books were written in 1765, when Marie Antoinette was nine years of age)." For those who don't know who Rousseau is he is a philosopher, whose political philosophy actually helped influenced the French Revolution.

"However, he (Rousseau) does not mention Marie-Antoinette in his autobiography, but states that the saying was an old legend, and that within the family it was always believed that the saying belonged to the Spanish princess who married Louis XIV in the 1660s." "There is a further problem with the dates surrounding the attribution, in that Marie-Antoinette was not only too young but not even in France when the autobiography was first published."

This quote was really first attributed to Marie Antoinette during one of the "famines" that occurred in France during the reign of her (Marie Antoinette's) husband. The saying went on to "acquire great symbolic importance in subsequent histories when pro-revolutionary historians sought to demonstrate the obliviousness and selfishness of the French upper-classes at that time."

Furthermore, as Fraser, the Queen's best-selling English-language biographer, points out, "Marie-Antoinette was a generous patroness of charity and moved by the plight of the poor when it was brought to her attention, thus making the statement out-of-character for her. This makes it unlikely that Marie-Antoinette ever said this. A second point is that there were no actual famines during the reign of King Louis XVI and only two incidents of serious bread shortages, which occurred, first, in April–May 1775, a few weeks before the king's coronation (11 June 1775), and again in 1788, the year before the French Revolution."


Anyways, sorry for my rant…
But if you can take anything out of this please remember that before you make or believe any claim about a person (historical or not) please do your research. It's so easy. Don't leave yourself open to misinformation.

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[edit] Forgot to put this: The image used on this stamp was not made by me.

[edit 8/27/13] Editing the history I wrote above and added a section 'cause I wrote this a long time ago, and I think I can make it sound better now.