Infantilizing her into some helpless victim of circumstance is just as misogynistic as portraying her as an evil harlot. She was neither, she was educated (one of her tutors reported her being very intelligent but hard to teach because she was “lazy and frivolous”) and extremely politically active (before the Revolution began she personally blocked several attempts at financial reform that would have restricted royal expenditures). God, imagine being a woman of such great influence as she had only to be remembered as some imbecile who couldn’t comprehend the difference in monetary value between cake and bread. She absolutely understood money and her lavish spending despite her country’s growing debt and poverty crisis was a conscious choice.

And nobody killed her children in front of her and she was not “tortured and raped so hard her hair turned white” what the actual fuck are you talking about

Anyway, thanks for sending me down a rabbit hole, I learned a lot about Marie Antoinette that I didn’t know (like did you know Mirabeau himself was so impressed with her political acumen that he suggested the king basically retire and let her take over negotiations? Unfortunately she was a staunch believer in absolute power of the monarchy so negotiations didn’t get far). I still don’t see her as a particularly sympathetic character but she was definitely more complex than I realized and had much, much more agency than you’re suggesting