Marie Antoinette, Sofia Coppola style

I watched Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette flick this week. I liked it, for the record. The problem as with most historical flicks is that I didn't know who many of the cast actually were. I was also curious what happened to many of them. The film concluded with the October Revolution in October, 1789 as the royal family fled Versailles for the Tuileries. It's a good place to end it. I did not need to see Kirsten Dunst beheaded.



So--

--Ambassador Mercy (Steve Coogan)  was an Austrian minister and a powerful court advisor. He became Governor of the Austrian Netherlands in 1792. He was appointed Ambassador to England in 1794 but died shortly after arriving there.
--Madame DuBarry (Asia Argento), Louis XV's mistress, was beheaded in 1792. I'm going to be typing that a lot. Her last words, "Encore un moment" have become famous in existential circles.
--Comtesse de Noailles (Judy Davis) was a court flunky whom Marie Antoinette nicknamed Madame Etiquette for her obsession with it. She and her husband were beheaded in 1794.
--Princess de Lamballe (Mary Nighy) was married to some rich French guy briefly and then became Marie Antoinette's confidante at court. She was moved to La Force prison for her safety when the revolution broke out as the people hated her for being a close friend of the queen. She was convicted in a revolutionary tribunal in 1792 and then was apparently torn apart by an angry mob.
--Aunt Victoire (Molly Shannon) was Louis XV's sister. I spent the whole movie wondering who this bitch was. She did survive the revolution with her sister, Adelaide, and became something of a fugitive in Italy, terrified that assassins of the Revolution would find them. She died of breast cancer in 1799. Also, the king's sisters were apparently such bitches that Marie Antoinette made her daughter play with poorer children so she wouldn't grow up to be that way herself. Also a bitter irony, she may have been the true source of the "Let them eat cake" line.
--Marie Therese, Marie Antoinette's daughter, survived the terror and was extradited to Austria in 1795. Her story is too long to recount but she never seemed to recover from the Revolution. She lived in exile in Britain, returned briefly during the Bourbon Restoration in 1815. Lots of political gerrymandering follows during which she was briefly the Queen of France, her family leaves France for the last time in 1830, living first in Edinburgh and then Prague. She died childless in Vienna of pneumonia in 1851.
--Count Fersen (Jamie Dornan) was a Swedish count who was indeed suspected of having an affair with Marie Antoinette like in the movie. He survived his part in the Revolution but was himself killed in a monarchic revolution in Sweden in 1810 where he was trampled to death.
--Louis Joseph, the Dauphin, died, apparently of tuberculosis, in 1789.
--Louis Charles became the Dauphin automatically when his brother died. He too died officially of tuberculosis in 1795 while imprisoned. The cause of death is controversial. There were also rumors he had escaped and various "real" Louis' popped up over the intervening years, causing lots of grief for Marie Therese.

Is this the most depressing blog post ever? Everyone dies horribly and/or alone-except for those that are dismantled by angry mobs of course. No wonder existentialists look to this moment in history for inspiration. Gloomy motherfuckers.

I didn't mention them but of course poor Louis XVI was executed in 1793, followed by Marie in October of the same year just a few weeks from her 38th birthday. Her sister-in-law Elizabeth was executed in 1794.