Vulgar History Podcast
Why do we still care about Marie Antoinette?
October 6, 2025
Hello and welcome to Vulgar History, a feminist women’s history comedy podcast. My name is Ann Foster, and this is one additional final episode, a bonus episode, to our Marie Antoinette season. I’ve been weaning myself off of just going hardcore on Marie Antoinette for such a long time. I just have so many thoughts and feelings, and I was so excited to find somebody to share those thoughts and feelings with, maybe the only person in the world who is as invested in Marie Antoinette as I am at the moment, and that is author Melanie Burrows.
So, you’ve heard me say her name before because her book, Marie Antoinette: Teen Queen to Guillotine, has been one of the major references that I’ve used for my research in this season, as well as you might know, Melanie Burrows from her social media where she goes by @MmeGuillotine and she posts stuff about art history from the French Revolutionary era and about Marie Antoinette and about Versailles. I follow her on the Substack and on Instagram and other places, and as I was working on the season, she kept posting things, and I’m like, “Oh my gosh, I didn’t know what that portrait! Oh, that’s what that part of Versailles looks like!” She just really was sort of a fairy godmother to the whole season, and I was so happy that she agreed to have a conversation with me just to kind of talk all things Marie Antoinette, French Revolution, all of it.
I do want to also just reiterate that she’s the author of the brand-new Marie Antoinette biography, Marie Antoinette: Teen Queen to Guillotine. I think you can tell by the title, it’s a fun, readable biography, extremely well-researched, extremely well-written, but it’s not, like, full of footnotes and stuff. It’s not an academic book. Like Melanie describes in the interview, she wants it to be a book that you read just, like, by the pool on your holiday.
It’s such a good book. I’m such a fan of hers, and so please enjoy this conversation with Melanie Burrows just to kind of wrap up the whole Marie Antoinette season.
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Ann: So, I’m just going to say: Welcome to Melanie Burrows, the author of Marie Antoinette: Teen Queen to Guillotine, also known on social media as @MmeGuillotine. Thank you for joining me for this conversation, Melanie.
Melanie: Hello, you all right? Bonjour. [laughs]
Ann: [laughs] So, yeah. I’m in my Marie Antoinette era, it feels like so many people are. The V&A exhibition is happening right now. Why do you think Marie Antoinette is especially of interest right now, the year 2025?
Melanie: I think because she’s been coming up in cultural conversation a lot in the last, sort of, five, six, seven years because of, you know, the cost-of-living crisis, all the wars, the general social issues, things like that. So, people have been using her kind of as a throwaway sort of expression for sort of the decadence of the uber-rich and the suffering of all of the rest of us. There’s always been a lot of pushback against that with people sort of talking about, “No, no! But what about all the good things Marie Antoinette did?” and, you know, “She never said that or she didn’t do that. She wasn’t like that.” That’s led to further conversations about actually Marie Antoinette. And so, I feel like the time has just become right for her, the actual her, to be discussed.
Yeah, so it’s a good thing. I really welcome it. The series has probably had a lot to do with it as well, but I really do feel it’s because of sort of, you know, increased exposure, which started off negative, but actually, I think it’s turned into a good thing. You know, it’s just turned into a general, a deeper interest.
Ann: Yeah, I’ve never studied Marie Antoinette before. I was always much more of, like, a Tudor era girly. So, this was my first exposure to her and to the French Revolution era and everything, and now I’ve got very strong feelings when I see people making a “Let them eat cake” joke or something, I’m just like, “You don’t know! No!”
Melanie: [laughs] Thing is, they all know. They all know that she didn’t say it, but they’re just going to do that anyway, so you know… Yeah, it’s really frustrating. But like I said, it’s led to more conversation about her, where those of us who have always been championing her to an extent have had opportunities to kind of go, “No! She never said that. And actually, she did all these really great things, too.” And yeah, it’s been a roller coaster. I get so pissed off when I see, like, Melania Trump being compared to her. It’s just so gross.
But yeah, I feel like as she becomes better known, and hopefully with the exhibition and my book, I think they’re probably going to make another season of the show, you know, all of these things together are going to mean that there’s going to be less instances of her being compared to negative people of the present. I mean, because during her lifetime, she was obviously being compared to negative people from her past, so it just feels… You know what? It’s all women, and it’s just part of the same shit, different century. It’s incredibly… It’s just so tiresome. It’s really grim.
Ann: I agree. Things where I see people comparing… When there was that stupid, that ridiculous spaceflight where Katy Perry went into the atmosphere, and people like, “Oh, this is a Marie Antoinette moment, Katy Perry going to space.” It’s like… [scoffs] What are you even talking about?
Melanie: Yeah, when the balloon took off from Versailles, Marie Antoinette wasn’t in it. And, you know, Louis XVI, Madame Élisabeth was super interested to get all over that balloon before it ascended. Marie Antoinette, I don’t think went near it. Like, she wasn’t interested at all in anything like that. You know, Louis XVI, if they could have fit him into the space thing, might have gone up. Madame Élisabeth, definitely. Comte d’Artois, definitely. Provence, no; too clever, no way would he have gone in. [Ann laughs] And Marie Antoinette, absolutely no way on earth would she have gone in anything; she was not being launched into space. That would not be her vibe at all.
Ann: No. I’m just picturing her, you know, cottagecore, like, just hanging out with her lambs in her fields, just drinking her milk. Like, that’s what she’s up to. Yeah.
Melanie: Yeah. With kind of, like, a bedazzled rocket in her hair.
Ann: Yeah, yeah! [laughs]
Melanie: And a celestial-themed outfit. That was more her vibe. I always think of her as being a bit of a dreamer, but her feet were definitely on the ground, you know? She had a great awareness of who she was and what she was doing, and she was very interested in her world around her. So, yeah, I don’t think she would have been too bothered by, you know…
Ann: Going to space.
Melanie: Yeah, not her thing, not her thing at all. So, yeah, that was really annoying, but again, that’s the sort of thing that you just push back against it. And the fact that there are people who know a lot about Marie Antoinette who can anticipate how she would have felt about things means that people are starting to kind of take more of an interest, you know, in what she was really like.
Yeah, I find her… I mean, she was not a perfect person, by any means. She could be incredibly self-righteous, judgmental, just really catty, she could be a bitch, thoughtless, careless of her friends, things like that. But she was also generous, affectionate, just desperate to be liked, and just generally overall delightful. So, you kind of can’t help but kind of warm to her when you’re learning about her. And I also love—I mean, for me, I’m also a massive Swiftie—but I always feel like Marie Antoinette’s life has got eras as well.
Ann: I literally just posted on my Instagram! I did the Eras poster, but with Marie Antoinette.
Melanie: [laughs] That’s so cool. Yeah, I was kicking myself earlier because my book was actually supposed to come out a few weeks ago; it wasn’t supposed to come out this late. If I’d known, I would have… And obviously, it would have been like, you know, how could I do like the life of a French queen? I should have colour-coded it a bit more and all of that stuff, but I didn’t know, so that didn’t happen.
But yeah, the person, the woman who was executed, was almost nothing like the woman who was Queen of Versailles. They are like… When you read, when you study her, when you read her letters, when you look at the things that happened and her reactions and her responses to it, it’s like, they are different people, totally different people. The Marie Antoinette of Versailles, if she’d met the Marie Antoinette of the Conciergerie, they would just have absolutely nothing in common. They were not the same person. And I find that fascinating. She is one of these people that… I don’t know. It’s like, which one’s the real one? And I actually think the Marie Antoinette at the end of her life was the actual real Marie Antoinette. The Marie Antoinette at the end of her life was her mother’s daughter.
Ann: Oh, my god! Oh, my god. The part… Yeah, I said this in my podcast when I got to that episode. It’s at a point where she’s just like, “I’m going to make an escape plan. I’m going to connect back to my Habsburg relatives. I’m going to write letters to every king.” I was just like, the Maria Theresa genes are just emerging! It’s suddenly just like, where was this your whole life? My gosh! Yeah, so much.
Melanie: Yeah, because she’d spent so long, I think, like, treading this fine line between Austria and France and the interests of both. Both of them, you know, with a husband who’d been taught that she was going to turn up and be a spy and a traitor right from the start, and her family reminding her constantly, like, “You’re an Austrian first. This is the most important thing.” And I think for a really long time, she just wasn’t that girl, you know? She wasn’t clever enough, savvy enough to be able to deal with that, with the diplomacy that it actually needed. But later on, I think she just had it. It was like, okay, she knew what to do. And yes, I suppose some of the stuff she did was kind of treacherous later in life, but who can blame her? Seriously.
Ann: No. She spent so long trying to be accepted by France, and people were hating her and gossiping about her, and being mean to her at every turn. So, when she finally was just like, “You know what I’m going to do? Send military secrets to Austria. I will be that spy you thought I was because fuck you.” Like, I don’t blame her. I don’t blame her.
Melanie: I don’t blame her at all. I would have done it much sooner, to be honest. [laughs] Like, screw these guys, oh my god. But, yeah, I think she was just constantly dealt a really bad hand, like over and over and over and over again. It was just a combination of events that were nothing to do with her. Like, she wasn’t even supposed to marry Louis, it was one of her older sisters, and it just cascaded from then on, you know? She never wanted to leave Vienna. I don’t think. She just wasn’t interested in any of that stuff. So, she did the best she could, and, you know, I think she did better than a lot of people would have done. She did better than I probably would have done because all the stuff that they were saying she was doing, I probably would have done it. [Ann laughs] I would have been out there spending a fortune, hanging out, grapes, lovers, cats everywhere. You know, it would have been amazing. And she wasn’t even doing any of that! So, fair play to her, you know?
But yeah, there’s loads of misapprehensions about them that I challenge in the book. But actually, because I’m three-quarters of the way through writing the follow-up book about Madame Élisabeth, and actually, since writing Marie Antoinette and the research into Madame Élisabeth has taken me into totally different directions, and I’ve found a lot more… You know, there’s different letters, different journals, a different perspective of the marriage of Louis and Marie Antoinette. It’s kind of like really made me reevaluate quite a lot of things as well, particularly about Louis, which is why I’m planning to write a book about him much later on, because, yeah, I had to really… I really have my… It’s my Lionel. [speaks inaudibly to her cat] This is Lionel.
Ann: Oh, my god! Beautiful ginger. Aww!
Melanie: So, yeah. Louis was just so different to how we see him, and therefore just kind of makes you reevaluate Marie Antoinette and their whole relationship. And I just don’t think it was how it’s been traditionally depicted. So, I’m really looking forward to writing about him and maybe getting a bit— Well, definitely getting a lot more into that. Like, what actually was the dynamic there? Because, you know, we’re always told, “He really didn’t like having sex and all this,” but they had, like, four children once…
Ann: Once they figured out what to do.
Melanie: Yeah, he was into it. He was actually into it. And it’s like, when you think about it that way, and yeah, I found a few other things in letters that are like, you know, about him flirting with a woman close to them. She was asking her husband, what should she do? And it was like, “Louis? What are you doing?”
Ann: This is shocking information to me. This is shocking because…
Melanie: Yeah. I mean, obviously, there were lots of stories about him flirting, you know, that he was secretly in love with Madame de Polignac, and even the father of her youngest child and things like this. That was very much in the rumour mill at the time. It’s like, he was a Bourbon. Is there stuff about him that we’re not considering? Are we really just quietly accepting this idea of this faithful, boring, quiet husband who has no interest in any other women? When actually, the guy was a Bourbon, and maybe he was just really discreet. We just don’t know. I don’t think we should write off the possibility that Louis had mistresses, is what I’m saying.
Ann: That’s so intriguing. That’s so intriguing. I came into my research for this, again, not having researched this time period at all before, and just kind of had this image in my head, I don’t know what it’s even from, of just this sexy, young couple, where it’s like, no, they were nerds. They were two nerds. And then that made me love them even more. Like, her affection for mechanical furniture, I find really sweet.
Melanie: Yeah, she was so into that. And he’s, like, there, making locks for her…
Ann: Making locks! That’s where I was like, I could see them…
Melanie: With his telescope on the roof of Versailles, spying on everyone, and, you know, up in his rooms and learning English, and just… Yeah, Louis was really interesting. It’s frustrating that he gets written off when actually… I mean, I always find it really interesting as well that Louis XVI and Louis XV, although there are several books about them in French, there’s not that much in Anglophone literature. But we know them through the perspective of, in Louis XVI’s case, his wife, who has had multiple books, and Louis XV, we see him in our culture through the eyes of his mistresses, because they get all the books, but he doesn’t. I find that actually really interesting. It’s totally different to Louis XIV. So, it’s like, well, what’s going on there?
That’s so French that we only see these two actually quite significant French monarchs, through the eyes of the women that they shared their lives with, which I find, yeah, it’s really nice, actually, as a female historian, to have that perspective. I’m a little bit disappointed in myself for wanting to know more about Louis himself and to want to write because it’s like, “No, that’s not what I do!” But I don’t know. I think that would shed more light on the women in his life as well.
And definitely reading Madame Élisabeth’s letters, where she mentions her brother, not always in a very complimentary way. [laughs] She refers to his… He refused to give us some money for something, and she was like, “This is one of those little villainies that my brother often practices, which do not reflect well upon him.” And it was like, whoa, Élisabeth! But we’re always told that you two were like this, like, devoted, and he would do anything for her, and he was so generous. But actually, what’s going on here? What is it? So, I’m… Yeah. That’s my kind of thing at the moment. It’s like, the real Louis XVI, who was he? What’s going on? Because he’s another person who, his character just changes as well. So, it’s like, who was the real Louis? Anyway, that was my thing I’m really interested in at the moment.
Ann: I relate to what you’re saying just in the sense of like, I start researching a person, and I’m like, “Oh! But what was the sister like? Oh! And she had a lover.” And then suddenly, I’m just researching this person five steps away, and I’m like, well, this is the next five years of my life, I guess, because every story is just like, oh! But, you know, when there hasn’t been a lot of scholarship on a person, and you start putting the stories together, you’re like, no one’s put this together before? Well, I guess I have to now. And then there you are, yeah.
Melanie: Yeah. I mean, that’s basically what I’m doing with the book after that, which I’m also writing at the same time, which is about women who were guillotined.
Ann: I’m so excited about this book.
Melanie: Everyone’s so excited. I’m going to have to finish. But I’m enjoying it so much, I just find so many things. But the process for writing that was basically, I found that there wasn’t an accurate list of every single woman that was guillotined in Paris. So, the first thing I had to do was go through all of the records, you know, like all of the trial records, the executioners’ records, everything, and put together an accurate list of every single woman. That meant taking off some names that are often on those lists and adding new ones in. Also, the original lists were phonetically spelled, so a lot of the names were just like, what even the fuck is this? So, it took me a really long time to accurately get every name and actually identify each person, so I had an actual idea of who they were. That took ages. But I’ve got the list now, so that’s going in the book at the end, so everyone gets to see the list.
And then the stories started to take shape as I was putting it together. I came up with— I found so many fascinating stories that I’ve never seen in books that are just in the records and just there, waiting to be told. So, that is a real labour of love. It’s taking forever because I just keep finding more and more stuff. Some of it is just, like, I’m obsessed, it’s like romance novel level stuff. Aristocrats in love with deputies and getting executed, and then the guy goes and kills himself, and all this stuff, and it’s like, how has this stuff not been written about before? This is insane! These people are mental. It’s also highly emotional. There are wives begging to be executed with their husbands. Just… It’s just crazy. It’s just so much drama.
So, I’m loving writing that. The book has changed form so many times since I started, but I think it’s on its, like, actual trajectory now, so yeah, I’m really excited about finishing that. It’s completely mental. But that’s another one where it’s just, like, a deep dive. I don’t know how it’s going to end up, actually. But I hope people like it. I don’t know. [laughs]
Ann: I will like it. I’m excited for it, whatever it turns out like. But yeah, just the fact that you had to go through, like, to compile the list in the first place. I would personally just find that really interesting to know just names and ages, and reasons. I’m sure a lot of the reasons are weird.
Melanie: Oh, it’s just like, “Got drunk and shouted, ‘Vive le roi!’”
Ann: And so now you’re being executed.
Melanie: Yeah, it’s just ridiculous reasons. “Danced with some foreign soldiers,” there’s quite a few of them. And then there’s just big groups of women brought from the provinces all together and just executed at the same time. There’s entire families; it’s mothers with their daughters, sisters, there’s like four sisters executed together. It’s incredibly depressing, and it’s so sad. So, I did make a note of when women were executed with their husbands and their sons. On the whole, I wasn’t really looking at men so much, but I did sort of pick out a couple of interesting men because I was, you know, I came across some Englishmen who were executed, which is something, you know, that I’d always been told that never happened, but it did. And so, I was like interested in researching, like, “Oh, who is this random Scots guy who got guillotined in 1793? Like, what?”
And I was also interested in, you know, you hear a lot of stories online, on places like Reddit, about, you know, “They executed children!” They didn’t execute children. The youngest person was 15, 16, which was kind of the age of, I suppose, people being hanged elsewhere for various crimes, ridiculous crimes, as well. But yeah, they weren’t executing children. But there were quite a few people who had their sentences deferred until they’d given birth, and you were literally taken the day after you’d given birth and executed. That is just appalling. But the babies weren’t killed; they were given to the women’s families to raise. There’s quite a few instances of this. Some women were allowed to have their children in prison with them, and then they would, you know… But they weren’t prisoners, so they were able to leave. It’s just such a weird situation, I think, particularly with the women who are in prison, because, yeah, they tended to have, like, quite a distinct culture in their prisons. They’re just so interesting. You know, I just find women’s history more interesting than men, though, so.
Ann: Well, I mean, frankly, no. I do a women’s history podcast, I’m on the same page as you, But also, I think, like, in terms of the women who are being guillotined and all this stuff, from the stuff that I’ve been reading about and learning, not just Marie Antoinette, although there was obviously so much sexism and misogyny in her story, but just the way that people were talking about Rousseau and being like, “Oh, women shouldn’t leave the house,” basically, “they should just stay home and breastfeed their children, who will be the next patriots of the nation.” So, of course, women’s behaviour, it’s like, “Oh, she was dancing!” Of course, that was who they’re going to guillotine, that’s who the government was.
Melanie: Yeah, exactly! I mean, think about the way the French treated French women who fraternized with German soldiers at the end of World War II, and probably World War I as well. You know, it’s always women who get punished in the most bizarre, awful ways for stepping outside the home, for daring to exist outside. Yeah, it’s horrible.
But, yeah. I mean, my interest in the French Revolution has been, like, pretty much my entire life. As a teenager, you know, I had to really kind of work around those sort of hideous aspects of it. You know, being interested in these people and sympathizing with them and being kind of fascinated with, like, Antoine Saint-Just, who was a terrible person and probably would have been an incel, you know? But he has my heart!
Ann: I know, I know. I saw you post, he’s your problematic fave.
Melanie: Yeah, I know. He’s my problematic fave, I love him so much. But knowing that, you know, if I’d been around, then I wouldn’t have done well. I would not have done well at all. But then again, if I’ve gone back now with my knowledge, who knows, you know? Who knows. I might have become Madame de Saint-Just, and everything would have been fine. [Ann laughs] You know, it would have been okay. It would have been fine… Probably not.
So, yeah, there’s kind of a lot of things there that you have to kind of reconcile with your own opinions and stuff. But yeah, I just find it such a fascinating period of history. I just love the fact that, you know, they all knew each other, they were all so surprisingly young, some of them were quite hot, and they just had these bizarre interpersonal rivalries. You get all these little snippets of gossip, like, you know, people talking about how, you know, like Saint-Just really hates Desmoulins because of Desmoulins’ secret vice, and it’s like, what was he talking about? He was probably just bi, you know? Or something that he just didn’t like. And, you know, everyone’s cousins with everyone else, and Desmoulins and Robespierre went to school together. They’ve got all these like links, and everything’s just like so intertwined, so personal and tense. But it’s not kind of like de-friending people on Facebook, it’s like, “Danton and Robespierre have fallen out, so Robespierre is going to have his head chopped off.”
Ann: Yeah, it’s a friend group and, like, these dramas are playing out. Part of what I find so perplexing about all of it is the fact, like, the French Revolution began and there’s kind of this feeling of, “Oh, we’re a bunch of lawyers,” these young men, and they have these ideals and they want a constitution and stuff, and then very rapidly, it turns just into The Purge, and it’s just like, limbs on the street, people being killed, then these guys are all killing each other. And it’s like, eventually, Napoleon is able to swoop in, becomes the emperor, and then the monarchy is restored. So, it’s like, why did we do any of this? Why?
Melanie: I know!
Ann: What was the point?
Melanie: I know! It’s like watching Raiders of the Lost Ark and realizing the film would have ended in exactly the same way if he hadn’t done anything. If Indiana Jones had not intervened at any point, he could have just left them to it, and they would have opened the ark and all their faces with a melted with absolutely no interference from him whatsoever. What was the point? Except he did get to punch a Nazi, so we applaud him for that. Yeah, that’s great. And there was also the bit when he shot someone in the marketplace when they had the sword, and that’s pretty cool.
Ann: But no, it’s the same thing. It’s just kind of like, you went through all this stuff, so many people died, only to bring the monarchy back.
Melanie: So many. I know, I know. It wasn’t even a cool monarchy either; it was just all the leftover losers. It’s like, “Guys!” Yeah, I just find the whole thing so crazy, but so interesting because they’re just so… I mean, you know, you can’t say that women are too emotional for politics. When you look at the French Revolution, it’s like, “Guys!” [laughs] Overwrought, I think. Someone needs a nap, and that someone is Robespierre. [laughs]
Ann: [laughs] When I learned that Robespierre didn’t even wear the outfit of the revolutionary effort, that he saw or his culottes, I was like “Robespierre? He’s the head of it all! What are we even doing?!”
Melanie: I know, with his wig. Yeah, he was just… Yeah, he was… I really like Robespierre. I think there’s a lot to like about Robespierre.
Ann: Is there? Okay.
Melanie: [chuckles] No, he was, you know, he was fully anti-slavery, like, wholly dedicated to that. He was a decent guy, but he just, I don’t know, just… I think it was just like kill or be killed.
Ann: Yeah. It was, it was.
Melanie: And then there’s, like, their ideals. I mean, we’ve seen it happen so many times when young people have ideals that no human can actually exist by. It always ends up like that. It’s just… No one could be perfect enough for Robespierre and Saint-Just and their vision of purity and virtue. Like, nobody is that good. So, it was always going to end in tears because they were always going to be disappointed by the people, you know? The people that they were saving.
But I think the thing with them is, I don’t think… Even though he was very young, I don’t think Saint-Just expected to survive anything that was happening anyway. You know, his, you know, his general demeanour was very, sort of, you know, “We’re basically going to have to sacrifice ourselves here, guys. We’re not we’re not getting out of here alive. We’ve done too much. We’ve seen too many things.” They all seem so tired at the end as well. I think all the fights, and so they were ready to go. But yeah, so crazy. I really want to write a novel about Thermidor, actually, because it just really lends itself to that sort of complete insanity, but I haven’t got the time, so maybe one day.
Ann: Yeah, when you’re done the other three, four books, you already said you’re actively currently writing.
Melanie: Yeah. I’ve been commissioned to write, like, six or seven more books. So, I’ve got to write all those, and then I might have time to write a novel, buy a house in France, and never write anything again. That would be great.
Ann: Actually, speaking… Well, I guess we have been speaking of France, but I wanted to ask you what you… Not just your thoughts, which I think I can assume, but what reaction you saw when the Paris Opening Ceremonies last year had the beheaded Marie Antoinette in the Conciergerie. I saw some backlash to that, which I was glad to see.
Melanie: I thought it was just crass and just super tacky, you know? I thought the whole thing was supposed to be, like, a celebratory event. But yeah, let’s go back to something, like, quite distastefully bloody that happened in our past, that, you know, was basically an act of judicial murder. I mean, if Russia is ever allowed to host it again, what are they going to do? They’re going to have, like, the Romanovs being shot in the window?
Ann: Yeah! Exactly!
Melanie: The fact that Marie Antoinette was executed publicly does not make it any less of a murder than the shooting of Nicholas II and his family. You know, it’s just a judicial wiping out… It just didn’t seem appropriate. It’s like if in the London ones we’d had… I don’t know, if we’d had the beheading of Anne Boleyn. I was going to say, actually, like Jack the Ripper and his victims, you know? It’s all on the par, isn’t it? Murder is murder, getting rid of someone for whatever reason… I just didn’t think it was appropriate. There’s so many nice things that they could have had, but, you know, no, they chose not to. And yeah, I just thought it was a bit grim, a bit tacky.
They can be really tacky with the general use of media, though, you know? You should see the websites the French use; it’s still like GeoCities, it’s awful. [Ann laughs] Whenever you go on French websites, it’s just like, “What the fuck?” [laughs]
Ann: In my day job, I work for a public library in Canada, and so we order books in French language, and there’s such a difference between books that are just English books translated to French. The books from France, like children’s books, they have the weird, most disgusting illustrations. And they’re all just like, the story of the happy poo and his voyage in the toilet, and then he dies… Just like, the most bizarre things. I’m like, France is a strange place. If this is what they’re producing for their children to read, like, I don’t know what…
Melanie: It’s weird that when you look at French books, they often look… awful. They’re like, I don’t know… This has been going on for a really long time. They look like, not even AI, they’re not even that good. They just look like someone just got a picture of something— You know when people post on, you know, when people like publishers, really crap publishers, all sort of bring out editions of Wuthering Heights or something, and they have a cover that bears no relation whatsoever to Wuthering Heights, and everyone loves it on social media? That’s what French books are all like. It’s like, why is there a picture of an iron on the front cover of A Tale of Two Cities? That sort of thing. It’s like, this makes no sense. Why have you got some spoons on War and Peace? We don’t know. And yeah, it’s just awful. I’ve got a lot of French books, and most of them are okay, but some of them, it’s just like, “Whoa! Why did you go with that font? That is really grim.”
Ann: So, that was like, the whole Opening Ceremonies, parts of it, I found charmingly strange. But then the Marie Antoinette, Concierg— Especially after I did my research, like I just rewatched, that’s why I brought it up. I rewatched the Olympic Opening Ceremonies a few weeks ago, and I was just like, “Oh! That’s…?” because I remember what palace it was that they were in, and I’m like, “That one?” Like, the place where she spent the devastating last days of her life. And then, they’re playing this heavy metal song, you’ve got, like, fake blood. I know that that was a choreographer or somebody who designed that, like, the Olympic Committee or somebody.
In general, to your knowledge, how is Marie Antoinette thought of in France, in general?
Melanie: They seem to be sort of just distantly affectionate. You know, they don’t hate her. It’s like just a general sort of… It’s not even nearly how we regard Anne Boleyn in this country, though. There isn’t that same sort of, you know, people in this country genuinely kind of really love Anne Boleyn. I don’t. [laughs] I’m not really a Tudors person.
Yeah, I mean, you’ll see her image on stuff, but she’s not as present, I think, perhaps, as people think she’s going to be. If you go to Paris, you kind of think, “Oh, is there going to be loads of Marie Antoinette stuff?” There isn’t, you know? Which might be one of the reasons why, you know, Chinese visitors or whatever get there and they’re really disappointed. It’s like, “Where’s all the Marie Antoinette stuff?” There’s not much. There isn’t that same sort of like real— It’s not like when you go to Berlin, and there’s Queen Louise stuff everywhere; or Salzburg, and there’s Mozart stuff everywhere; or Austria, and there’s Empress Sisi, you know? Or, I suppose Scotland, we have Mary, Queen of Scots. It’s not like that. It’s. She’s not that prevalent in their social media. She doesn’t pop up in adverts all the time. Yeah, it’s kind of odd. And maybe it is because of this sort of sense of, “Well, lads, we did fuck up a bit there, didn’t we?”
Ann: Yeah, I heard from… I just know from, again, just your social media that you post videos and pictures sometimes from Versailles, you’ve obviously been to Versailles.
Melanie: Oh, loads. Yeah.
Ann: I’ve heard from one of my listeners who went there that they found that she wasn’t as present in Versailles as they would have thought. Is that your experience as well?
Melanie: Well, yeah. I mean, I’ve been going to Versailles… I’ve been a lot. I mean, the first time I went was in 1989, and the last time was a couple of years ago when I lived in the town for a month to do my research, so I spent a lot of time just wandering. By about the second week, I was just walking past the shutter and not even looking at it, just like, “Oh yeah, I just walked past the palace. Whatever,” you know? Which was quite the privilege.
Yeah, I always think of Versailles being kind of like… They seem to zone things a lot in the palaces and stuff. So, you know, they’ll have like, it’s particular themes. So, Fontainebleau, they try and really sort of lean it towards Napoleon; Versailles, I think they prefer to lean it more towards Louis XIV, it’s Louis XIV World, if you like. Marie Antoinette’s part is, you know, her main apartments. Obviously, you can see her private apartments upstairs. But really, if you really want the Marie Antoinette stuff, it’s like in the Petit Trianon, out in the gardens. So, it’s not really… Yeah, she’s not everywhere; it’s just contained in those particular areas. But there’s Louis XIV everywhere. It’s his palace. It’s his…. very much. But then, you know, there’s sort of these little bits downstairs because, you know, they have got the apartments of her aunts downstairs, and they’re gorgeous. And the Dauphin’s apartments and the Dauphine’s apartments, where her children lived, but they’re kind of set up as they were during Louis XVI’s parents’ residence. But it’s not, like, a big Marie Antoinette fest when you go there, which I kind of wish it was. But yeah.
Ann: I’m from Canada, and I feel like what I would have expected is if you go to Prince Edward Island, Anne of Green Gables! You cannot escape Anne of Green Gables; every store, every pub, every like, it’s just everywhere. It’s the braids. It’s the hat. It’s Anne of Green Gables Land.
Melanie: Puff sleeves?
Ann: Puff sleeves. Everything! Carriage rides, it’s everything. And they have so many tourists, especially from Asia, who go there because that’s what they want. They just want… So, I would imagine those same tourists would come to Versailles, or come to Paris, and just expect Marie Antoinette World. To not get that is interesting, but also feels very French that they would be like “Tourists want this. Euhhh, who cares?”
Melanie: Yeah. I mean, that’s very French, isn’t it? I mean, they’ve even… I suppose that says something because in the Conciergerie, pretty much the first time I ever went, they had the Marie Antoinette cell with the Marie Antoinette model sitting…
Ann: Oh, wow.
Melanie: Yeah. And the replica of the fleur de lis wallpaper, and the guard, like, a model guard. It was just set up as it would have been when she was in there. Every single time I went after that, that cell was there. And then the last two times, I went to Paris the year before… about six months before lockdown started, and it had gone. It had been replaced by, you know, an information display, and that was still there the last time I went, which was two years ago. I just found that really interesting that this had been such an integral part of the Conciergerie experience, the fake cell of Marie Antoinette, but they always they were always honest about the fact that this is not actually where her cell was, this is just a cell that has been made to look like Marie Antoinette’s cell, and it’s been like this for decades, so we’re just going to carry on with this, you know? Gradually, I think things started being taken out to make it look less tacky. And finally, they just went, “You know what? This was never her cell, so it’s not her cell. So, we’re going to just put a display about the French Revolution in this area, and we don’t have a Marie Antoinette cell anymore. We’re just going to make clear that the little room to the side of the chapel,” which has got the memorial to her in there,” this is actually all the remains of her actual cell.” And I found that actually quite interesting in a sort of like, okay, Marie Antoinette vanishing from the stuff that’s associated with her now. That, I think, is an interesting decision.
I will say that the Conciergerie shop is still the best place to buy books about the French Revolution and Marie Antoinette. It’s got the most… It always has been just the most awesome books, it’s just incredible. So, you know, that’s still good. But yeah, it’s kind of like, people go to the Conciergerie expecting to see where she spent those last days, and they’re going to be really disappointed because it hasn’t been like that for a while. Other places where she had more presence, she seemed absent, you know? Like, there isn’t that much of her in the Louvre. I think they have a little room now, and that’s only been a recent development. Before her stuff was scattered, but now they have a Marie Antoinette room, and it doesn’t even have that much. So, it’s interesting. Fontainebleau, you know, it’s got a couple of rooms and a bedchamber, but then they kind of I think they kind of prefer to position the bedchamber as like Josephine’s bed rather than Marie Antoinette’s, but that it was Marie Antoinette’s bedroom.
So, it’s kind of things like that where they almost just sort of, I don’t know. Maybe they think… I don’t know. Because I mean, obviously, people go there wanting that stuff, but then it’s kind of being kind of taken away. And yet, Versailles, because they have their policy of reacquiring art, they still do that. So, obviously, they got that lovely Duplessis portrait a couple of years ago, like three, four years ago, of the young Marie Antoinette in the first year that she was living in France.
Ann: Oh, the one that she didn’t like? That one?
Melanie: Yeah. Well, she didn’t like any of her paintings, like, absolutely none. No, that’s not true. But, you know, it seems to be the general trend. But they have got it on display, but it’s not in one of the rooms like most of their paintings are, as part of the room decor. That one, I thought… I can’t really remember, actually. I think it’s when you’re coming out of the Hall of Mirrors, and it’s just in its own little alcove, and it’s on display on its own as a new acquisition, which I thought was interesting. But at some point, it’ll probably get moved into a bedchamber or something, I suspect. I don’t know. Yeah, I always think that’s kind of sad because, you know, I really want to see the Marie Antoinette stuff, even if no one else does.
Ann: I don’t know! I’m hoping at some point in the future I can make a trip to Paris and to Versailles, and all I would want to see would be the Marie Antoinette stuff.
Melanie: Well, exactly. Yeah. I mean, I’ve been thinking for years, actually, about doing tours of it. I’m just not well organized. I have ADHD, so I’m just not organized at all. But yeah, so at the moment, I just take my boyfriend around; he’s quite interested. I haven’t been to see the exhibition yet because… We’re going for my birthday in… next week? Is my birthday next—? Oh my god, my birthday is next week!
Ann: Happy early birthday.
Melanie: Thank you. So, yeah, we’re going for my birthday. I love going to stuff with Marc because he doesn’t really know anything about stuff like that, but he loves hearing about it. So, we’re just going to go all around, I’m going to talk to him about every single thing, and he will listen because he’s very well trained.
Ann: That sounds like the perfect boyfriend for you. I’m very happy that you have someone.
Melanie: Thank you.
Ann: One of the reasons I started my podcast is because I want to talk about all this stuff, and I’m like, “No one in my life is interested. So, I’m just going to talk to the internet,” and I found lots of people who are interested.
Melanie: Oh, my god. That is so cool. I should— I’m just not organized enough to have a podcast, plus I’m just socially awkward. And yeah, my sleep schedule… [laughs]
Ann: But you’ve got all of your books! I mean, like, this is how you’re sharing your knowledge and information.
Melanie: I don’t need to have to actually literally talk to someone.
Ann: I’m so happy that you had this conversation with me, because honestly, I told you at the beginning, I’m so, like, Marie Antoinette just in the brain, I need to have a conversation about her with somebody who gets it, who knows all these things. Just from your social media and stuff, and like, we’ve messaged each other a few times. But I was just like, I need to have this conversation with you. I need to work through my feelings about all of this.
But I want to say and remind everybody your book, Marie Antoinette: Teen Queen to Guillotine, available now, yes?
Melanie: Yes. It is now available. I don’t know when it’s coming out in… On the other side of… you know. [laughs]
Ann: There are ways that we in North America can acquire books.
Melanie: The Americas, yeah. But I mean, I’ve just sent out a load of books over to Canada and America that were ordered via my fiancé’s website. So, that’s the link that I’m primarily using for that, for pre-orders, and it has been okay. Like, Royal Mail let us do it. Because I was like, “Oh my god, am I going to be able to send these or not?” So, the good news is, I can’t speak for Amazon or my publisher or anyone else, but if anyone in the Americas wants to order them directly from me, I can actually make sure they’re sent to them. Whether they get to them, who knows? But that part, it’s possible. It’s possible that I can actually get them to you. So, that’s actually really good news, because I’ve been hearing all sorts of doomy things about, “Oh, you won’t be able to send them to people and stuff.” So actually, yeah, I can actually send them. I don’t actually know when it’s officially out, but at least then I can get them to people that want them.
Ann: Yeah. And I’ll put the link to that when I post this episode, so everybody can get them there. Are you signing them? Is that true?
Melanie: Yes, I am signing them in French. In gold pen, even!
Ann: [gasps] That’s so Versailles! Yeah, gold pen!
Melanie: Obviously, people can’t see this, but I didn’t realize until I got them that it’s like pale pink, pale pink. The actual book itself is pink, and they’ve never done that for me before.
Ann: When I first— Honestly, I just want to say your books are all with Pen and Sword, and I am a real fan. Every time I’m trying to research some obscure person from British history, the one biography that exists is from Pen and Sword. So, I respect the books a lot, but I’ve never seen one from them look this good. It’s a beautiful book.
Melanie: Yeah! Marc, my fiancé, actually designed it. I just didn’t want the usual designer because they just do, like, kind of traditional history books, and I had a very definite idea of how I wanted my book to look. Marc is incredibly good at design; he isn’t a designer, but he designs, like… This just happens to be on the table. I’m not plugging it because he’s done this in Edinburgh, but he designed, like, his flyer for Edinburgh. He just does amazing things, so I asked him to do this, and yeah, this is what he came up with for my book. And I just love it so much. Luckily, the publisher absolutely loves it. So, all my books going forward— I mean, I’ve got covers for them online, but I’m going to quietly let those drop off because he’s going to be redoing them. So, all my books are going to look kind of cool like this going forward.
Ann: I think, you know, the exhibition, the V&A exhibition, it’s Marie Antoinette Style, and I do think the aesthetic and the look is so much of her story and her image. So, I think having a book that looks so appealing, it just seems appropriate for her. You don’t want to have one of these boring covers for a Marie Antoinette book. Like, no!
Melanie: Yeah, I mean, so many of them just look so boring. And I just thought, no, I want to lean into that whole, you know, the film Marie Antoinette kind of vibe with it. So, the back cover is…
Ann: It’s bright pink. Everybody should look at the cover, but even just the title, Teen Queen to Guillotine, like, you know, that this isn’t going to be a boring biography.
Melanie: Yeah, it wasn’t ever meant to… I mean, the sort of books I’m going to write are, you know, like those really old-fashioned biographies that were written like novels, and we all used to devour them when we were kids, you know? We’d be at grandmother’s houses, and there would be like really trashy books about, like, Anne Boleyn and shit like that. Nowadays, people, certain historians whom I will who…
Ann: Who we’ve messaged each other about.
Melanie: Yes, would obviously say that these people are terrible and we shouldn’t be reading their books. But, you know, they just gave us so much enjoyment, and they were such a window into history and these lives of these incredible people. It doesn’t matter that they were really overdramatic and, you know, a bit ridiculous, and a little bit trashy perhaps. They were just so entertaining, and history should be… It doesn’t have to be dry. I mean, I’m not expecting anyone to use my book to research an essay, you know? That’s not what it’s for. I mean, you could because it’s not made up. Stuff is, you know, it’s a book about Marie Antoinette, I mean, it does what it says on the tin, basically. But that’s not its primary function. What I actually wanted to write was a really cool biography that people could, like, take on holiday and read on the beach.
Ann: Yes, exactly! Perfect. As a person who has read this book, I will say: That is how it is. It’s readable. It’s like, there’s other biographies I read, and I have to kind of pause and stop and then be like, “Oh, let me just, I don’t know, look at these footnotes,” or whatever. Yours is just like, you just devour it. It’s very readable. So, your goal achieved, as far as I’m concerned.
Melanie: Oh, thank you so much. I mean, that’s basically what I want. I just want people to kind of read it and kind of think, “Oh, this is clipping along at a good pace. Yeah, it’s really good. I’m really enjoying reading this. I can totally visualize all this crazy shit and, like, these mad clothes they’re wearing, and what the fuck’s going on?” And, you know, actually, like… Because I mean, I was a novelist first, so I kind of try— Also, my degree is actually in art history, so the visual elements, the portraits, the art, are the bones of the books that I write. So, I’ll always talk about the portraits and, you know, the decor and how people looked and stuff, because I just deal with things in a very visual way. Yeah, so I just wanted people to be able to visualize things and just get really into it. But also, just not to be heavy. I just didn’t want it to be heavy. Obviously, I write a lot of books about people getting their heads chopped off, apparently, that’s my thing. So, yeah, I mean, it’s hard. I mean, I suppose that’s the problem with writing history books; they always end with someone’s death.
Ann: Yeah. And that’s the thing… I mean, I found in your book, like, it’s fun to read as you go along. You’re not just like, “Little did she know, this was the last time she would ever see her son!” I hate when books do that. It’s like, “No, she didn’t know that, so don’t tell me that.” Like, you want to be there with her. She doesn’t know what’s going to happen next. But it’s always so hard to write the end because it’s such a tragic ending.
Melanie: Yeah. I was looking through earlier because I was signing loads of copies and getting them ready to send out. And I mean, it’s been over a year since I turned it in for editing and stuff, so I’ve just completely forgotten it. And I actually read the last line when, you know, spoilers: She gets guillotined at the end, guys. I’m really sorry. I read that last line that I wrote, and I was just like, “Ohhh! That’s actually really… I really put that well. That’s actually really sweet,” because, you know… I don’t know if you remember the last.
Ann: I don’t remember specifically.
Melanie: Is this going to be a spoiler?
Ann: I mean, we all know the end of the story. It’s fine.
Melanie: Hang on. I was just like, oh! “In a heartbeat, the noise and roar of the crowd and brightness of daylight all faded away to nothing, and Marie Antoinette was at peace at last.” And I was just like, “Did I write that? Ohhh! Sad, innit?” [laughs] That’s actually like, oh, it’s actually quite, quite lovely. Yeah, that’s a really nice way of putting it, you know? Because I think when I wrote that, it felt like being on such a roller coaster, and it was just all this stuff happening, and it was just getting worse and worse and worse. It was like a fly trapped in the spider’s web, where it’s just the more it struggles, the worse things get. And then, yeah, I just thought, well, how would I feel, you know? And it was like, honestly, the thought… As she’s dying, I mean. She must have just thought, “Thank fuck for that.”
Ann: I know! I was just thinking, yeah, exactly. She had been wanting to die for a while, just because, like, “Just get me out of this.”
Melanie: Yeah, it was her only escape, and she was free, she finally escaped. And it’s… I don’t know, she was so let down by people. Like, if her mother had still been alive, none of that would have happened. None of it.
Ann: Well, so much is just like the, you know, unsung villain of the whole her whole life was really smallpox and just how it kept killing off crucial people that just really pivoted the king… Anyway, I agree. I think if her mother had been around, things would have been different. But it’s like, 750 things had to all go wrong in order for this to be the result, and they all did. Every single one of them.
Melanie: Yeah, she was so unfortunate. But yeah, but at least she got to try curry. [laughs]
Ann: She found it a bit too spicy, didn’t she?
Melanie: Yeah, but I just love the fact that, every so often, I do think of this. I thought of it a bit earlier today, it just pops into my head sometimes, like, “Marie Antoinette had curry.” Like, how cool is that? It’s one of those unexpected, weird things. Yeah, you just don’t— You sort of think, “Oh, yeah. When was curry invented?” Marie Antoinette had curry, you know? And we know what she thought of it, and I just think that’s wonderful. I think it’s really neat.
Ann: I love those humanizing details, which is like, oh, that was a person. And she didn’t live that long ago in the grand scheme of things. Yeah.
Melanie: No, I mean, because we’ve got photos of Empress Marie Louise, who was a great niece, who was married to Napoleon. There’s photos of her, and that’s just insane to me. There’s photos of guys who are, I mean, really old, they were old at the time, but guys who fought at Waterloo, there’s photos of them as old men. It’s just like, it’s not that long afterwards. I mean, if Marie Antoinette had lived a full span of life, and I’m not sure she would have done because I think she was actually really ill.
Ann: She was quite sick, yeah, by the end.
Melanie: And I think that might have always happened. Then, I mean, it’s possible that she could have been maybe still alive in the 1840s, and we would have had photos, perhaps, maybe. When would… I think people had photos then? We’ve got photos of, like, a reasonably…
Ann: Early photos. But yeah. And even Marie Louise, one of the things I read suggested that she apparently looked a lot like Marie Antoinette. So, to have photos of her, it’s kind of like, okay! people who knew Marie Antoinette and saw her said there was a resemblance, and we can see a photo of her. So, you can kind of…
Melanie: I just find it… Yeah, it’s just so interesting. But yeah, it just wasn’t that long ago, really, in terms of generation. And yeah, I just find it so interesting, it’s just such a weird… So weird, poor thing.
But yes, so the next book should be next year, hopefully.
Ann: I mean, I just want to thank you again. Thank you so much. Like, I know you don’t do podcasts usually, but I really feel honoured that you joined me for this conversation. I’m so happy to have this conversation with you. I think the listeners, too, we’re all in withdrawal. We’re all in Marie Antoinette withdrawal after going through all these episodes for so long. And so, I think your book is a great thing that if people want to really dive in and learn even more details than what I was able to cover, Teen Queen to Guillotine. Everybody should read it, everybody should read it. But also, everyone should follow you on social media because you’re constantly… Even when I was doing the podcast, you’d post about some portrait I hadn’t seen before. I’m like, “Wait, what’s that portrait?” And then suddenly I had to put that in my podcast because every portrait has a weird story.
Melanie: I know! I love all that. I used to just post constantly about her portraits. So, I’ve been delving out the old research and stuff and just, like, sticking them on my Substack because I can’t think of anything else to talk about because I, too, just think about it 24/7, basically. So, yeah, that’s… I mean, I’d do more podcasts if people let me do them at, like, three o’clock in the morning.
Ann: The time zone works out great for me. Yeah, the secret is just North American people.
Melanie: Yeah. I just won’t do any more UK ones, because if people expect me to do stuff during the day, it is not happening. Like, I sleep until, like, one o’clock, and then I get up, and I roam around drinking coffee and shouting at my cats. And then, around about midnight, I come to life, and yeah. [laughs]
Ann: It works out so well! Because usually when I’m interviewing people from the UK, for me, it’s like, okay, I’ll wake up at 6:00 a.m., and for them, it’s like, three in the afternoon or something like that.
Melanie: I wish I’d known because there’s no way you would have had to do that, seriously. No, this is perfect.
Ann: Perfect for me, too! But yeah, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me. And everyone should read your book and order it from you. I’ll message you when this episode is going to come out, just so you can know if you want to share it and stuff. But yeah, again, thank you so much.
Melanie: Thank you!
—————
So, again, you can follow Melanie Burrows on Substack, she’s on Instagram, she’s on Threads. All of her accounts are called Madame Guillotine, but it’s @MmeGuillotine is where you can find her. And then, also her book, Marie Antoinette: Teen Queen to Guillotine, is available to buy. The best place to get it, as she said, is probably from her fiancé’s website, which is MarcBurrows.co.uk. I’ll put a link to that in the show notes as well, so you can get your personalized signed copy in French with her gold pen. Even just go to the site to look at this book. It’s a beautiful-looking object, and again, I’m so grateful to Melanie both for writing this book that really helped me with my research and also for joining me for this conversation.
I promise we’re moving into our next era on Vulgar History: Halloween era. Mary Shelley Month kicks off on Wednesday with a conversation about Mary Shelley’s mom, Mary Wollstonecraft, who, guess what? Went to Paris during the French Revolution. So, we’re like, bridging from one topic into another anyway. So, there will be a new episode of Vulgar History on Wednesday. Thank you so much for listening, and until next time, keep your pants on and your tits out.
Vulgar History is researched, scripted, and hosted by Ann Foster, that’s me! Editor is Cristina Lumague. Theme music is by the Severn Duo. Transcripts of this podcast are available at VulgarHistory.com by Aveline Malek. You can get early, ad-free episodes of Vulgar History by becoming a paid member of our Patreon for as low as one dollar a month at Patreon.com/AnnFosterWriter. Vulgar History merchandise is available at VulgarHistory.com/Store for Americans and for everyone else at VulgarHistory.Redbubble.com. Follow us on social media @VulgarHistoryPod and get in touch with me via email at VulgarHistoryPod@gmail.com.
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