Marie Antoinette

Marie Antoinette
Born on November 2, 1755, in Vienna, Austria, Marie Antoinette helped provoke the popular unrest that led to the French Revolution and to the overthrow of the monarchy in August 1792. She became a symbol of the excesses of the monarchy and is often credited with the famous quote: "Let them eat cake," although there is no evidence she actually said it. As a 20-year consort to Louis XVI, she was beheaded nine months after he was, on October 16, 1793, by order of the Revolutionary tribunal.

 During her husband’s tumultuous reign, she earned the ire of the people because of her extravagant and expensive taste, and her apparent obliviousness to the hardship and political upheaval around her. With the abolition of the constitutional monarchy in late September 1792, the royal family was arrested and imprisoned. The deposed king was put on trial, found guilty of high treason, and then sentenced to death by guillotine early the next year. 

The “Widow Capet” was held in the Conciergerie, the “antechamber to the guillotine” during the months following her husband’s execution; during this period, her health severely  deteriorated 
Among the accusations leveled against her included the notorious claim that she had sexually abused her son. Firsthand accounts noted the queen’s composure, even the sympathy she briefly drew from the audience after a sympathetic appeal to the mothers among them; regardless, she was found guilty of treason and sentenced, like her husband, to die at the guillotine. She was carried by cart through Paris at noon, and then beheaded in front of a crowd of spectators, who reportedly erupted into cheers as the blade descended and ended the life of a woman who was a symbol of the root of all their strife. 

Sources and further reading:
http://archive.org/stream/cu31924024293429#page/n281/mode/2up
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Antoinette
Image via Wikimedia Commons