Was Marie Antoinette actually a lesbian? Where does this idea come from?

Was Marie Antoinette actually a lesbian? Where does this idea come from?

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Better question: why are her cheeks so ruddy? Did she suffer from rosacea?

She lives at a time when sexual attraction, romantic attraction, sexual activity, and matrimony, were not mashed up into identities.

She was not a lesbian because she wanted to marry and have sex with a man.

propaganda leaflets m8

>Where does this idea come from?

probably from you since I've never heard it from anyone else
Mary An didn't fuck Louis because he was autistic and had phimosis but she had male lovers

Only way to get Louis to impregnate her was with some cheek slapping foreplay

How cheeky

It's called rouge

Viva Le France

I don't think she played DnD

>Mary An didn't fuck Louis because he was autistic and had phimosis but she had male lovers

He didn't have phimosis, that's a myth. His penis was structurally normal, as per the investigations of multiple physicians. They actually consummated their marriage within 2 years of being married, but a lot of factors (physical pain for both of them, awkwardness/shyness, her having a 1.5 year period where she was gambling until like 3 in the morning whereas he went to bed at 10, and Louis not being taught that he was supposed to thrust until he came inside her) got in the way of her getting pregnant. She didn't have male lovers, another myth.

>probably from you since I've never heard it from anyone else

It's a popular trope on social media, mostly Tumblr and Instagram.

As for where it comes from: she was accused of being a lesbian by propagandists--or rather she was accused of being a tribade (a woman who acts like a man, including in their choice of sexual partner) since the modern concept of a lesbian did not exist in 18th century France--; there's a film called "Les adieux a la reine" which portrays her as a lesbian, and because she wrote in very flowery, gushy language popular for both men and women in that time period, and because most people lack the inability to understand relationships except in black-and-white terms of "gay/lesbian or straight" they assumes it means she wanted to fuck women because called her female (and male) friends "dear heart" and said "I love you" to female friends.

>too retarded to know to thrust
The Jacobins were justified.

>Louis not being taught that he was supposed to thrust until he came inside her
Yeah, I would've told people I had phimosis.

To be fair, he was never given any sort of sex education or exposed to sex due to being neglected in childhood.

Normally, the king was supposed to give him "the talk" but Louis XV didn't really care and in fact knew that Louis didn't know how to have sex (he wrote that Louis was excited for his upcoming marriage and consummation but "did not know what he actually had to do, when it comes time to do it"). And Marie Antoinette's only sex education was a letter from her 16 year old sister describing how painful and horrible sex was and how you should just lay there and pray for it to be over. Not a recipe for a healthy sex life.

He had to have it explained to him how sex works from his Brother-in-Law by using locks and keys as an example. He was clearly autistic, and on top of that a terrible ruler. The Tennis Court Oath should have included a section about bullying the manlet monarch.

MA was the subject of all sorts of salacious sexual fantasy in her time. Think of it like Rule 34. People loved erotic drawings and stories about her, but that doesn't mean it was taken literally. Maybe some of that fantasy was misinterpreted as rumor and then, later on, misinterpreted as fact. In reality it was just meant to entertain the French and slander the crown all at once, just like the fake news and tabloids of today. Whether or not it was presented in earnest -- and it usually wasn't -- it was mainly meant to associate Antoinette with the excess and bad taste that she actually DID display.

true though that people have always had a hard time believing that a woman could be a party girl and not a floozy.

>Yeah, I would've told people I had phimosis.

He only told his brother in law, not the public. Joseph II wrote that to his brother after visiting Louis and Antoinette in order to have heart-to-hearts with them about their sex life. The letter wasn't published until the early 20th century, so the French public just assumed he couldn't get it up. According to him Louis said he felt sexual desire, had normal erections, put it inside her... then stayed still for several minutes before removing himself. In addition to having pretty much no sex education, his staying still may have been because Antoinette experienced a lot of pain when he moved; she possibly had vaginismus, although she was never examined by physicians because gynecology at the time was limited.

>He had to have it explained to him how sex works from his Brother-in-Law by using locks and keys as an example.

The "lock and key example" is a myth. He knew to put his penis inside her vagina. He and Antoinette consummated their marriage in 1772--5 years before Joseph II visited--and had regular attempts at consummation for the next few years, which were a failure due to pain on both their ends and an increasing distance between them after Louis became king because of his increased royal duties and the period where she went hog-wild with fashion/gambling/etc.

What Joseph II told him was that he absolutely had to thrust and to finish inside her in order for her to become pregnant. Louis assumed that as long as his penis went fully inside, that enough of his 'seed' would come out through leakage that he didn't have to thrust or fully ejaculate inside her.

>Maybe some of that fantasy was misinterpreted as rumor and then, later on, misinterpreted as fact.

Her alleged tribadism wasn't limited to pamphlets or fantasy, though. Her supposed love affairs with women were the reason why the duchesse de Polignac fled France in 1789 when pamphlets calling for the head of the "queen's lover" circulated; and when the princesse de Lamballe was brutally murdered, her murderers attempted to bring her head to the prison where the royal family was held to "make the queen kiss the head of her lover." It, along with all the other propaganda lobbied about over the past 15 years, was brought up in her trial and used against her as well.

After all that and her diseased runt of a child dies in a jail cell while good Frenchmen enjoy wine and song during the Festival of Reason. Truly, it was a great time for the Republic.

Surprisingly informative thread.

That's how Veeky Forums works. We shitpost, but with a lot of good information on the topic wedded to it. This is why we've been able to resist /pol/ so well.

>Louis not being taught that he was supposed to thrust until he came inside her
LOL who in the universe needs to be taught about that seriously? It's supposed to be instinctive, I never taught my dog how to fuck and however believe me he perfectly knows how to proceed.

>instinctive

Louis didn't have instincts of any kind.

For him sex was a chore and a duty, not a pleasure. He was eager to be done with it, he didn't really enjoy it when it was happening and neither did his wife.

It's la you monkey

And here's MA with one or the other of those women, not sure which. Possibly these rumors didn't originate in the tabloid press, but they were certainly reinforced by it.

I think it's quite impossible to tease apart the propaganda and the allegations. Likewise, it's difficult to tease apart the prurient interest and the class rage. We can be sure that the folks who carried out the murder and threats saw the pamphlets, which were deliberately designed to give the French a literally raging boner. Besides, material that is published -- by anyone, for any reason -- is sometimes enough to legitimize all sorts of crazy behavior. If I might skirt the board rules a bit, Pizzagate is a great example of how effective this stuff can be, even on modern people who are (arguably) much more sophisticated and secure than the lower French classes of the 18th century.

>be Luigi
>get royal top quality pussy without even paying a drink
>do nothing with it
Guillotine was not enough.

I mean... humans are different psychologically than dogs. Your dog isn't going to stop if the dog he's fucking cries out in pain, whereas with Louis that's what he did.

I think it's interesting to compare the libelles, especially the basest ones which are just about her supposed sex life, with the impact on her public reputation and even political consequences. Because at the first rise of these sexual libelles you have the Affair of the Diamond Necklace, where she was totally innocent but because her reputation had sunk so low with the public thanks to an onslaught of these types of pamphlets, the Cardinal was redeemed literally and in the eyes of the public for believing that the queen of France would have had a late night mystery meeting with a man. Whereas she was figuratively condemned despite not having any role in the Affair.

And then 1789 and onward they just get more outrageous. Like this one depicting her and the princesse de Lamballe getting it on in the Temple after they were just imprisoned, which accompanied a narrative depicting the royal family's "last days" of sex and debauchery just before the monarchy was officially abolished.

>Besides, material that is published -- by anyone, for any reason -- is sometimes enough to legitimize all sorts of crazy behavior. I

it's definitely most evident in her trial. Almost everything that is brought up is directly from these sorts of pamphlets, just endless rumors and made up stories. From her having an affair with Lafayette to wanting to see the blood of French people run in the streets to fucking women and everything in between. Marie Antoinette herself even said at her trial, "No one has produced against me any positive fact."

So you tell me it's a very rare case of double rape where each participant were both volunteer AND non consenting?
wtf I love royalty now.

I mean, not really. They both wanted to consummate because they wanted children. It was just difficult for them to do so for mostly psychological but some physical (pain, though whether it was abnormal or just pain from lack of foreplay is debatable) reasons.

She's wearing a ton of cheek rouge, as was the norm

It just looks to have been applied rather inelegantly.

I assume if Louis didn't even know he had to go in and out of his wife he probably wasn't exactly an expert when it came to eating puss

As others have said, pamphlets and court rumors. Marie-Antoinette was horribly mistreated by History, and only now do you see balanced accounts of her life popping up.

she was actually a qt trap

:3

It's just how it was worn during that time period, at least in France.

Although it seems that pair finally experienced some sexual pleasure once he was told that he had to "fully" consummated the marriage with ejaculation inside.

Louis wrote

>I delight in the pleasure, and I regret that I wasn’t aware of it for so long!

And Antoinette wrote

>I am in the most essential happiness of my entire life. It has already been more than eight days since my marriage was perfectly consummated; the proof has been repeated and yesterday even more completely than the first time.

there's another letter but I can't find the quote right now, written to one of her sisters where she talks about how the king repeats his attentions on her in the most gentle and sensitive way.

Without porn, sexual education and with masturbation being frowned upon, would you have figured it out all out at 15? Especially if you were a bit of late bloomer as both of them were? These were just two awkward teens trying to figure things out, trying their best with way too much weight on their shoulder, cut them some slack.

Usually the heir would have been given the talk and often deflowered by some lady of the court at the first wet dream (fun fact, they called the heir’s cum stains on the sheets a “map of France”), but Louis wasn’t heir until very late.

She actually had a famously beautiful complexion.

From a court painter

>But the most remarkable thing about her face was the splendour of her complexion. I never have seen one so brilliant, and brilliant is the word, for her skin was so transparent that it bore no umber in the painting. Neither could I render the real effect of it as I wished. I had no colours to paint such freshness, such delicate tints, which were hers alone, and which I had never seen in any other woman.

Intense red rouge was seen as a symbol of wealth because only the wealthy could afford the rich red rouge made from carmine as opposed to vegetable juice. So the rouge in this painting is one of the indicators of her status. It's possible that it was something painted in by the artist to symbolize Antoinette's status due to the lack of traditional queenly fashion or other symbols of her status in the portrait, rather than rouge she actually she wore at sittings. Because at this point Marie Antoinette wasn't wearing as much rouge but was rather following the simpler English style of fashion, which was a small bit of rouge on the cheek and lips to imitate a natural rosy complexion/natural flush.

>was perfectly consummated

hnng, so cute

Normies with no sex ed get each other pregnant all the time, in fact no sex ed is probably the best way to get teens pregnant.

No sex ed, sure, but normies watch porn, see films, series with sex scenes, hear their friends talking about it, masturbate. They might not know how condoms work, but they know the motions, that’s just how pervasive sex is in modern society. None of that for a barely pubescent sheltered royal couple. Instincts could have taken over (“feels good when I enter, what happens if I do it again?”), but it was painful for her because Louis had no idea of what he was doing. If your wife is writhing in pain under you each time, you wouldn’t do something that hurts her, right? This isn’t some doujin with hips moving on their own.

this. and her only lessons on sex were her mother saying "submit to your husband and turn a blind eye if he takes a mistress" and her closest sister writing a letter about her own consummation which described the act as a painful torture.

I'LL FUCKING KILL YOU

>then stayed still for several minutes before removing himself.
I understand it from the perspective of
>she possibly had vaginismus
but isn't it almost a natural reaction to thrust? It's pretty dang hard not to do it in such a scenario. Hell way back before any sexual education reached me that's how I masturbated.

>No sex ed, sure, but normies watch porn, see films, series with sex scenes, hear their friends talking about it, masturbate. They might not know how condoms work, but they know the motions, that’s just how pervasive sex is in modern society.
You do know that there was a time before the internet right?
Your parents generation had way more teen pregnancies than ours.

you do know that there was more to the comment, right?

I do, but as you probably realised I wasn't talking about those two specific individuals. I was merely pointing out how horribly flawed the 'sex is pervasive in modern society'-argument is.

>Where does this idea come from?
Probably from the revolutionaries, who also spread the idea that the king was a eunuch or a gay or had a deformed penis (he wasn't), or that Antoinette molested her son (she didn't).

>She didn't have male lovers, another myth.
I call BS on that one

Thats cute, i'm glad they got to figure out sex before they were murdered horribly

The basis for the rumors for her having lovers is her sleeping at the Trianon, away from the court because she couldn’t handle it anymore. Which was turned into her having night long orgies with the guards. There’s nothing indicating she might have had lovers. Only one where there might be reasonable doubt is von Fersen, but I’ve never seen conclusive evidence. Personally I think he was at most a particularly close orbiter.

Everyone wanted to get dicked by the Chad of Chads

Perhaps, but would Fersen put his head on the line to get the queen, and would the queen put her (as far as we know, happy) marriage, the alliance between France and Austria, her and her children’s future in jeopardy and international shame for her country just for some pretty boy?

only people that believe the Fersen theory are old frustrated archivists who’d love to get ravished by the Swedish chad and “historians” who write fanfic-level smut about Marie Antoinete

It was a longstanding rumor/insult back during the Revolution. Specifically she was close friends with another woman (her name I'm forgetting) the rumor is they were lovers so when the woman's head was chopped off it was paraded in front of Marie's cell where she they jeered her and told her to kiss it.

Likely it was all just bullshit slander as yet another example of the decadent royal family and the evil foreign queen.

Louis XV is really overlooked in the history of terrible rulers. Did he actually do anything good?

>but as you probably realised I wasn't talking about those two specific individuals

then there was literally no point in replying and you're dumber than I thought

>I call BS on that one

Not BS. There's no evidence she had any lovers, male or female.

I even decided to give one of the newer "historians" (and I use the word loosely) a chance by reading their book which claimed to SHAKE THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE FERSEN RELATIONSHIP with TANTALIZING NEW EVIDENCE.

Yeah, their evidence was:

-A French diplomat helping plan the royal family's escape to Metz wrote to an English lord that Fersen was an extremely close friend of Marie Antoinette "rumored to be the father of the dauphin" (So Gossip = fact, and the context of this diplomat answering the lord's uneasiness about Fersen being involved by assuring him that the royal family was close to him doesn't matter to the "historian")

-An English aristocrat wrote in a letter that Sophie was probably Fersen's daughter (no evidence from this aristocrat, just again repeating rumors; so again, gossip = fact; but selectively, since gossip that the comte d'Artois was Marie Therese's father is apparently not fact, so only some gossip can be fact to this "historian')

-Marie Antoinette wrote some tender words to Fersen, including "I love you madly" which was crossed out (but NOT crossed out by Marie Antoinette herself, so she didn't consider this worthy of hiding; context that Marie Antoinette wrote with these type of flourishes to everyone she considered intimate is ignored, context that Marie Antoinette was responding to a pissy, almost frenzied letter from Fersen during his attempt to help them in the revolution basically saying she didn't trust him is ignored; context that "I love you madly" was also used by Marie Antoinette to describe her feelings for her children, and by other contemporaries to describe love between everyone from lovers to siblings, yet the historian doesn't also claim she was fucking her kids or that incest was rampant)

And the rest of the book was a rehash of their earlier book, all gossip, no substance.

>the woman's head was chopped off it was paraded in front of Marie's cell where she they jeered her and told her to kiss it.

as expected of the French

Under the Regency he was alright. He got some land in Europe. Also his wife was top tier, but he got tired of her. But other than that, as far as I know, no. I wouldn’t be objective in judging him, though, I have an irrational hate for him, man and ruler.

The princesse de Lamballe was too pure for this world. One of the many noble martyrs of the révolution, victim of scared people put in a state of frenzy by bourgeois agitators.

Read my post again mate and you might understand the relevance of it.

Is there any truth to the story that he died due to contracting syphilis by raping a peasant girl?

no. he died from smallpox.

Cute, A CUTE

If you want to understand how such rumors come about, consider that there are plenty people who genuinely believe Miranda Cosgrove got gangbanged by some University football team, just because some user wrote a somewhat detailed fictional account about it.

That one's not Marie but a self-portrait of the artist (forgetting her name).

She is cute too but I was referring to the sexual exploits of Louis and Marie Antoinette.

Oh, yeah it's something you could easily make a comedy out of.

>SACRE BLEU LOUIS, THRUST BOY! THRUST!

And add to that the cutthroat environment of Versailles and the court in general. Before Marie’s time most of the rumor mill and machinations would be reserved for the king’s semi-official mistress, with the queen generally left alone. The way to power and money for women was generally through the king’s bed, everything was fair to win his favors. But Louis XVI never took a mistress. And so bevause of that and Marie’s foreigness, her not being ready, armed to deal with court warfare, and a few foolish mistakes, Marie got possibly the worst treatment a queen ever got from the court.

It's actually the duchesse de Polignac! The artist you're thinking of is Elisabeth Vigee Lebrun, but her Polignac portrait looks very similar to her self-portrait so it's a common mistake!

They were honestly really fucking cute together. In their first years together they were shy at first but grew to love one another. They had a few years of discord when she was at the height of her "filling the empty hole inside me with shopping, gambling and fashion" but after she had children they settled into a comfortable, loving groove again.

Some quotes from the Austrian ambassador to France because fuck it, I like their cuteness

>[Louis was] kissing Mme la Dauphine, he said to her, “But do you love me?" Mme la Dauphine answered, “Yes, you cannot doubt it, I love you sincerely and respect you even more.” The young prince seemed very moved by these words; he caressed Mme la Dauphine most tenderly.

>He spoke to his august consort in an infinitely cordial and tender manner, saying among other things that he loved her with all his heart and that he could swear to her he had never had the least feeling or sentiment for any woman, but for her alone.

>[Marie Antoinette] ran to [her husband,] threw her arms round his neck and hugging him tenderly, told him: “I feel, my dear husband, that I love you more each day. Your honesty and frankness charm me; the more I compare you with the others [note: his brothers] the more I know how much more you are worth.

Or to quote Louis XVI during the preparation for his trial, who (according to his lawyers) frequently spoke of his wife and how much he loved her and respected her, and how the French people had been misled about her. His lawyer remember him finally saying: "If only they knew what she is worth."

heh

Anime fucking when?

Fuck the sans-culottes.

Never heard of that myself.

Most bad things labeled on her were character assassination. It went all the way up to allegations of incest with her youngest son when she was in court.

Not wanting to defend the royals for everything. But the truthful shirty parts of the king and queen are buried under dozens of slanderous rumors.

wasn't he like 6 feet something senpai

It would have a really, really shitty end.

>her best friend got raped in an alley and beheaded by revolutionaries, who then tried to show her the head.
>almost gets torn apart by trashy fishwives
>husband keeps failing at compromising with violent revolutionaries
>spend your last few years of life in a virtual prison, then an actual one, and then in a kangaroo court.
>get executed
>children end up in various states of murder or depression

So, like... Is there a history about royal deflowerers.

This is the first time I've ever heard of this.

There's Rose of Versailles which has cute moments between them, but it does make her fall in love with the dashing count Fersen.

Godamn thats cute

anyone got the letter wtf

>It went all the way up to allegations of incest with her youngest son when she was in court.

After being pressed to answer the charges, she finally slowly rose and, to quote her trial transcript, "in an emotional and animated air," addressed the spectators:

>If I did not reply it was because nature recoils from such an accusation against a mother. I appeal to all mothers who are present here!

Even the hardened fishwives at her trial responded sympathetically, and the spectator crowd responded so loud in her favor they had to call the court to order and threaten to make everyone leave to regain it.

...

>it does make her fall in love with the dashing count Fersen.
Fuck, I'm watching this right now. I will have to stop if it's full of bullshit like that.

I'll see if I can find it for you. Granted, this sister (Maria Carolina) wrote the letter when she was 15 years old and after a very unpleasant initial reception on both her and her husband's end. I would imagine that the first sex of any royal couple was not super pleasant. In any case, she ended up having 18 children and was perpetually pregnant for almost 2 decades.

We’ll put the ending before things go to shit. Or pull an alternate reality where the revolution stops at the Fete de la Federation.

It's not too bad, from what I remember. I think Oscar even calls her out? It's been years since I watched it, granted.

feels bad man..

Maybe a dashing user can step out of a portal and save them all.

fucking TRIGGERED

>an ending where Louis becomes the People's Monarch that we deserve, ushering in a constitutional monarchy that balances the needs of the people with the prestige of the monarchy
>Antoinette dies old and beloved, hardly remembered for the scandals of her youth but instead for the charity she bestowed on a people who had so often terrorized her in the past but came to love her once again
>Louis never remarries after her death, and instead spends his last years ensuring that his son Louis Charles is ready to inherit the throne of King of the French, while his daughter Marie Therese has been long since married to someone that wasn't her awkward cousin and has reaped the benefits of the motherhood she so longed for
>And Louis' spinster sister, Madame Elisabeth, spends her waning years at her estate of Montreueil, caring for the local poor as she had always done, becoming known to all the local children as Tante Elisabeth

>she ended up having 18 children and was perpetually pregnant for almost 2 decades
Nice

Didn't find the letter I was thinking of yet, but I did find one that Carolina wrote to their one of their shared governesses where she addresses how she fears that Antoinette will have to go through the same thing with her husband.

>... one suffers a martyrdom which is all the worse because one has to appear always pleased. I know what it is, and I pity deeply those who still have to make the beginning. For my part, I tell you plaintly that I would rather die than suffer what I suffered at first. Now, it is all right; therefore I can say, and it is no exaggeration, if Religion had not said to me, 'Think of God,' I should have killed myself, and that to live a week seemed to me like hell, and I wanted to die.

She had just turned 16 when she wrote this, as well.

Ah so I found which book I read the letter in, Evelyne Lever's "Correspondence de Marie Antoinette," which is naturally packed away in a storage unit. If I can find it online I'll share here.

Louis XIV was pretty much raped by a woman his mother gave the green light to. She was 42, apparently pretty ugly, possibly even one eyed. Didn’t stop him from fucking her for two years ans being embarrassed about it forever. She got a 2000 livres pension and a nobility title for her husband out of it.

“It is certain that she had had the virginity of King Louis XIV, terrible as she was. As the prince was very young, she one day put her hand in the breeches, having found him alone in the the Louvre, where, so to speak, she violated him, or at least surprised him, so that she obtained what she desired, the fire of the youth having prevented the prince from reflecting on what he was doing”.

Here’s the scene in the series Versailles: xvideos.com/video20841449/valerie_thoumire_versailles_s01e03_2015

Goddamn, now I’m sad.

>ywn cause a succession crisis because your fetishes make it difficult to create an heir.

>xvideos.com/video20841449/valerie_thoumire_versailles_s01e03_2015

Is this series dubbed in French? I watched it in English on Netflix and I don't remember this. Maybe I blocked it out.