Did Marie Antoinette, the notorious and ill-fated queen of France, actually respond to the peasants' clamor for bread with, "Let them eat cake" ? Such myths and fallacies associated with the consort of the guillotined Louis XVI are cleared up in this vivid, well-rounded biography by the popular British author of, among other well-received works, Mary Queen of Scots (1969) and Royal Charles: Charles II and the Restoration (1979). Marie Antoinette was dispatched to the French court as a teenage bride by her mother, Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, to cement an alliance between the two "superpowers." Marie's intended role was to function as a spy-agent for the Austrian imperial court. She had been raised with a certain informality, a sensibility she brought with her to the opulent Palace of Versailles, but Fraser is quick to admit to Marie's extravagance once she became queen. Even though Marie's marriage to Louis XVI proved problematic, the king never took a mistress; however, Marie got saddled with a reputation for taking lovers of both sexes. Although Marie had no real taste for politics, the revolution proved fatal for her, but Fraser concludes, "her weaknesses, although manifest, were of trivial worth in the balance of her misfortune." --Brad Hooper

A child-princess is married off to a husband of limited carnal appetite. Her indiscretions and navet, scorned by elderly dowagers, are coupled with charity, joie de vivre and almost divine glamour but her life is cut brutally short. The queen of France's life is rich in emotional resonance, riddled with sexual subplots and personal tragedies, and provides fertile ground for biographers. Fraser's sizable new portrait avoids the saccharine romance of Evelyne Lever's recent Marie Antoinette, balancing empathy for the pleasure-loving queen with an awareness of the inequalities that fed revolution after all, Marie herself was fully conscious of them. Her subject shows no let-them-eat cake arrogance, but is deeply (even surprisingly) compassionate, with a "public reputation for sweetness and mercy" that is only later sullied by vituperative pamphleteers and bitter unrest. She would sometimes be trapped by ingenuousness, and later by a fatal sense of duty. Yet her graceful bearing, acquired under the tutelage of her demanding mother, the empress Maria Teresa, made her an unusually popular princess before she was scapegoated as "Madame Deficit" and much, much worse. The portrait is drawn delicately, with pleasant touches of humor (a long-awaited baby is conceived around the time of Benjamin Franklin's visit: "Perhaps the King found this first contact with the virile New World inspirational"). Fraser's approach is controlled and thoughtful, avoiding the extravagance of Alison Weir's royal biographies. Her queen is neither heroine nor villain, but a young wife and mother who, in her journey into maturity, finds herself caught in a deadly vise. Color and b&w illus. (on sale: Sept. 18) Forecast: Fraser needs no introduction to American audiences. She will come over from England for a five-city tour, and with widespreand favorable reviews, this should have no trouble making the bestseller lists. It's a BOMC, History Book Club, Literary Guild and QPB selection. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Fraser (Mary Queen of Scots) has written an exciting biography of a young Austrian woman named Marie Antoinette, the future bride of a future king of France, during a period of increasing political unrest. This volume moves quickly, but not without the most interesting of historical detail, through the courts of Austria and France. Marie Antoinette was the bride at 14 to Louis Auguste, her senior by just over a year; they both lacked the maturity for marriage, let alone the political leadership to command a European power. Fraser leads us through the daily lives of the two young people constantly before the public eye; from the planned marriage we move into an era of political and social revolution, knowing what the final violent outcome will be yet hoping for a different end. A well-researched biography that may cause one to rethink the role in which history has cast Marie Antoinette, this complements but doesn't replace Evelyne Lever's slightly less sympathetic Marie Antoinette: The Last Queen of France (LJ 6/1/00). Highly recommended for academic and public libraries. Bruce H. Webb, Clarion Univ. of Pennsylvania Lib. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

A biography of a queen who never said, as legend has it, "Let them eat cake." Novelist and historian Fraser (Faith and Treason, 1996, etc.) manages to turn this spoiled, not-too-bright princess into a likable character. Pretty Marie was raised to further the Hapsburg family's political ambitions, as defined by her dominating mother, Empress Maria Theresa of Austria-Hungary. Fraser presents her subject's childhood, full of dancing but short on books, as a smaller version of the proving grounds she would inhabit for the rest of her life. She fought her brothers and sisters for the time and attention of their mother; married to King Louis XVI, she vied to increase her power at Versailles; as a prisoner in the Tower, she fought for survival according to the rules of the Revolutionary Tribunal. At each of these challenges, she failed. For years, Marie's position at court was undermined by the king's refusal to have sex (or at least proper sex) with her. When she finally fulfilled her function and bore an heir, 11 years after marriage, France was already in the financial crisis that would lead to the convening of the Estates-General and, later, the Revolution. If she had been a more successful plotter, Antoinette may have saved her life and the lives of her children. But skeletons from past court intrigues-most involved the Queen's enemies taking advantage of her-as well as inaction on the part of her brother, Joseph II, the Holy Roman Emperor, led her to the guillotine. For a brief few years, Antoinette did have a heyday, though. After the birth of her son, she made a splash by abandoning the elaborate dresses and makeup that marked Versailles, a bold move for the leading figure of world fashion in the late-18th century. While Antoinette never made the oft-repeated line to peasants seeking bread, she was a spendthrift, a trait that helped do her in when the revolutionary lawyers made their case against her. Antoinette's story isn't really a tragedy-but Fraser somehow makes it seem like one.