Marie Antoinette. The Portrait of an Average Woman

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Life at the court of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette has long captivated readers, who have been drawn by accounts of the intrigues and pageantry that were to come to such a sudden and unexpected end: the fourteen-year-old who took Versailles by storm, her frustrations with an aloof and inattentive husband, her affair with the Swedish Count von Fersen, her lavish tastes and spending and, ultimately, the chaos of the French Revolution and the savagery of the Terror. An impassioned narrative, Zweig's classic account, a combination of history and literary flair, focuses on the human emotions of the participants and victims of the French Revolution, making it both an engrossingly compelling read and a sweeping and informative history.