#11: Marie Antoinette
Marie Antoinette never said “Let them eat cake,” a line circulating before she became queen. Married into France’s court as a teenager, she faced xenophobia, gossip, and expectations she could not satisfy. She spent extravagantly at times and resisted portions of the Revolution, so innocence is another myth. Yet pornographic propaganda transformed her into the source of national collapse. France’s fiscal crisis had structural causes far beyond one queen’s wardrobe, parties, or disliked Austrian birth.
