Marie Antoinette Before She Was Queen

405 Words2 Pages
Queen of France, Marie Antoinette, (born Maria Antonia Josepha Joanna) was born on November 2, 1755 in Vienna, Austria. Her mother was Maria Theresa, the Empress of Austria, and her father was Francis I, the Holy Roman Emperor. She was the fifteenth of sixteenth children. As a child, the Queen had a less than normal upbringing for an aristocrat in Austria. Her family was very informal, and etiquette in their household was quite unknown. As Marie Antoinette aged, she became a very lively, funny person. Her true passion was theater, focusing mostly on comedy. One of her favorite things to do was play music, especially her harp, but she could sight read music extremely well. Upon the ending of the Seven Years' War, tying an alliance between Austria and France became a main priority for Empress Maria Theresa. At the time, the easiest and most effective way to bond two separate countries was by marriage. Soon enough, the son of the French Emperor, Louis XV, passed away, leaving his 11-year-old grandson heir to the throne. Within months, it had been decided that Louis Auguste and Marie Antoinette were to marry. In the years to come, Marie was found to be lazy with a short attention span. On many accounts, she was described as dissipated. Her teachers thought she was difficult to educate because she constantly got off topic. She demonstrated many symptoms of attention deficit disorders throughout her life, yet she was known at the time just to be lazy and dumb. On May 16, 1770 at the age of fourteen, Marie and Louis were married. Their wedding was extremely extravagant and luxurious, nothing out of the ordinary for a royal wedding. Marie and Louis Auguste were hugely different people. While Louis was shy, quiet, and smart, Marie was outgoing, bold, and a lover of parties. Not only was she unhappy with her marriage, Marie Antoinette did not adjust well at all to married
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