Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette

Louis XVI became king in 1774 at the age of nineteen, inheriting a powerful but indebted monarchy. He was conscientious and interested in geography, locksmithing and the navy, but he was often indecisive, shifting between reforming ministers and their opponents at court. His wife, Marie-Antoinette, an Austrian archduchess married to him in 1770, became a focus of public hostility.

Pamphlets attacked her as extravagant and foreign, and the Diamond Necklace Affair of 1785, a fraud in which she was actually the victim, nonetheless damaged her reputation badly. The famous line 'let them eat cake' was never reliably attributed to her. Historians debate how much the royal couple's personalities mattered: some argue a more decisive king could have managed the crisis, while others see deeper structural problems that no individual could have solved.