[The Queen]  … seemed born to please the national taste. Marie Antoinette, brilliant, lively, witty fond of pleasure and festivity, with all her husband’s goodness and a special grace of her own … having won all hearts even as she charmed every eye…

How was it that so fair a dream vanished, how was it that the welcome of the accession changed into mutterings of disapproval, and then into the clamor of hatred; how was it that a queen, whom a whole people had adored, became to them a monstrous portent first, and later on their victim; … Ah! here we have one of the saddest problems of history…

—Marie Antoinette: The Queen by Pierre de Nolhac