13. Marie Antoinette Was Falsely Accused In A Scandal Blown Way Out Of Proportion
When Marie Antoinette first came to the royal court, she quickly earned a sour reputation among the French people for childish behavior, excessive opulence, and an inability to become pregnant. That reputation spiraled downward over the so-called Diamond Necklace Affair of which she was actually innocent.
Marie Antoinette’s husband’s predecessor, King Louis XV, commissioned an elaborate diamond necklace for his mistress, Madame du Barry, one which was worth approximately $14 million in today’s money. However, the king died before the chain was complete, and his disgraced mistress was exiled from the court. So what to do with the $14 million gift for which the jeweler had to be compensated? Easy. Sell it to Marie Antoinette. She should be easy to convince to buy it; after all, no one liked the more exceptional things in life quite like the new queen. However, she refused to buy it, insisting that the money could be spent better on affairs of the state, like equipping the French navy.
Two nefarious individuals, Jeanne de Valois-Saint-Remy along with her co-conspirator and lover, Cardinal de Rohan, made their way into the royal court by loudly bragging about their close relationship with the Queen of France. Jeanne borrowed large sums of money from the royal treasury, insisting it was authorized by the queen for her charity work, to purchase beautiful items for herself that brought her back into the high class of society. She even went so far as to hire a prostitute who resembled Marie Antoinette to play her part in several different encounters. The jewelers who had made the $14 million necklace decided that they could use Jeanne and Rohan to sell it to the queen.
However, when the time came to pay for the jewelry, the money that Jeanne had taken from the treasury came up short, and supposed correspondences with the queen that they had forged were uncovered. Still, the public was incensed and was all too happy to blame Marie Antoinette’s lavish spending on herself instead of taking care of the country.
In the 21st century, when Hillary Clinton was found to have used her private server rather than a heavily encrypted government server to send official emails. She was publicly accused of sharing government secrets, even though she was innocent. Nevertheless, despite the FBI finding her not guilty, the damage to her reputation was done. This scandal could have been a causative factor in her losing the 2016 presidential election.
