3. Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette
History records Marie Antoinette, who besides being the Queen of France was the sister of the Emperor of Austria, as being the ultimate in noble indifference to the plight of her poor and starving subjects. History is unfair, Antoinette was in truth a dedicated worker for the betterment of the French poor, both in the cities and among the rural peasantry. She was though dedicated to her own luxury and comfort, as well as to her several extramarital lovers, and to the entertainment of her court and other nobles at the expense of the peasantry and the French treasury.
Her husband, Louis XVI, was on the other hand a man who liked to use his hands, to the point that he operated his own blacksmith shop above the salons where the nobility mingled. Their dedication to each other is evident in the children they had together, though it was Marie’s scheming to save the French monarchy which ultimately led to her husband’s execution (he was willing to serve as a constitutional monarch; it was she who exhorted him to flee France which led to his arrest), and finally several months later to her own.
