Is Marie Antoinette’s lesbian kiss all hot air?
Expert derides BBC drama that depicts queen as gay, claiming she was a victim of ‘scurrilous caricaturing’
‘There are pamphlets of a sexual nature filled with accusations’
MARIE ANTOINETTE is shown kissing another woman in a new BBC period drama despite no evidence the French queen was gay, according to historians.
The series set to air on BBC Two was written by The Favourite screenwriter Deborah Davis, whose Oscar-nominated script focused on Queen Anne’s same-sex relationships, and her latest work follows another famous royal.
In a trailer for the new drama titled Marie Antoinette, the eponymous queen of France is shown kissing one of her female courtiers despite experts saying there is no historical evidence that she was gay.
Historians have said that “gossip” about the queen’s sexuality was used to malign her prior to her execution in 1793 during the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror, and raised concerns that by including a same-sex relationship producers are repeating this centuries-old slander.
A new trailer for the series shows a teenage Marie Antoinette played by German actress Emilia Schüle arriving at the Palace of Versaille, and struggling to adjust to the French court and her new husband, the future Louis XVI.
Marie is shown in the clip kissing a female courtier, who is understood to be the character Madame Du Barry, a real historical figure who was the official mistress of Louis’s father.
However, Catriona Seth, Oxford professor of literature and biographer of the French queen, says its inclusion is “titillation”.
She said: “Mud sticks, and it seems to have stuck to this day. I think it’s quite hard to find the true Marie Antoinette behind the gossip.”
Marie was Austrian and treated as an outsider when she arrived at the French court aged just 14, and medical issues appear to have initially prevented her consummating her marriage to Louis, and this failure to complete the primary duty of a queen made her more unpopular.
She was attacked in scurrilous pamphlet known as “libelles”, which contained pornographic pictures and claims about the royal family’s sex life, which added to revolutionary opposition to the monarchy and the image of the queen as a depraved woman.
Prof Seth said that this “tragically” false image continues to this day, saying: “Clearly, the vision people had of Marie Antoinette has been coloured by it, by this circulation of libellous texts and so on.
“There are whole pamphlets of a sexual nature filled with accusations against Marie Antoinette, which start essentially because her marriage took a long time to be consummated.
“She can’t be sleeping with the king so she must be sleeping with other courtiers and so on.
“She must be sleeping with men, or women, or, according to one of the pamphlets, she must be sleeping with a dog. It’s all tied in with this idea that she was cuckolding the king and therefore cuckolding France. She is seen as an Austrian, an outsider, a traitor.”
Prof Seth has said that such “scurrilous caricatures” have stuck because there is a “fascination with Marie Antoinette” and her image as a “man-eating, power-crazy and yet stunning and seductive individual”. BBC Two will feed this fascination with a new series created outside the corporation by production company Banijay Studios, and the eight-part drama stars James Purefoy among a cast of relative newcomers playing courtiers at Versaille.
The series follows Marie Antoinette’s arrival at the palace following her engagement to the young Louis, not yet king, and her struggles to adjust to the strict rules of courtly life.
The first instalment of the series will air on BBC Two on Dec 29 at 9pm, with all episodes available immediately on BBC iplayer from the same date.
The BBC has released a trailer for Marie Antoinette, its flagship costume drama this winter, showing the French queen kissing another woman. One would have thought her life had enough drama – from being born into the Habsburg court, via marriage at 14 to Louis XVI and Versailles, to the guillotine – without adding invented sapphic elements to the mix. Perhaps the trailer should not come as a surprise, as the series’ creator is Deborah Davis, whose film The Favourite with scant evidence places Queen Anne in a lesbian love triangle. If costume dramas wish to deal with gay relationships wouldn’t it be better to choose historical figures for whose same-sex attraction there is plenty of evidence. The lives of Piers Gaveston, Michelangelo and James I were not exactly boring.