“Let them eat cake,” said the hard-hearted Marie Antoinette when told that her subjects had no bread. Except she almost certainly did not. The much-despised queen, widely disliked in her own time, was ...

PARIS, France — With the 2024 Paris Summer Olympic Games opening ceremony over, many of the visuals are making people wonder about a significant chapter in the city's rich history — Marie Antoinette.

Above: Marie Antoinette scandalously abandoned traditional regalia for newfangled “fashion”—as seen in this fateful 1783 portrait by Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun, one of her style influencers. Between the ...

MARIE ANTOINETTE—Katharine Anthony—Knopf ($3). Biographer Anthony takes no stock in the story that Marie Antoinette, when a hungry mob was clamoring for bread, asked with cruel naivete: “Why don’t ...