The relationship between Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette is often oversimplified and minimized into stereotypes or at best, overshadowed by the theory of the Dashing Romantic Swede Affair.
On the other hand, it’s important to understand the type of love they shared when we discuss the dynamic between Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.
To quote Madame de Mackau in a letter written to her husband about potential nuptials between Madame Elisabeth and Joseph II: “But, my friend, people up there don’t get married for happiness…”
And this holds true for the relationship between Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI. They were not passionate lovers who fell swooning into each other’s arms and ran off to the local church to get married and start a life together; they did not fall in love at first sight, harps plucking and cupids dancing in the background.
At the first, they were two young teenagers who were paired together solely for political and dynastic purposes. Their relationship was founded not on love or even a mutual agreeable affection–it was founded on pure politics, politics which were uncaring of any feeling they might have (or develop) towards one another. They represented their respective countries, and their duty was to marry and reproduce in order to cement an alliance between said countries: their individuality and preferences didn’t matter.
Over time, however, they grew to appreciate and love one another. Marie Antoinette grew to respect–as she wrote–her husband’s “solid worth,” particularly when compared to his brothers. Louis XVI grew to adore his wife, so much so that he is often described today as describing her like a “mistress,” since it was the affection-chosen mistress–not the politically-chosen wife–who was the actual love of the king of France.
This type of love is somewhat difficult to approach from our 21st century conception of a loving marriage. It is not ordinary romantic love–for they did not love each other when they married–but a love that was nurtured between two people over years of shared experiences.
Their love was borne of a mutually shared position in life, a situation they never expected to realistically control. Marriage, for people in their station, was about alliances and duty. Love, if it happened between a political married couple, was a luxury. And love was certainly not something that every politically married couple enjoyed–George IV and his wife Caroline of Brunswick being just one strong example of a loveless political marriage.
Yet love did happen between this couple, who had practically opposite personalities, who faced immense pressure from the first moments of their marriage, who faced both internal and external stressors that created conflict in their personal and public roles as wife/husband and queen/king, and who ultimately decided to remain together with their children regardless of the danger than separate.
It was this love which guided Louis XVI to lament to one of his lawyers about the French people’s view of his wife and to bitterly say, again and again: “If only they knew what she is worth.”
