Hello and welcome to this brand new series of Legacy.

In this series, Marie Antoinette, one of history's most memorable and eternally debated queens.

She's a woman who met a violent end at one of the key

moments in history, a victim of the most brutal time in the story of France. She's been described as the

most fashionable queen in history and she's still celebrated as a fashion icon today. But she's also

held up as an example of all that's wrong with privilege and with royalty,

and with the French royal family in particular, which is perhaps why the most notorious woman in French history

ends up in a fatal meeting with France's most notorious invention.

Not the baguette, but the guillotine.

From Wondery and Goalhanger, I'm Peter Frankapen. I'm F. Huah Hirsch.

And this is Legacy, the show that tells the lives of the most extraordinary men and women ever to have lived,

and asks if they have the reputation that they deserve.

This is Marie Antoinette, episode one, a princess and a pawn.

Okay, Peter, let's start with the one thing that every school child and adult can cite about Marianne, which is the alleged famous quote.

Let them eat cake.

Let them eat cake. Which was supposedly what she said in response to grievances that the people had run out of bread.

But she didn't speak English, right?

That's the first problem.

The first death knell for that allegation.

She never said, let them eat cake.

And it's been attributed to another royal, the wife of Louis

the 14th, famous sunking, or one of the daughters of Louis the 15th. But there's no evidence,

...