It’s understandable that France would celebrate their tradition of liberté with the Phryges.
But what was that huge display of headless Marie Antoinettes? The woman had virtually no agency her entire life, traded as a teenager to France (by her own mother) as breeding stock and part of a peace treaty, then reviled as a symbol of everything that was wrong with France and the subject of vicious smears.
(And she never said “Let them eat cake”).
Surely they could have found many more guillotine-worthy figures, from Louis XVI to Robespierre. The execution of Marie Antoinette should be the subject of embarrassment, not gloating.
