What was Marie Antoinette wearing the day she died?
Her prison guards in the congergerie who treated her very badly
took away everything she was attached to, that she figured out
pretty fast. So, she had to be inventious.
She had had a package send from Madame Campan en Madame de
Tourzel which contained a bit of clothing. New caps for on her
head, new linnens (underwear), stockings, and a lily white dress.
It was the kind of dress you were suppost to wear underneath other
clothing, though, it was definitely not see-through fabric. She
decided she wanted to wear that on the very day she was to go to
the guilotine. But first, she had to go on trial, and for that
ocassion, she wore her widow-dress. That made the people in the
courtroom pity her and so the members of the Asemblee National were
affraid that when she would wear it on the day she was to be
executed, the French people would feel sorry for her and try to
save her in any way. Therefore, the forbade Marie Antoinette to
wear the widow-dress. Marie Antoinette put on the white dress on
the very last moment, just before she was to be handcuft and driven
to the Place de la Revolution.
When the French saw her in her lily white dress (white like the
Royal Fleur de Lys!), with her whitened hair (it turned white in
just one night) and ultra white skin (she had always been pale, but
because she was also losing a lot of blood due to a suspected
cervical cancer she looked as if she had no more blood left in her
body), nobody spoke a word dring the whole ride to the scaffold.
There were thoussands of people standing on the streets watching
her go by, and they were all completely mute. This was what she had
wanted, and that is why she chose the dress. It represented the
color of Monarchy, the color of the French Royalties and she would
be a French royal until she died, although people now called her
Widow Capet.