What was Marie Antoinette really like as a women? She was completely of her time, and that time was Rococo: exquisite, artificial, and quite out of touch with reality. Had she been brought up in the time of Elizabeth I or of Catherine de Medici she would have been set to work at Latin and Greek and instructed in the ways of kings and queens instead of being allowed to run wild in her mother’s palace in Vienna. When she came to France, it was under the impression that her first duty was to become a beautiful figurehead, and in that at least she succeeded, sweeping through the galleries at Versailles in exquisite gowns, or leading the applause at the Opera. Marie Antoinette was clearly out of touch with reality. Almost from the moment of her birth, Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna von Habsburg-Lothringen (November 2, 1755 – October 16, 1793),