That's the point of Chantal Thomas' sutdy. You have to draw a line between the real Marie Antoinette and her paper caricature. Unfortunately, these propaganda campaigns were very cleverly made. So that the French people eventually believed that the queen was as shown on those papers. This was a way to attack the monarchy through his weakest link, the Autrian woman but this awful alter ego really led poor Marie Antoinette to the guillotine. Remember her trial ! They accused her of incest for political reasons, a terrible, a montruous accusation for a mother ! Although, they did it. And this accusation was possible only because of those pamphlets and caricatures, that already showed a monstruous image of Marie Antoinette for long. We can say that this accusion of incest proves how much these propaganda campaigns were efficient. Alas !
