Review Detail

I love historical fiction. I also love 18th century France with the lush costumes and gorgeous courts. The Bad Queen has all of that and more.

Marie-Antoinette has been brought up with rules and instructions all her life. These rules increase when she leaves her Austrian home at the age of fourteen to marry the dauphin of France. In her new home nothing she does seems to satisfy the court. She's known as 'l'Autrichienne'--a derogatory name for not being French. Once she becomes queen, Marie-Antoinette decides since she can do nothing right, she'll make her own rules. But all this comes at a terrible cost.

This story is one book in the Young Royals series. I really loved how the author shows us a girl who even though of royal blood, questions the rules that she's expected to follow. Meyer gives us a character who's not the cardboard queen history books show. No, she's someone who misses her Austrian homeland and tries to get the French people to accept her. She's also true to her husband, the king of France, even when this means her very death. At times she does seem selfish with 'expecting' to buy things without caring for the cost while the common people go hungry. But I think most royals at the time were that way and even worse.

I'd like to read the other books in this series. The Bad Queen shows us a woman who shared a trait with the revolutionaries of France--she was a rebel who followed her own rules. Only with her this lead to her downfall and death.