Beginning with
Marie Antoinette's mother, Empress
Maria Theresa, the book chronicles the life of
Marie Antoinette and how she, though the youngest of her mother's daughters, was selected to marry the future king of France. Fraser depicts a young
dauphine, and eventual queen, unfairly maligned due to decades of anti-Austrian sentiment and
xenophobia who was never comfortable in her role as influencer and ambassadress to Austria in a French court in which she was treated with derision and hostility. == Reception ==