Actually, Antoinette had some interesting encounters with poor people, and behaved quite admirably towards them,as mentioned here:

http://teaattrianon.blogspot.com/2008/0 ... -hunt.html

One would think that being isolated from poorer people would make her act in a more unpleasant way. However Marie Antoinette was kind, it wasn't in her nature to treat anyone poorly.

Yes, especially how she staunched the old peasant's wound with her own hand.

She was very kind.

Speaking of Du Barry, I had heard that while in Exile from court, she lived at Louvciennes, and helped the poor out around the town?
But, they still killed her :/

Funny you should mention this, I did a whole bunch of research on du Barry's trial a few months ago. You are correct. She did move to Louveciennes and she did do some charity work for the town. She certainly was not universally despised, at any rate.

I suppose she wasn't well loved enough to have been spared though. :/

By the time Madame du Barry was guillotined, everyone even vaguely associated with royalty was being killed.

Yes that is all too true.

She was a particularly strong symbol of everything people hated about the monarchy though. Although the people who knew her in her town didn't mind her, overall she was despised in the French mind as a symbol of the decadence and corruption of the ancien régime. She was definitely more important than any random noble.

She does seem to have been kind of an odd case, though. It was actually an Englishman, George Greive, who was in France, who was the person tracking her down and doing his best to get her arrested. He certainly seemed to have some sort of personal issue/obsession with her.

Fascinating!

Indeed it is.
I wish we had more books on her.

[quote="dreamoutloud"]She was a particularly strong symbol of everything people hated about the monarchy though. Although the people who knew her in her town didn't mind her, overall she was despised in the French mind as a symbol of the decadence and corruption of the ancien régime. She was definitely more important than any random noble.

I believe that is precisely why she got executed.

That is precisely why she was executed, plus some other stuff. Obviously you can't execute someone for being the mistress of a former king. She was charged with counter-revolutionary conspiracy and sheltering and sending money to émigrés. In fact, she was in contact with some émigrés to England and I think she sent them money too. While I seriously doubt she was involved in any real counter-revolutionary plots, sending money and keeping in contact with aristocrats that had fled the country was a really bad idea. So while she may have actually done some of the stuff she was charged with (without, I believe, any particular counter-revolutionary motive, but she still did it), and which she was technically executed for, everyone knew that the real reason was that she was the mistress of Louis XV and generally despised in the mind of the French people.

Can you recommend any books on her Dreamoutloud?