There were times when she could not refrain from offending the court by bursting into laughter. In practice, she could be left standing naked while courtiers battled over the right to throw the chemise over the royal head. In theory, she was the centre of attention and her needs paramount to those around her. The young dauphine discovered that every moment of her day was imprisoned by royal routine. They were pawns in an elaborate game of oneupmanship and social climbing. Fraser makes it painfully obvious that royal wives were little more than political hostages. The hell of Versailles, and, in particular, the hell meted out to its foreign consorts, was a severe shock to Marie-Antoinette. Few spies could have been less prepared and less able to carry out their brief. However, all too soon the adolescent was packed off to France with a long list of instructions, first and foremost being to serve the interests of Austria. Then, with the prize of uniting the Hapsburgs and Bourbons in her grasp, Maria Theresa was shocked to discover her 14-year-old daughter was practically illiterate.

As it was, the empress paid no attention to her youngest daughter until an accident of nuptial politics made the girl a candidate to marry the French dauphin. With a good education and a solid childhood, Marie-Antoinette might have become one of the most admired women in Europe. She was sensitive, emotional and generous but also pliable, prone to grudges and lacking in concentration. In many ways, her character was not unlike that of Mary, Queen of Scots. She was intelligent and artistic but devoid of the ambition or calculation required to survive in the fetid atmosphere of the French court. Marie-Antoinette was born in 1755, the youngest daughter of Empress Maria Theresa of Austria and Emperor Francis I. But, as Fraser points out in this outstanding biography, the truth is far more prosaic and therefore tragic.

Defenders have tried to cast her as a saintly martyr detractors as a debauched nymphomaniac. Her adopted country rejected her, her husband misunderstood her, her children died, her friends and family betrayed her.

Marie antoinette fraser