From hated queen to 21st-century icon: Paris exhibition celebrates life of Marie-Antoinette

Paris show includes treatment of woman France loved to hate in mangas, fashion and film

When Marie-Antoinette met a gruesome end at the guillotine 226 years ago this week, she was the most hated woman in France. As the horse-drawn cart carried the former queen, her blonde hair shorn and prematurely grey, through the streets of Paris to her execution in 1793, the crowds jostled to spit and hurl insults at her.

She was 37, an Austrian-born "foreigner" accused of treason and of being aloof, branded a shameless spendthrift and nicknamed "Madame Deficit" for the bills she had run up on the finest clothes and jewels.