Marie Antoinette was the victim of a smear campaign

As an allusion to Marie Antoinette assuming a fictitious identity while attempting to elude capture in France, the caption of some editions of this etching claims that the document is the passport of a Russian baroness. The leopard's stripes were meant to represent the queen's inability to alter her behavior despite her new identity. Not to mention, look at the snakes in Marie Antoinette's hair. In order to compare her to Medusa, a dangerous figure from Greek mythology, the artist has done.

There are numerous depictions of Marie Antoinette and her husband, Louis XVI, as selfish, foolish, and immoral, and this one is only one of them. Louis was frequently shown as a pig or riding one. The queen's reputation in France was tarnished by more than just printed propaganda, such as a cartoon showing the queen engaging in a homosexual fling with her friend the Duchesse de Polignac. Numerous songs were also written about her. The song that suggested she had an incestuous relationship with her own son, Louis Charles, the Dauphin, was possibly the most destructive.

The biggest historical victim of misinformation may have been Marie Antoinette. She might not have been faultless, and she might have loved pleasure and been naive, but the way these booklets and songs depicted her was false. But it didn't matter that most of it was based on lies. The upshot of this extensive slander effort was an irreversible shift in public opinion against Marie Antoinette. The end of Marie Antoinette was approaching.