King Louis XVI became heir to the throne and the last Bourbon king of France upon his father's death in 1765. In 1770, he married Austrian archduchess Marie-Antoinette, the daughter of Maria Theresa and Holy Roman Emperor Francis I. After a slew of governing missteps, Louis XVI brought the French Revolution crashing down upon himself, which led to the monarchy's collapse. Louis XVI will go down in history as one of the worst rulers to have been crowned king.
In 1765, his father died, making him the immediate heir to the throne of Louis XVI. Louis was uncomfortable with this position, and upon the death of his mother sometime thereafter, he felt entirely isolated and lonely. Despite his efforts to prepare himself, he still preferred the outdoors to the pressures of the court. A foreign ambassador remarked: "He seems to have been born and reared in the forest." Nevertheless, now Louis would be the next king of France and, although he never showed much interest in girls, arrangements were made - with the help of the famous Maria Theresa of Austria, to marry him to her daughter the Habsburg princess Marie-Antoinette. Such a match was a necessary part of his princely duties in order to maintain relations with the powerful Habsburg family and to secure the Bourbon dynasty in France (Louis, XVI).
Thus, in 1769, when Louis was 15 years old, final arrangements were made, and the marriage was celebrated the following year in Paris. However, on the wedding day, fireworks accidentally caught fire, formed the stampede, and killed many innocent people; a lot of people think this was bad omen (Louis, XVI). Louis's married life was not entirely happy. Frivolous, self-indulgent, and demanding, his bride was embarrassed with his relatively crude habits and his fondness for the outdoors, scolding him for his inability to adapt to life at court. Most humiliating for the couple, however, was Louis's impotence which was the subject of much gossip.
