To portray Marie-Antoinette, Thierry Malandain decided to focus the action on one place: Versailles. He divided his ballet in fourteen frames danced with a sleek and suggestive set. From the teenager Austrian princess arrival to court on May 16th, 1770, who came to celebrate her marriage to the young Dauphin Louis-Auguste, future Louis XVI (video clip Le festin royal), up until the Queen's precipitated leave on October 6th, 1789, after she became wife and mother, under the masses' angry screams (video clip A mort l'Autrichienne).

In order to enhance her character's evolution through these 19 years, the choreographer chose key moments: her wedding night’s failure during which the marriage wasn't consumed (and won't be for 9 long years - video clip La nuit de noces). But also, the performance of Persée, the opera which she sees on the next day, where the character of Medusa ends up having her head cut... what a gruesome omen! When she became queen after Louis XV's death (video clip Le roi est mort, vive le roi!), Marie-Antoinette is vain and enjoys many pleasures (video clip Reine du Rococo). She wants to live her fantasy, which her mother Marie-Thérèse, watching her from a distance through her ambassador in the yard, doesn’t appreciate (video clip Badinage).

But when her first child is born, she turns out to be able to feel real maternal love, as seen in a moving scene where, with Louis XVI, she cuddles an articulated doll representing her daughter (video clip Maternité). Despite her family happiness, Marie-Antoinette keeps doing whatever she likes: she flees the Yard to her Trianon domain, in which she pretends to be a shepherdess with sheep (video clip Le Hameau). Thierry Malandain also stages her first meeting with the Swedish count Axel von Fersen, and the love born between the two of them (video clip Le beau Fersen).

The whole scenography unfolds to the rhythm of three symphonies by Haydn, one of the Queen's contemporaries. Titled Morning, Noon and Evening, they form a full musical cycle which frames Marie-Antoinette's journey towards her deadly fate.