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Who is better known amongst the (anglo) general public - Louis XIV, the Sun King, probably the most long-lived, powerful, and reformative monarch in Europe's history... Or Marie Antoinnette, famed utterer of a vapid phrase which she probably didn't even say?

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Granting (probably correctly) that Marie Antoinette is better known, the fact that you can pick out two examples with a particular relationship doesn't tell us a lot about the distributions they're drawn from. Looking at rough contemporaries, I would expect Descartes is better known than either, and Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Voltaire aren't exactly obscure.

Great point. I should also note, that when I said innovators and thinkers, that definitely included any politically related character. I'd like to think that Marie Antoinette is mostly popular because of her involvement with the French Revolution, and all of the characters relevant to that.

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