How does Antonia Fraser use imagery in Marie Antoinette: The Journey?

Imagery:

"At least the Queen always maintained a 'most submissive' attitude to her husband in public. But she was beginning to incarnate what Maria Teresa angrily called 'the spirit of dissipation' both by night and day; for the new Empress had lost none of the vitriol of her pen with the passing years."

"The boy whose birth had been saluted by his father to his mother with these triumphant words, 'Madame, you have fulfilled my wishes and those of France,' was dead, a 'decayed old man,' covered in sores, at the age of seven and a half."