Doomed Queens (39 page)

5. Which quote really belongs to Marie Antoinette?

         a. “Man was born free, and everywhere he is in chains.”

         b. “A queen who is not regent ought, under these circumstances, to remain passive and prepare to die.”

         c. “Then let them eat pastry!”

         d. “We had joy. We had fun. We had seasons in the sun.”

ANSWER KEY

1, all of the above: People found that Rousseau inspired them to follow their bliss. 2, c. 3, c: But Sophia had big dreams and a bigger brain. 4, a: She did both quite well, from the sound of things. 5, b: And die she did.

CHAPTER SIX

Semimodern Times and More

OUT OF THE MOUTHS OF BABES

I feel old, oh, so old, but I am still the mother of this country, and I suffer its pains as my own child’s pains, and I love it in spite of all its sins and horrors. No one can tear a child from its mother’s heart and neither can you tear away one’s country….

Alexandra Romanov

S
hock waves from the French Revolution shook Western civilization for generations afterward. Joséphine de Beauharnais, the next royal resident of Marie Antoinette’s apartment at the Tuileries, confessed, “I can never be happy here. I can feel the queen’s ghost asking me what I am doing in her bed.” In 1901, two English lady scholars claimed to have encountered the queen’s specter at Versailles; whether or not this was true, they unquestionably had Marie on their minds. Around the same time in Russia, Alexandra Romanov hung in her private quarters a small portrait of the French queen with her children. It offered the empress scant comfort when the Russian Revolution arrived in all its bloody glory in 1917.

Clearly the spirit of egalitarianism was on the rise. As part of this new consciousness, divorce became more widely available, granting women a little more control over their destinies. Divorce also allowed queens to keep their heads after losing their crowns—a pity for poor Anne Boleyn, who was born four centuries too soon.

Just as marital status became fluid, so did the concept of royalty. Blood ties and divine right were replaced by the cult of personality, in which celebrity conferred power. This made it possible for a woman born into poverty to rise to riches and regality. Those who possessed the most influence were famed for their good works or extraordinary beauty and talents. However, the press, instead of the guillotine, gained the ability to make or break a queen. In some ways, the guillotine was kinder.

In this brave new world, royal fatalities arrive in ways that don’t require a march to the scaffold: illness, accidents, and the occasional assassin. But the lack of ceremony was often compensated for by burials resonant with mythic overtones.

Eva Perón, the first lady of Argentina, was granted a burial worthy of Cleopatra after she succumbed to uterine cancer in 1952. Her embalmer, who was rumored to have worked on mummifying Lenin, used preserving solutions and wax to transform Evita’s earthly remains into an icon worthy of veneration. He even displayed her under glass, like Snow White awaiting her prince. The body of Princess Diana, Evita’s populist counterpart in Britain, had no such consecrated public presentation, perhaps because of the car accident that ended her life. Instead, Diana was laid to rest upon a private Avalon-like island, where she still awaits a once-and-future realm forbidden to paparazzi.

1814

he next female occupant of the French throne bore little resemblance to Marie Antoinette, though she would also end her life crownless. Thirty years before Marie lost her head, the girl who would grow up to become Empress Joséphine was born in Martinique to struggling Creole sugar plantation owners. At the age of ten, Joséphine was told by a fortune teller that she would grow up to marry twice, be widowed once, and become more than a queen—predictions that proved to be all too accurate during a life that often seemed like an overripe romance novel.

Marriage number one was arranged by an aunt in Paris when Joséphine was fifteen. The girl traveled to France to wed Alexandre de Beauharnais, the suave teenage heartthrob of the crumbling French aristocracy. Alexandre was horrified by Joséphine’s unpolished island ways. Nonetheless, the wedding proceeded: Alexandre required a bride to claim his inheritance and his mistress was already married. Though they had a son and daughter, their union was unhappy. The couple separated but were reunited in prison during the French Revolution. Alexandre was stripped of his estate and beheaded; Joséphine was condemned five days later. Just as she was about to be marched to the guillotine, she miraculously won a reprieve.

Now free of marital bonds and wealth, Joséphine reinvented herself as a socialite and courtesan par excellence. The Creole sensuality and charm that Alexandre had held in disdain became Joséphine’s weapon for survival, seducing numerous well-heeled lovers. It also grabbed the attention of Napoléon Bonaparte, the hail the conquering hero of the French army.

Marriage number two began like something out of a drawing room farce. Joséphine slept with Napoléon, thinking that he would be a useful patron. He pursued her, thinking she had money and social connections to aid his political ambitions. Once the truth was discovered, it was too late: Napoléon was obsessed. Steamy letters record the major-general’s pursuit: “How happy I would be if I could assist you at your undressing, the little firm white breast, the adorable face…. To live within Josephine is to live in the Elysian fields.” He begged her to marry him despite his family’s objections—they looked down on Joséphine as a New World tramp.

Immediately after the wedding, Napoléon took off to conquer Italy. Left alone with hostile in-laws, Joséphine comforted herself with an old lover. The Bonapartes made certain the racy gossip reached her husband. “I don’t love you anymore,” he wrote in a fit of jealousy, “on the contrary, I detest you. You are a vile, mean, beastly slut.” Despite these fighting words, Napoléon could not leave her. He also needed her politically—her innate grace and generosity made her Napoléon’s greatest diplomat, winning him the devotion of the French people. When he became the emperor of France in 1804, he crowned Joséphine empress, making her more than a queen.

But love was not enough. The emperor required an heir; the empress’s sojourn in prison may have left her barren. Five years later, he divorced her—infidelity was tolerable but infertility was not. Joséphine was gracious in defeat: “[H]aving no hope of bearing children who would fulfill the needs of his policies and the interests of France, I am pleased to offer him the greatest proof of attachment and devotion ever offered on this earth.”

Within a year, Napoléon married an archduchess of Austria, Marie Louise, who quickly popped out a son. She proved to be as unlucky for him as another Austrian archduchess had been for Louis XVI. By 1814, the emperor had lost his throne and was living in exile on the island of Elba.

As for Joséphine, she retired to preside over a salon that attracted numerous luminaries. Perhaps yearning for her native Martinique, she nurtured a garden famed for its exotic tropical blooms. It indirectly led to her premature death at the age of fifty: While showing off her garden one day, she caught a fatal chill.