Conquering hero or maniacal tyrant.
Cunning witch or enchanting seductress.
Patriot or traitor.
Principled or opportunistic.
Loyal subject or reluctant queen.
We had risen higher, my loved ones and I, than a fatherless girl of sixteen would ever have dared to imagine, but what did that matter, any of it, if we did not now safeguard ourselves for the ages? If we did not act shrewdly to curate the words that would guide our passage through time?
Napoleon had known all along the power of his words, the fact that his pen could do more for good or to strike down his foes than one thousand swords or a hillside of cannons. And he’d done his best to flood the world with his own words, to offer his own telling of his life and legacy. Not only with the newspapers, the censors of his administration, the gossips of his court—but also from his island exile, where he had written furiously, using his final years to bombard a war-weary world with his words. And he’d used those words to condemn my husband. To expose and steal some of my most sacred and private memories.
But the Emperor was not the only one who could use words.
You see, I remain, even now, even after he is gone. Long after he is gone—I’ve outlived Napoleon by forty years next year. And I’ve outlived her, his Josephine, by forty-six years.
And so I am using my time, I am using my words, to put forth my story, as well. My Bernadotte is gone—he left me sixteen years ago—but I have used the last bit of my time and my energy to tell the world of our extraordinary life and love.
I laugh, even now, to think of the girl so many years ago. How Napoleon—but of course back then he was Napoleone—sent me so many books and instructions. How he urged me to apply myself. To exercise some discipline in my work and through my words. I hadn’t then. At least, not to his satisfaction. Nor had I cared one bit for my Swedish lessons or learning the rituals of a new court. But in these recent years, I have applied myself.
I have overseen the handling of all of my Bernadotte’s letters and journals, as well as all of his letters—Napoleon’s—to both my husband and me. Far older than the St. Helena letters or memoirs, far older than his attempts to forge our legacies without our permission, these words go back to a girl of sixteen and the rough Corsican soldier who was courting her on the southern coast of France. These are the words of lovers and soldiers, of suitors and rivals, ordinary people thrust into extraordinary moments—on battlefields, in ballrooms, in the halls of power. It is all here in my possession, and I’ve kept it all this time, safeguarded this story; words, words, words, the original words that seem to grow more astonishing with each passing year.
I’ve worked with the writer Georges Touchard-Lafosse to set it all down. A Frenchman, of course, and now a trusted ally and friend. Together, we shall deliver my husband’s and my story to the ages. We shall ensure that Napoleon’s shall not be the final word on our lives.
It has been tiring and laborious work. Exhausting, really. But it was the only way that I could earn myself any true and lasting peace. And now, we are done. The biographies are complete. Oscar and Josephine assure me that my grandchildren shall read them and hear my telling of my own story, just as their children after them. I may rest.
Words, words, words—I sit here at the opera, in my royal box, but I cannot understand the words, because they are not in French. I never bothered to learn any other language. But it’s no matter—I can feel the music. And regardless, I arrived so late to the opera this evening that I am only now going to catch the final act. I saw how the audience noted my late arrival into the box; I heard the titters and whispers that popped up across the great opera house. She is never on time. Always late, our old dowager queen. Does she ever know what time it is?
I boarded a ship for France a few years ago, just before my eightieth birthday. I longed to see my homeland, even though nobody remained there to welcome me home. Maman and Nicolas are long gone, Joseph and Julie died years ago. And yet, I yearned to touch French soil one more time. But the roiling seas filled me with such dread that I lost my stomach for the trip before I’d even lost sight of the receding coast, ordering the captain to turn around and return me to the port. Abandon France, return me to Sweden—words I’d never imagined myself uttering.
The new arch in Paris, the Arc de Triomphe, lists my husband’s name as one of the great heroes of France. His image adorns the hall at Versailles, that Bourbon palace resplendent once more. Would he feel better? I wondered. Would it give him some measure of peace to know that France has forgiven him, even if he never forgave himself?
Another man named Napoleon ascended to the French throne. He worked to make an empire in his image. The son of Hortense, I noted with a chuckle—the grandson of Josephine. I remember when the child was born. This Napoleon, he called himself Napoleon III, was pulled from power in due time, followed by the establishment of yet another French republic. And men claim that women are fickle?
In 1844, in the same year my husband’s death filled every newspaper, the son of an old soldier friend of Bernadotte’s, Alexandre Dumas, found fame and glory by writing a tale titled The Three Musketeers. His hero is a tall, dark, fiery Gascon. A poor outsider who finds a family only in serving among soldiers. A principled patriot who rises from nothing to make his own fortune in the nation’s service and earns his way to the highest ranks.
Of course I remember Dumas’s father, the friend who sheltered us for those harrowing nights as Napoleon seized power back in Paris. Of course the elder Dumas would have told his son of the valiant Gascon alongside whom he’d fought—a strong, dark-haired soldier who rose from nothing to make his own fortune in the nation’s service. A friend, a fellow critic of Napoleon. A patriot, a leader, and yet, always a bit of an outsider. I know, as I read Dumas, that D’Artagnan is my Bernadotte. Words, words, words.
All my life, I’ve been told that I need the protection of others. The nuns. My father. My brother. Napoleon. Josephine. Julie and Joseph and Bernadotte. At times, our greatest challenge was merely to survive. And survive we did. Only now, they’ve all fallen away. And yet, here I am. I’ve outlived them all.
I laugh at this; I laugh too loudly. From my place in the opera box, I attract the stares of the people nearby. But their stern, condemnatory looks only prompt me to laugh even louder. Now people on the lower level are turning to stare up at me as well. It is all so hilarious—their prim disdain, their censure. Once I would have cared.
I learned this lesson too late; what a shame, how late in life we realize that we simply ought not to have cared! That all along, it turns out, we have been free, endowed with the power to tell our own tales. To fulfill our own fortunes.
I know that my own tale will soon come to an end. I’ve seen enough of death in this life to know when it approaches. I am old, so very old. My aching joints rail against me, the blood has grown weary in my veins. I am tired. I am at peace.
My final journey did not take me to France, and I never had the chance to bid farewell to those places that made me Desiree. You shall have to change your name. Desiree. It sounds too French. I am known here as Desideria, just as my Bernadotte was known as Carl Johan.
I sigh. None of that matters, not anymore. I smile and nod at the people who still look at me with their proud, half-pitying scowls. And then, I rise. Even though the opera performance is not over, I shall quit this box. I’ll wave my hand and a cluster of attendants will see to it that my coach pulls up to the front, ready to convey me through the snow-covered streets, bearing me wherever I wish to go. Kring kring, round and round she goes.
When the snow falls at midnight, blanketing the empty cobbled streets, sugaring the gothic bell tower of Storkyrkan Cathedral, it becomes easy to imagine. To imagine and to remember—the two go hand in hand. The memories swirl and shift now, more dizzying than the erratic flakes of winter snow, more percussive than the poundin
g of the horses’ hooves on the cobblestones. A girl, a beautiful girl, pulled into the center of a nation’s turmoil. Heartbreak, and then hope. A lover, and then a wife. A mother, an attendant. A queen with a crown plucked from the stars that guide our fortune. I’ve been so many things, called so many different lands my home, and I’ve survived them all. I’ve found my way and I’ve ruled, even as those around me have fallen.
And now, at last, I am going home.
Epilogue
DESIREE CLARY BERNADOTTE DIED IN Stockholm on December 17, 1860, at the impressive age of eighty-three. She left as her legacy a kingdom at peace and a popular ruling family that included her son, her four living grandchildren, and a growing brood of great-grandchildren.
The dynasty of the House of Bernadotte, begun by Desiree and Bernadotte and then solidified by Oscar and Josephine, still rules Sweden today. The descendants of Desiree and Bernadotte still sit on the thrones of many countries—more than the descendants of the Houses of Bourbon and Bonaparte combined.
Desiree is buried in Stockholm’s Riddarholmen Church beside her Bernadotte. Together, through their multitudinous offspring and their forever-interwoven destinies, Desiree and Josephine not only survive, but also continue to rule.
Author’s Note
It started with a question posed by my father, one of the greatest history geeks I know: “Allison, what do you know about Desiree Clary? Desiree Bernadotte? The Frenchwoman, Desiree?”
“Desiree?” I considered the name a minute. “Honestly? Nothing.”
“You should look into her. Her life—you cannot believe it’s true. But it is.”
That was how the conversation unfolded, years ago, when my father gave me the precious tip that would lead to my fascination with Desiree Clary Bernadotte and the constellation of larger-than-life characters around her, and the process of writing this book.
As a writer of historical fiction with a passion for telling the stories of women whose lives and legacies have been overshadowed in the forward march of time, I am often presented with such tips. Just the smallest grain of a story, dangled before me by fellow lovers of history and fiction; the teaser that a great tale lurks in the shadows of the historical record, waiting to be told.
In order for me to take up such a lead, in order for me to commit years of my life to researching, thinking about, writing about, editing, and then speaking about a proposed historical figure or time or place, several key things need to happen.
I have to feel that I’m looking at a way into history—through this historic individual (or moment in time)—that has not yet been sufficiently explored, particularly via fiction, but sometimes through nonfiction as well.
I have to feel that this story will be juicy and dramatic and compelling—both for me and for the reader.
I have to feel that this historic figure—usually a woman, in my experience—is calling to be pulled from a supporting role in the lives of others to a leading role at center stage, offering us an opportunity not only to learn the facts of her life, but also to imagine and explore the emotional truths located therein, to consider how the important events of her story might have felt.
And finally, I have to become utterly, madly, and inexorably obsessed.
And that is precisely what happened when I encountered Desiree Clary Bernadotte.
All of the above, many times over.
When I told my dad that I knew nothing of Desiree, that was indeed the case. I had never even heard the name. Desiree Clary? Desiree Bernadotte? A quick Internet search unearthed just the most basic of facts: Desiree was Napoleon’s first fiancée. She’s standing right there, in plain sight, in the iconic Jacques-Louis David coronation painting of Notre Dame, attending to the very woman who had displaced her from Napoleon’s heart. And so is her husband, who was a power player in the French army and government before becoming King of Sweden. The exiled Napoleon wrote and spoke about Desiree and her husband until the end of his life, and she kept his love letters until the end of hers. Her descendants still sit on many of the thrones of Europe today—descendants whom she shares with Josephine, her one-time rival and then unlikely friend. And yet, her name is not a household one, nor is it nearly as well known as so many of her contemporaries, the people she called family, friends, and foes—sometimes all of the above. Desiree’s story had its hooks in me, and there would be no letting go. As my dad said: history is often too good to be true. Especially when it is true.
What especially stunned me was Desiree and Bernadotte’s prominence in The Coronation of Napoleon by David, which hangs in the Louvre. There they stand at the front of Notre Dame Cathedral, dressed in their finery alongside Julie and Joseph, the Bonaparte sisters, the Pope, Mamma Letizia, and the rest of the colorful imperial inner circle. As I stared at that masterpiece, I couldn’t help but wonder: How was Desiree there? Why was she there? What must she have felt, looking on, attending to the man who had broken her heart and the woman who had replaced her as they made themselves Emperor and Empress of France?
And those questions kept coming up as I researched Desiree’s life. Over and over again—she was there for that moment? And that moment? And that? How? Why? What must that have felt like for her? But there was one resounding question that clamored the loudest as I learned about Desiree, this ordinary woman who was thrust into the most extraordinary of times, and that was: how do I not know about her?
How is it that we have allowed Desiree’s name to become obscured in history?
In many ways, the life of Desiree Clary Bernadotte was a historical fiction writer’s dream. Though she lived through so many of modern Europe’s most well-known moments, though she coexisted with larger-than-life figures who have since come to assume almost mythical proportions, Desiree herself has not had much opportunity to serve as the leading lady of her own story. While there are scores of biographies in existence about Napoleon, Josephine, Bernadotte, and so many of the Bourbons and Bonapartes and Habsburgs, I could not find an English-language biography in which Desiree occupied center stage. So then it became a game of connecting the pieces, pulling together so many disparate threads from so many other life stories until the beautiful and complicated picture that was Desiree’s began to emerge.
The well-documented histories of Napoleon, Josephine, and Bernadotte—and their revolutionary and imperial power clique—provided the bones of the story, over which I was given free rein to imagine the flesh and the color and the heart of Desiree’s. As I sought to craft this fictional world from the historical facts and legends, Desiree took shape as a leading lady with a will and an agency all her own. To return to the David tableau with which I began my search: her character not only appeared before my mind’s eye, but in fact, it ended up stealing the show.
One of the criticisms leveled at Desiree by her Swedish court rival, the perspicacious Queen Hedwig Charlotte, was that Desiree was “a French woman in every inch.” I am fortunate in my life to have many such “French women in every inch,” most notably my one-hundred-percent-French maternal grandmother, Monique LeBlanc Rowland, who helped me to understand what this meant (and who also, it must be noted, was the only family member who knew anything about Desiree at the time I set out to write this story). And even though several centuries separate them, Grandmère’s stories of her convent boarding school upbringing directly inspired Desiree’s time there in this book, particularly the feigned illness in order to binge on food and sleep in the sick ward.
Though so much of history has been written by and for men, I feel most passionately that women carry much of the heart and soul of so many of these great historical moments, and that their lives provide some of the most captivating and inspiring material for storytelling. On that note, I must point out that I broke out in full-body chills and spasmodic breathing when I uncovered that Josephine (the Queen of Sweden and Oscar’s wife, not the French Empress) and another historic heroine whom I’ve had
the great privilege of writing about, Sisi, were cousins! Both free-spirited and intelligent beauties from the royal Bavarian Wittelsbachs. Both pulled from their relatively low-key and bourgeois family circles to rule over vast kingdoms far from home. I like to imagine Desiree and Sisi—both queens whom I’ve come to love and admire, both fascinating and complicated women, both plucked from their ordinary lives to ride the waves of astonishing times—presiding together over a fantastic family reunion.
So, too, do I love the symmetry in the fact that Desiree and France’s Empress Josephine—erstwhile rivals, reluctant friends, soul sisters in heartache and havoc—are joined forever through their many offspring and that their descendants still rule to this day, while the man between them—a man who was so obsessed with his own power and legacy that he left them both—can claim no progeny still in power. The current Crown Princess of Sweden, Victoria Bernadotte, has the middle name of Desiree; her sister, Princess Madeleine, has the middle name of Josephine. Unlike Napoleon, I don’t believe that Desiree—or Josephine, for that matter—was ever particularly preoccupied with getting a crown or ruling for generations, but I’m gratified for them both nonetheless.
For Lacy,
With gratitude
Acknowledgments
There are so many people who made this book possible, and to all of them I say a heartfelt thank you, knowing even as I say it that it is not enough.
Dad, for that initial conversation and the tip that led me down the path of all things Desiree, I am so grateful. And to Mom, for always being such an enthusiastic and energetic cheerleader. On the topic of progeny and bequeathing to future generations, my parents love history and storytelling, and I’m happy to say that has carried to all of my siblings, who inspire and challenge me and who are my favorite people to join at a table and just talk, because we never know where it will go, but it will always be interesting.
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