"Napoleon’s Fiancée: The Fabulous Destiny of Désirée Clary" Topic

"When in 1942 Sacha Guitry wrote and directed a movie about the woman he described as "a little-known but very illustrious personage," he titled it Le Destin Fabuleux de Désirée Clary.[1] "Fabulous" is indeed an apt word for the life story of Bernardine Eugénie Désirée Clary (1771-1860). Her father, François Clary (1725-1794), was a wealthy and influential Marseillais shipowner involved in international trade (and not in fact a silk-merchant, although most accounts of Désirée's life – both historical and fictional – say so, even portraying her as selling silks in his shop as a girl).[2] Désirée was the youngest of his thirteen children (by two wives), ten of whom lived into adulthood. Her sister Julie married Joseph Bonaparte in August 1794 and Désirée became engaged to his younger brother, Napoleon, who preferred to call her Eugénie. We have few reliable details about their relationship, but it did inspire Napoleon to pen a romantic novella, Clisson and Eugénie (unpublished in his day).[3] In early 1796, however, Napoleon ditched Désirée for Josephine de Beauharnais and in 1798 she married General Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte. Napoleon made Bernadotte Marshal of France in 1804 and in 1810 the Swedish Diet elected him Crown Prince and future successor to their childless king. As David Bell has put it, "the era's tornado of possibilities landed [Désirée], improbably, in Stockholm as queen of Sweden (her descendants sit on the Swedish throne to this day…"
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Good movie!.

Amicalement
Armand