It’s really exciting looking more deeply into Marie Louise. We do get a skewed view from the memoirs because none of those writers have much reason to like her. Yet everyone does treat her with some indulgence and sympathy. I was wondering if that was because she was unintelligent and that they felt bad for her. In this diary, it turns out that Marie Louise is a lot sharper than I could see at first.
Marie Louise’s favorite person is the Duchess of Montebello, someone who does not much like her. But, more remarkably, the Duchess de Montebello is fairly open about disliking Napoleon. It is so strange Napoleon made the Duchess de Montebello the main lady in waiting to his wife. Napoleon always has less influence over Marie Louise than the Duchess de Montebello. When Marie Louise first traveled to France, the Duchess de Montebello sent off Marie Louise’s previous favorite person lady attendant and blamed it on Napoleon.
Here we see someone perceptive and deeply manipulative.
Marie Louise says she’ll continue to play her power games.
The memoirs so far are available here.
https://www.thetanster.com/blog/2019/2/11/napoleon-memoirs-links
The private diary of Marie Louise.
https://www.thetanster.com/blog/2019/11/15/muzh01ve0qlmbrxke6ha2l1gusujox