We’ve been going deep into the story of Napoleon’s 2nd wife Napoleon Marie Louise and I’ve come to a lot of conclusions. I’ll share them because, why not?
I think Marie Louise was highly indoctrinated into becoming potentially a living sacrifice for the Hapsburg Dynasty and this was sold to her through her desire to be loved by her remote father - Emperor Franz.
By the time she reached Napoleon, she was way too brainwashed to really be able to change and she was perceiving the world through the false persona she had adopted to conform to the system of her upbringing. This means she had to constantly change her natural impulses to fake ones which would be most “appropriate”. This resulted in her coming off as stiff and haughty and in consequence she was generally not liked. She also spent a lot of time in bed probably due to depression. Marie Louise’s private writing shows a lot of instability, so I’m wondering if she suffered from something like Borderline Personality Disorder.
Despite all this, Napoleon really did succeed in seducing her. As she had really succeeded in seducing him. She definitely portrayed herself in terms to him that he’d like that were a bit artificial. For example, she pretends to be far more involved in her son’s life to him than her personal writing reveals.
Because Marie Louise’s authentic self was so cratered, when the power brokers of Austria sent a new man to seduce her - she fell for that as well. She just really wanted to be loved and she deserved better. I think there was a good person under all the weight of her cruel circumstances. She still could’ve made better choices but maybe she really was too weak to do better.
That’s my opinion.
Here we see a letter written to Marie Louise’s son who got to survive to adulthood, Guillaume. She is writing after the death of her son with Napoleon. She is saying she has chores that are exhausting her and making her sick. She had a lot of servants so whatever she was doing couldn’t be entirely left to them. I recently posted how Marie Louise had warned her son that his death was on the horizon if he wouldn’t stop emulating Napoleon’s virtues - the virtues that led to Napoleon’s early death.
