I’ve been showing for years, that there was an extremely painful dynamic between Napoleon and his brother Louis about Hortense. This excerpt of a letter says a lot.
*You have the best and most virtuous of wives, and you make her unhappy. Let her dance as much as she pleases-it belongs to her age. I have a wife who is forty; from the field of battle I write to her to go to balls; and you wish a wife who is only twenty, who sees her life passing with all its illusions, to live in a cloister, or, like a nurse, to be always washing her child. You are too much yourself in your home, and not enough in your Administration. I should not say all this to you if I were not interested in you. Make the mother of your children happy. There is only one way; show her thorough esteem and confidence. Unfortunately you have a wife who is too virtuous : if she were a coquette she would lead you by the nose. But you have a proud wife, who grieves and revolts at the bare idea that you have a bad opinion of her. You should have had a wife like some I know in Paris. She would have deceived you, and at the same time kept you at her knees. It is not my fault, as I have often told your wife.“
Louis Bonaparte, husband of Napoleon’s stepdaughter Hortense.
