Noble Blood - Napoleon's Josephine (with Jennifer Wright)

Episode Date: December 19, 2023

The wife of Napoleon Bonaparte, Josephine went from a sugar plantation to prison to Empress. But her rise and her fall reveal a dark undercurrent in the trend toward women in post-Revolutionary France. Dana is joined in conversation by the writer Jennifer Wright. Support Noble Blood: — Bonus episodes, stickers, and scripts on Patreon — Merch! — Order Dana's book, 'Anatomy: A Love Story' and its sequel 'Immortality: A Love Story'See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Hey, I'm Dr. Maya Shunker, a cognitive scientist and hosts of the podcast, a slight change of plans, a show about who we are and who we become when life makes other plans. I wish that I hadn't resisted for so long the need to change. We have to be willing to live with a kind of uncertainty that none of us likes. You can have opinions. You can have like a strong,

dance. And then there's your body having its own program. Listen to a slight change of plans on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of IHeart Radio and grim and mild from Aaron Manky. Listener discretion advised. Hello, welcome to a very special episode of Noble Blood. I am here with my friend, the brilliant writer and historian Jennifer Wright. Hi, Jennifer. Hi, Dana. I am so happy to be here again. I am genuinely thrilled to be doing this episode with you. We are going to be talking about Josephine Bonaparte, which was not her actual name, really. It was not. But for popular reference, Josephine Bonaparte. And what I find very exciting is coincidentally, both you and I separately saw the Napoleon movie, the Ridley Scott movie last night. We did, yes. I was at the Americana. I was at the Grove. Oh, my God. We were both doing a Rickeruso mini. mini town, that's a very L.A. thing to say. I really liked it. I had a blast. I really enjoyed it. I think there are some historical accuracies. I don't think they matter. I think there are historical

accuracies in Maria Antoinette by Sophia Coppola. It doesn't stop it from being an amazing movie. I think there are historical inaccuracies in Maria Antoinette starring Norma Shear. Doesn't make it less of an amazing powerhouse performance by Norma Shear. I have gone on the record and I will continue to go on the record and say that I think historical fiction should not operate like a history book. No, it's entertainment. It's about theme. It's about character. It's about storytelling. It's about vibes. And boy, do they get the vibes of the French Revolution and the vibes of Napoleon being a very unpleasant little band. I wrote my letterboxed review, which is the most film bro thing I'll ever say. And then my

letterbox review is like, it is a misconception that Napoleon was short. He was average. That was average type. Average height. Average high. It was very hunched and he was poorly. fed growing up because his mother cared a great deal about having furniture and without, but not providing food for her children. And of course, there was the discrepancy in the English system of measurement and the French system of measurement. Well, and also, and first go, if you were British, Wellington was 5'10. I... And Napoleon had had two guards next to him who were very tall. Very tall. But my letterbox review was that Napoleon was not short, but as this movie makes abundantly clear, he was Europe's weirdest.

little guy. That is exactly right. That is absolutely true. And the beautiful Vanessa Kirby played Josephine, which will get into her life. But to segue, I will say, I did find it very Hollywood that they got an actress like 15 years younger than Joaquin Phoenix when. When in reality, Josephine was six years older than Napoleon and Napoleon was very young when they met. It's 24. Tell me about Josephine before they met. Well, I want to talk about another person who I know we've talked about on the podcast before as well, and that's Madame Pompadour. And the reason that my favorite historical woman, and that's because when Josephine was 15 years old,

she was told by a fortune teller that she would marry a dark man who would cover the world in glory and make her greater than a queen. And I was so struck by this because this also happened to Madame Pompadour, Louis 15th mistress. These four gentiles are just out here. Every pretty young girl. I think that's what, I think that these fortune tellers were not. uncannily accurate. I think they just realized that if a young girl comes in, just tell her she's

going to be a princess. And if she's a very beautiful, they're like, you will marry a great man. A great man, yes. Yeah. When Madame Pompadour was nine, the fortune teller told her that she would capture the heart of a king and be not quite a queen, but a little queen. And just to give you a little bit of perspective on Madame Pompadour because I think there's such fascinating archetypes of pre-revolutionary and post-revolutionary women. Madame Pompadour, who was born Jean Poussaint, was by almost any stretch of the definition a genius. She was extremely well educated. She was almost compulsively well read, so much so that the most famous portraits of her by Boucher show her reading and surrounded by more books. When she was told

to get married by her family. She married a wealthier man who was not excited about the prospect of marrying this middle-class bourgeois woman. He met her. He was immediately in love with her so much so that he was devastated when the king took her for his mistress. As soon as she was let loose in Paris,

she dominated every literary salon. Voltaire became her closest friend. Yeah, why not? She was able to secure him a position at court. And I think it's pretty well established that once she was made the king's mistress, she was a great champion of the Enlightenment, she fought against censorship,

she was friends with Dieterow and Montesquieu, she fought the Catholic Church to create a French encyclopedia. The king considered her his best advisor and consulted with her on every matter. He should not have done that. During the seven years of war, she did not know where to place cannons.

She was very unlike the bullion. You know who Dow was going to say? You know who knew how to play cannons as Napoleon? But I think it's also true that, and I don't want to dismiss Madame Pompadour as being frivolous because I think she was very concerned about, for instance, what she saw as the overreach the Catholic Church or censorship or the continued expansion of the Russian military. But Madame Pompadour's greatest day-to-day concern with whether or not she was able to sexually satisfy the king nine times a day as he requested. Wow, all right. And when her frail health after six years meant that she was no longer able to do that, the king just gave her a new role at court that basically acquainted to the king's best friend.

It's a great right. Yeah, she celebrated it by giving him a naked statue of herself, copying her breasts, Adam, entitled The Spirit of Friendship. That's a great, that's a great inspiration. And she's perhaps best remembered for her statement after, Nula de Jules, but came after the epic failure that was the Seven Years' War when France's army was just destroyed and their economy entirely depleted. And what it means is after us will come the flood. And Josephine was really bored into that flood quite literally. She was born

Marie-Josef Rose Taché de la Pajerie. She would come to be known as Josephine only when Napoleon started calling her Josephine. She was largely known as Rose throughout her life. until that. Well, that's the good thing about having three hyphenated names is people can just choose their favor and go with it. That is exactly what happened to Josephine. She was born on a sugar plantation in Martinique in 1763, and she was born a year before Madame Pompadour died at the age of 42. Can I interrupt so briefly, just a historical fact that has always fascinated me is Martinique went back and forth between the British. British and the France. And I know that it went from the British to the French just four months before Josephine was born.

Yep. So there's a world where she was born and she was British and she's off seducing, I don't know. The Duke of Wellington. Lord Nelson. Yeah. Duke of Wellington. Sure. When she was three, her house was entirely destroyed by a hurricane.

And rather than rebuilding as her father, who was a chronic gambler, just kind of moved them into the one non-destroyed part of the house. She was never properly educated. she, to be fair, she was also not interested in books in any capacity. Yeah. She was left to run essentially wild on the plantation. She mostly ate sugar, which disliked her teeth entirely and made her very overweight. And just for a little perspective, again, because I love the balance between these two women, when Madame Pompadour told her family about a fortune teller's prophecy,

which she'd heard because she was on a girl's day with her mom when she was getting their fortunes read. Her entire family was delighted, and they started calling her redat, which means our little queen. When Josephine told her family about the prophecy, she was locked in a shack for eight days because they accused her of consorting with a witch. Sure. So Josephine is not growing up in the free-flourishing Enlightenment era, France, that some of her contemporaries were. And because she now had Rodd teeth and was very overweight and her family was completely broke. She was not married off to a plantation owner's son. And her marriage prospects were looking very, very bad by the time she was 15.

But she had an aunt who had been a Marquis' mistress for 18 years. And the Marquis was getting older and he was worried about the long-term security of his mistress. And Josephine's aunt convinced the Marquis to marry his son to Josephine. So Josephine goes off to marry Alexandre de Beauhorne. He is 17. He already has a 29-year-old mistress. Her name is Madame de Longprey. Apparently, she's very charming and witty.

I've never read anything about Madame de Long-Prey that doesn't make her seem like a bit. But fine. He has a 29-year-old mistress. and he is horrified when Josephine gets off the boat. He is deeply disappointed in her appearance. He's deeply disappointed in her lack of education. He starts forcing her to go out to literary salons

of where people immediately make fun of her for being an idiot. Women say that she looks like a little girl dressed up in her mother's clothes. Oh, for Josephine. Okay, to be fair, I don't. want this to be me. But the literary salons at this particular time were mostly just discussing dangerous liaisons. Which, look, I...

They were very specific bookclubs. I love dangerous liaisons, but it is 400 pages of very horny letters from imaginary aristocrats back and forth. Yeah. If your only takeaway after reading Dangerous Liaisons was, I think it would be fun to have sex with the vicomte Valmond.

That would be a completely valid contribution. Yeah, what if he's played by Ryan Phillips? Exactly. Yeah. What if they made him wear a suit as a high school student? Well, of course, very sexy. I once saw, this is my fun fact, I once saw Dangerous Liaisons on Broadway with Leibsriver in that role.

It doesn't work, I saw it too. He was not good. It doesn't work. He looks like a jock. Well, I also thought the Ellen Rickman clips are still online, if you ever want to look those. My take on Leap Tribert was I was like, I think he was going through a divorce at the time.

And I was like, is there real wine in the caraf? Like, he did not seem like engaged. He's a good actor and it just was not working. She doesn't seem like he has the finesse of the Valmont character. No, he did not seem sneaky. Yeah. Did not work. Yeah, no.

He seems like a battle axe. He doesn't seem like someone who enjoys a secrecy in power game surroundings. Yeah. So that is my little Broadway review corner. Please continue. So she's being mocked at this out. She's being mocked at the flogs. And in a, she ends up having two children by Alexandra. And there is, look, there is a part of me that loves the fact that Madame Pompadour so thoroughly dominated the public imagination in terms of what a sexy, desirable woman is. Alexandra responded to this by being like, I cannot possibly fuck, let alone love a woman who does not go to book clubs. I mean, That's great. It's like when, you know, our culture, what is sexy is a cultural concept? It's cultural context. I think that like in the early 2000s, there's that like Girls Gone Wild,

Paris Hilton thing. And then we got like the smartest sexy. And I think that it's interesting that that was still happening in the 1700. It fluctuates back and forth. And that is fascinating. Isn't it fun that women have to shape our very identities in order to be desirable? Yes. But Alexandria says that he can not possibly remain at home with this object who has nothing to say to him? So again, this is devastating for Josephine. And he goes off with his mistress, Lord de Long Prae, but not before impregnating Josephine twice. Now, when she is having his second, immediately after she has...

Portents is number one. A Eugene. Yeah. And Eugene, yeah. Immediately after she had his second child, Alex Sauchery decides to divorce her so he can be with his mistress. in a truly insane response. He accuses her of infidelity.

He says that she is lower than all the sluts on the earth. Josephine has been nothing but faithful this entire. People are calling Josephine a slut. I'm sorry also for using the slur. They say it explicitly in the movie Napoleon. They do. Well, we'll come to that. Yeah.

But at this point, totally fine. At this point, very, very fine. And again, not to slut chamber. Be a slut. Do whatever. Sure. At this point, she has been nothing but incredibly faithful to Alexandria. Josephine retires to a convent to wait out the proceedings for legal separation. A lot of women did this. Getting back to dangerous liaisons, Madame Trevelle, retires to a convent to escape the advances of the Vicon de Valmont. And if you've, if you're listening to Noble Blood, if you've been listening to Noble Blood, Isabella of Angoulin retires to a convent after her scandal. Exactly. So lots of stylish women are staying at this convent. And in an almost unheard of turn of

events, the judge actually sides with Josephine during the legal separation. And he agrees that Josephine has been wronged. He orders Alexandria to take care of his children and to withdraw any accusations towards Josephine. Alexandra does none of that. But fortunately, the other women at this convent had taken it upon themselves to give Josephine a makeover. So they teach her how to use makeup, which she will use a massive amount of throughout the rest of her life.

They also showed her how to lose weight, mostly by not subsisting entirely on candy. And the fashions were also. changing. Maria Antoinette was going through her Tetrion phase right now. So instead of the huge pompadour, roughly hyperfeminine gowns, people were dressing in much more simple muslin gowns, and that suited Josephine a lot better, and she felt a lot more comfortable in that. So after her time at the convent, she went to Fontainebleau, where the king had his hunt. And she charmed the master of the hunt. He invited her to come along hunting with the various aristocrats that the king invited. She was able to find a protector very quickly. I think she had three of them. All of them were

about 20 years older than her. They were giving her a tremendous amount of jewels. She was able to take care of her children. And I think had things continued this way, she probably would have ended up like her aunt being a permanent mistress to one of these men. Except a revolution. happened. 1789, the revolution promising equality for the common people comes, and Alexandria, for once in his miserable fucking life, is a little bit useful for Josephine. He was a noble, but he was also a staunch anti-royalist. He was a vicom. This is stupid. He shouldn't have done this. But he became a key member of the National Assembly representing a group of nobles believed that the monarchy should be abolished. And of course this ended really famously well for him. Oh, it is.

He worked out. Oh, it is great for him. But when the royal family attempted to flee the country, it was Alessandre who dispatched the riders to bring him back and the National Assembly that everybody had to wait until the royal family returned, but they couldn't get away from this. He emerged very briefly as a hero to Paris. And Josephine is suddenly very much in style. She's being invited everywhere. she is, seen very briefly as being a hero of the revolution. Unfortunately, the promise of democracy did not change France's situation at all. The people who were starving before are still starving. And by 1793, the reign of terror led by Robespier had begun,

and it was carried out with the intent of eliminating anyone deemed parasitic on the state. And of course, that includes all royals and all. members of the Catholic Church. Oh, and Josephine's husband gets the, uh, Joe guillotine. His husband is guillotine very, very quickly. Um, it's so fascinating. I don't want to dwell too much on the reign of terror, but a reign of terror is fascinating to me. The executions were based on everything. The one that fascinates me is that some executions happened because people had old playing cards. And it was seen as showing sympathy towards kings and queens. Sure, if you're playing cards, have kings and queens.

Why would you keep that? One of the other special horrors with the revolution that always sticks in my mind. Special starring? Special horrors. Horrors. Yeah, of the reign of terror, is that a lot of aristocrats had dogs. So their dogs went wild after they were dragged to the guillotine. And it meant that rabbit packs of dogs were roaming the street, drinking blood out of the gutters.

So the army had to be dispatched to start shooting the dogs. That's also another, I mean, it feels like those stories are reappearing because a few hundred years earlier, we're going to get a dog with the beheading of Mary Queen of Scans. Famously, before she went to get beheaded, she hit her dog in her skirt so they came out. The one that it makes me think of is the Rwandan genocide for the government again had to be dispatched because dogs

and so many people were murdered that their dogs just ran wild on the street. A lot of them went avid. This isn't a theory, but I think this feels self-evident. But I think if you have to dispatch the army to kill all the rabid dogs roaming your streets, your revolution has failed. You're going to be remembered very poorly by history.

True. So we need to fast forward just a little bit. Josephine is put in prison. Josephine's in prison. Josephine is at least. It's one of the most horrifying prisons in Paris. But good news, her roommate in Purcellmate, I guess, in the prison is Teresa Caberas. She is a mistress to the revolutionary John Talien. Now, Teresa is pretty angry that her boyfriend, protector, whatever, is in close coats with

Robsby and yet she's imprisoned. So she sends Talian a dagger and a letter demanding that he kill Robsby. and free her immediately. And if he doesn't do this, he's not a man. And she feels personal shame that she ever slept with. And Talion actually does this, which is amazing to me. He's like, okay, Robs here has to go for all the reasons, but also for this. No, very much specifically for this and only for this.

So when Robsby is giving a speech at a convention, Talian storms the stage, waving the dagger, Teresa, sent him, and shouting down with this dictator. His co-conspirator, Paul de Barras, joins him, and Robespier flees. He tries to shoot himself, but he only succeeds in shattering his job before being dragged to the guillotine. Tallien and Baras emerged from this as heroes. Baras became the head of the new directorate government. He's also one of the only remaining super wealthy men in Paris.

And Josephine emerged from prison at Teresa's behest. Teresa, who has become a hero to the Parisians, has not forgotten. her friend, but Josephine emerges to find Paris in ruins. Most of the homes have been lit a blaze, but she's popular again. Yeah, and this is about when she'll meet Napoleon at a part? Almost, yes. Okay, we're coming to that. The Baron de Friendly wrote at this time that after the reign of terror, it was slid in height of good manners to be ruined, to have been suspected, persecuted, and above all imprisoned. People started wearing their hair crop to imitate prison styles. They were Quifera la victim.

Quiffure la victim, yes. My French pronunciation is not as good as you were. And ribbons around their necks in a nod to the guillotine. Josephine's welcome at the extremely exclusive bald of victim where... Do you believe the ball de victim actually happened? All the time, yes. Absolutely. Okay. Yeah.

There were basically like support groups for people who had been imprisoned. There were special salons for people who had been imprisoned. I just mean from a purely historical standpoint, it was whether the act. actual, like the main ball de la victim was a, actually happened or was like a romantic convention. Um, I mean, I don't know. I don't know enough about this period to really say. My guess and my speculation is it's like a combination. Like I think people are having these parties. And then I think in the romantic era, people were like building up their ideas of like one advice only. Yeah. Speaking of parties, Josephine was spending an astronomical amount. She was one of the only women in the city with a

carriage at a time when bread was so scarce that wealthy people brought their own food to every dinner party because you couldn't expect other people to have food. Josephine was also deeply in debt. She's being constantly pursued by life. Well, she's spending all our money on carriages. She's an insane expense. She's in desperate need of a protector who will cover her expensive. Fortunately, she'd remained very close with Teresa, who's universally beloved in Paris. And she's now married to Italian and coasting some truly extravagant orgies. So Josephine becomes one of the marvellouses of this period.

She appears around town clad in only see-through Greek-style gowns and sandals. Some of the marvellouss watch through the streets with their breasts exposed. Most of them soaked their gowns in water so they would cling to their bodies before going out. And around this time, Teresa introduces her to Pal de Baras. Paul's now the president of the National Assembly. He's the richest man in Paris. He's able to pay off the many, many people pursuing Josephine for money. And he asks only that she'll arrange orgies for him. She does in very extravagant style. Apparently, at these orgies, women dip their breasts in champagne glasses. They stripped naked and pretended to be jungle cats. They took off their dresses and wagered on who were the least. Josephine sat on Deborah As's lap the entire time, so he was. he could bundle and have sex with her throughout. Everything's going great. She's enjoying life.

And it was around this time that a 22-year-old Corsican general appears. And it's Napoleon Bonaparte. He is absolutely agog at the women in Paris. He writes to her brother that here alone, they deserve to rule all the men are mad for them. They think of nothing but them. They live only for them. A woman needs to live in Paris for six months to know, what her do is. He has big virgin energy. He is big, very, very much a virgin. Women also don't like him.

He is a very brilliant military strategist. He is very uncomfortable to talk to. His technique with women was to stare at them for many, many minutes on end and did not say anything. Most women found this very creepy. Sure. But Napoleon was one of DeVrasse's protégés. So he seats him next to Josephine at a seemingly non-orgy-related dinner. Sure, that's what they say. And whenever it's like, oh, how do you meet? And it's like, they met on Tinder, but it's like, oh, we met at a friend. And so it's like it was a non-orgy party.

I think this one was a non-orgy party because I think Napoleon would have been very frightened. Yeah. But it's funny to imagine them trying to whitewash how we met Stowe. Yeah. And Josephine was nice to him. He says that she's the first woman in Paris who has been nice to him. She just talked to him about how she saw his military strategy was smart the entire time and touched his arm. I think it's interesting that in the movie, they make her seem like an elusive creature of mystery.

It's not that. She was just a very pretty lady who was being nice to him at dinner and Napoleon was in love. He proposes very soon after. And Josephine, to everyone's surprise, I think they were married six months. months after meeting. Yep. And people kept wondering why she was marrying this man who was commonly accepted to be a fool, especially because by Josephine's own admission, she had only lukewarm feelings towards him. Baras said that she was motivated entirely by money, and she would behead her own lover if she could drink gold out of his snuff. But Baras was pretty mad about this,

and Napoleon had so much less money than any other man she knew. He made him. 15,000 francs a year, and that's what she was spending on makeup at this point. And I think, you know, a slightly more pragmatic explanation is that Josephine is 31 by this point. Baras is very unlikely to marry her. She probably is thinking about her future in a somewhat strategic way. If Napoleon isn't successful now, he seems like he's on the verge of becoming very successful. But I think the most charitable explanation is just that he, He is a very awkward little foreigner overawed by Paris, who everybody thinks is awkward and dumb.

And I think he probably reminded her of a younger version of herself in a way that she felt very tenderly towards. I will also say there's something very charming. I think Napoleon is a very smart man. I think we can say that... I think he's a brilliant military. He's a brilliant in, you know, in certain ways. I think that she probably found his intelligence attractive.

But would I also find very attractive? is someone who, like, openly really likes you. But she wasn't going to marry him. I'm saying, like, here's a guy who's like, I love you. I want to marry you. And I'd be like, all right, let's get on with it. You know, I think that's interesting. But shortly after their marriage, he goes off to Italy.

He writes her a constant stream of letters. This is, if you are a noble blood listener, listen to our episode on the Black Count, Toma, Alexander Dumas. And that'll be like a good companion to this because you're like, what was Napoleon off doing in Italy and Egypt? That episode will give the context. And meanwhile, he's over there, Josephine. Josephine, one of his letters says that if Josephine ever takes a lover, he will enact

Othello-style revenge, murdering her and her lover and himself. This is all of the letters. This is how they all read. He keeps writing things. I feel like I've read these letters, and he's like, if you loved me, you'd write me twice a day. Good women would be reading constantly. I know. I find I don't care for Nebraska.

Pauline's letters. I know that they go for millions and millions of dollars at Ochen, but what bothers me the most about them is that there is no teasing, there's no warmth of familiarity, there's no friendship in those letters. Napoleon was an aspiring romantic novelist when he came to Paris. He was trying to write a romantic novel. And I think in all of his letters, Josephine could be replaced by a sexy automaton and the letters would read exactly. Yeah, it's not very personal. Well, I think if you've paid attention to someone's sandwich preferences and send them a link to a sandwich shop you think they'd enjoy, it would be more romantic than anything Napoleon wrote Josephine. Seems like he's just very, I mean, he's very excited about being in love. And desperate for, I mean, not to extend the metaphor of conquering, but like to own and possess.

That's this woman. Yes. I have a wife. I love her. She loves me. I have her. That is set. Yes.

Yes, Josephine says that he does not love her. He worships her. And I think that does get at some of the difference there. Now, Josephine, while he is away, has taken a lover, Ippoly Charles. Oh, yeah. He was 23. He was very, very handsome. He fit in very well with Josephine's Paris friends. Baras said he looked like a weakman cruz dummy. Doras is my favorite person in this entire story.

Napoleon, meanwhile, was in despair. He writes Barass that if Josephine didn't join him, in Italy, he was going to kill himself. And Josephine's like, no, thanks. Not this time of year? Correct. Baras needed Napoleon to win battles in Italy because France needs to reestablish itself as a country with some kind of military power.

So, Baras tells Josephine that he is throwing a very elaborate dinner for her. He does indeed throw this dinner. Apparently, it's very nice. And afterwards, he picks her up, bundles her into a cage. carriage and tells her she has to go to Italy. Now, I don't know how to explain their relationship at this point, except they seem to be best friends who hate each other. The compromise is that they agree that she can bring the Ippoly Charles along with her to Italy. So off Josephine goes to Italy, she seems to somewhat enjoy her time in Italy, but before long, Napoleon has to head on

to Egypt. And he continues sending letters to Josephine constantly. Meanwhile, Josephine goes off to take the waters for her health. She writes to Bras, telling him that she hopes he gets really, really, really sick so he can join her. I love their relationship. And in Egypt, Napoleon is talking about his wife so constantly that his soldiers say that it verges on idolatry. His aide de Camp, who was having an affair with Josephine's maid, finally tells him that Josephine is having an affair.

Napoleon is devastated. He writes his brother that he's going to get a divorce. The ship carrying his letter is seized, and it gets reprinted and distributed in all the British papers. Oh, that's so embarrassing. Oh, the British people are so excited. They're so happy. This is a great day for them.

Dap collectors assume that Josephine will be divorced imminently and they send on her. Debraus stops French papers from French. printing this article, he fights off all her debt collectors, and he gets her the money to buy a house called Malmazon, where he tells her to wait this out. And locals report that they often see her walking was a handsome young man who must be her son. Uh-huh. It's Apolline. It's always it's her lover. Yeah, yeah. Napoleon decided to even the score by having an affair with a young soldier's wife named Pauline, who had accompanied her husband to Egypt. He had no idea how to initiate this affair because he was the least charming person alive.

So he just did his thing where he stared at her for the entire hot air balloon launch they were attending. Pauline said, and she's like, look at that hot air balloon. It's going up that way. Pauline said that this made her intensely uncomfortable. Then Napoleon sent an aid of his to describe that he wanted to have sex with her. She said no and that she was married and this made her again very uncomfortable. triple. Then he sent her a diamond bracelet and she relented immediately. Yeah, yeah. It's like, okay, enough is enough. So I, so pass forwarding a little bit, why does Napoleon ultimately forgive Josephine? So Napoleon returns to Paris.

Josephine has been waiting for him. Unfortunately, she's at another house when he returns. Napoleon is devastated. He finally finds her at the house she's at. She's sobbing hysterically and she sends her two children to go bang on his door. and she has coached them to say, Our father is already dead, must we lose our second five? So she has her two sobbing children doing this. Then she goes in, she has sex with Napoleon.

The next morning he announces he's not going to get a divorce. It's going to be fine. But Napoleon does continue to have affairs throughout the rest of his marriage. He never again indulges in the kind of single-minded worship of Josephine. He'll have an illegitimate child. He will have an illegitimate child later. Now, shortly after this, if we jump ahead a little bit, Napoleon stages a coup d'all over from the... Your spoiler alert, Napoleon becomes emperor, crowns himself, crowns Josephine.

Yeah. Baras gets excelled to Brussels. He continues to write Josephine constantly. Josephine never writes him back again. Yikes. What did he ever do other than end the reign of terror and try to have a democracy? Well, you can't have a... and bail Josephine out of every problem she ever had. You can't be one of the main guys when there's a new emperor.

You got it, you know, all right. The one truly lovely man in this story. So Josephine and Napoleon moving to the decrepit Tullerese Palace. On the gates of that palace hung a sign from the Revolution that read on the 10th of August 1792. Royalty was abolished in France and will never return. The first thing Napoleon did was scrub away. all revolutionary side. He said he did not like to see that shit around.

And he began referring to Louis XVI's as the good Louis the 16th. Well, I do think, I mean, not to step on this and to agree, I think that part of Napoleon's claim to power was reestablishing the bad revolution, the good power of France. And I mean, if you think back, if you as a listener are sort of imagining the imagery and architecture and fashion and furnishings that we associate with Napoleon. It's very gilded. It's very regal. It's like red velvet. It is. At one point, Josephine had a dress that was covered entirely with real rose petals.

She had a dress that was made entirely of peacock feathers. Josephine also bought 900 dresses a year, five times more than Marie Antoinette ever bought. I read a thing that she never wore the same pair of stockings twice. Well, that's smart. I mean, they rip. That makes sense. But also, in her defense, I think Napoleon, maybe she went a little far, but I think he was very much advocating for, like, we have to play this part. We took power by force, so we have to present power.

They brought back people to talk about how everything used to be done at the court, so they could try to mimic it. Now, Josephine was never comfortable with this. She was sleeping in Marie Antoinette's chambers, and she claimed that she could hear the queen. 's ghost asking her what she was doing in her bed. So creepy. I love it. Also around this time, Napoleon declared that French women needed to learn obedience. So he rolled back women's rights enormously. Husbands could now imprison their wives for infidelity.

Also, and unrelated to the sexism aspect of this, I just want to remind people that Napoleon and France is the only country and history to ever reinstate slavery. Slavery. Yep. People thought it was because of Josephine's influence because she grew up on a plantation. And she was comfortable. I mean, I also think it was partly because Napoleon, I mean, they just needed, like, them. I don't think he cared about the revolutionary ideals. I think he was driven by, like, cold economic prospects. Absolute lust for power.

Power and money. Yeah. So that's not good. Yeah. Madame de Stelle, who adored Napoleon at the beginning of his reign, and wrote him letters saying that she should be his mistress rather than this insignificant woman, Josephine, which Napoleon and was very uninterested in. He despised intellectual women. Really? Oh, yes. Yeah. Her move with men was to ask them who their favorite woman in history was, so she can have a lively conversation with them. My favorite Madame Dostel quote that I feel like I come back to a lot is, and I'm paraphrasing, but the one must in life choose between boredom and suffering. That's very depressed. I know. And as two adults, what do they call it contentment? Contemptment is better than boredom.

But isn't that just like very insightful? Yes, yeah. She was a very insightful woman who, when she asked Napoleon that, had him reply whichever woman bore the most children. Madame de Steele is shortly after this going to flee the country. The censorship that had so horrified, Madame Pompadour is back in full force. The Marquis de Sade is imprisoned shortly after the publishing of Juliet.

Which we have an episode on it. She's doing an episode on Juliet. Are you doing Justin Mann, Julia? We've done the Marquis de Sade. So if you are a listener, you know all about the Marquis de Sade's imprisonment and his long-suffering wife. God, his poor wife. You read much Marquisadegh? Not on purpose.

I read some for that episode. And I literally, I think I said in the episode, I was like, I'm not quoting any of this. I'm not recommending it. I don't find it pleasant. I think it's like the equivalent of like a shock comic. It's a shock comic. I actually love Juliet as. a proto-feminist piece about a woman who only does

make things and comes out on top. But it is pornography. It's pornography. It's nothing I would recommend any esteemed listeners of this show. But this is basically the end of female intellectuals in France, where Louis XVI's had consulted with Madame Pompadour all through the Seven Years' War. What Napoleon liked was for Josephine to sit in front of him in total silence while he thought, about military matters. She was a gilded statue. She was a beautiful statue for him. And at the coronation,

Napoleon obviously, oh, the Catholic Church is back to. Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, we've rolled back everything the revolution tried to accomplish. So the Pope is there for Napoleon's coronation, but Napoleon crowns himself, as we assume all listeners know. And he also crowns Josephine. And one of my small comforts of this is that there was one spectator at the coronation that saw Josephine walking down the aisle in her finery and said, oh, look, there's Barossus's whore. Oh, sorry, I don't love Josephine that much. No, she's an interesting figure. But she's also not, I think the important thing about history is you don't have to like everyone you talk about.

I don't feel the fierce loyalty to her, but I do to some female historical biggers. I think she is an amazing survivor. Well, to fast forward again a little bit, obviously, Josephine probably in part thanks to her age and also the toxic makeup she was wearing. And also the fact that she had been using contraceptive. Contraceptive duchess for years. And she had broken her pelvis. So for all of these factors combined, she can't bear children, she can't bear Napoleon in air. And so reluctantly, they divorce.

They divorce. She, Napoleon, Mary's 19-year-old Marie-Louise in 1810. Their nice Catholic princess. A nice Catholic princess. Their first meeting was arranged at the Chateau de Comptien, where Louis XVI's met Marie Antoinette for the first time. Oh. Like Marie Antoinette, Marie-Louise had to, because he really just wants to be Louis the 16th at this point, had to get rid of all of her French clothing before.

Austrian clothing before crossing into France. And she had to get rid of her dog, just like Maria Antoinette. And she hated this and was mad about it. And as soon as Napoleon was exiled to Elba, she never wrote him again. I understand it. She's like, this isn't my bargain. She did her job. She gave him a son.

Meanwhile, Josephine retires to Malmaison, her house. She is given an allowance of $3 million, as well as $4,000 to go exclusively to her garden. Now, Josephine got really into plants at one point. It's one of her main accomplishments. She introduced the concept of English gardens to Versailles. And Melma-Mazahn became an incredibly beautiful home. Her granddaughter recalls wandering around eating sugarcane on the grounds,

just like her grandmother. But Josephine was inconsolable. She said that sometimes it seems as though I am dead and that all that is left is a faint sensation of knowing that I no longer exists. I mean, yeah, imagine feeling. I mean, it's literally redundancy. But it's the most, it's like if you get laid up and they're like, it's not personal, but it's like it's the most personal thing.

It's her all identity is a crippling redundancy, I think, because she was not valued. And again, we're coming back to Pompadour. Pantadar also has to stop being the king's mistress. But her retirement is getting to Sylvie. Retirement is instead of having sex nine times a day, I'm just going to talk about politics and all of the enlightened my writers are going to come and read me their drafts and I'll give them advice on. I mean, that's the horrible thing where it's like if you're a woman and your only value is childbearing or being sexually attractive, then you, that's your job you wage out. And Josephine was still seen as a treasure to some of the allies.

The Tsar of Russia came to visitor at Malmaison frequently. and but she was never happy again. Josephine's overriding emotion seems to be despair at this point in her life. And in 1814, she caught a cold and lapsed into a delirium. Supposedly, she could be heard muttering Napoleon Elba, King of Rome. Just before she died, she insisted on being dressed in her pink satin morning gown and rubies in case anyone important came to visit. Oh.

And she likely died of pneumonia, though her minorses. said that she died of grief at the age of 51. 51 very young. Yeah. I mean, it's sort of this tragic life, and I'm so glad you brought up Madame de Pompadour in comparison. Well, I think it is such an interesting commentary on the revolution that they did it. And now everything is the same, but everything is worse. And I think that when people view Napoleon and Josephine is this, like, great romance, like, I think it's a false image. I don't even think it works well in the movie. I think you can take so many creative liberties when you're making a movie. But I also think a lot about the fact that these people didn't read. And I think one's thing that does come out

of reading a great deal, at least hopefully, is a kind of healthy self-awareness and a sense of humor about yourself. And Josephine and Napoleon had absolutely no senses of humor. Very serious. Yeah, they were deeply serious people. You can have opinions. You can have like a a strong stance, and then there's your body having its own program. I'm Dr. Maya Shunker, a cognitive scientist and hosts of the podcast, a slight change of plans, a show about who we are and who we become when life makes other plans. We share stories and scientific insights to help us all better navigate these periods of turbulence and transformation.

There is one finding that is consistent, and that is that our resilience rests on our are relationships. I wish that I hadn't resisted for so long the need to change. We have to be willing to live with a kind of uncertainty that none of us likes. Listen to a slight change of plans on the I-HeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can have opinions. You can have like a strong stance.

And then there's your body having its own program. I'm Dr. Maya Shunker, a cognitive scientist and hosts of the podcast a slight change of plans, a show about who we are and who we become when life makes other plans. We share stories and scientific insights to help us all better navigate these periods of turbulence and transformation. There is one finding that is consistent, and that is that our resilience rests on our relationships. I wish that I hadn't resisted for so long the need to change.

We have to be willing to live with a kind of uncertainty that none of us likes. Listen to a slight change of plans on the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I do think in terms of a noble blood epilogue, the one weird detail about her life that I always find sort of morbidly fascinating is that when she felt her position with Napoleon slipping a little, she had her daughter, Hortense, marrying Napoleon's brother. Yep, Louis, who she hated. It's just... And everybody agreed Louis was awful. Yeah, that's exactly why people needed Napoleon to divorce Josephine because we're like, we can't have the power going to his awful brothers. Exactly.

Nobody wanted Louis to be emperor. Yeah. So, like, imagine Napoleon's stepdaughter then becoming his sister-in-law. It's just wild. I mean, there's a lot of inter-family marriage at this point, just in some desperate attempt to preserve power, even with Josephine. Oh. But, yeah, no, I feel the impression. that Josephine was able to survive at all. I think it's interesting that she was able to use her

sexuality in that way and that her sexuality was a thing that was very much created and not innate to her. She was not born incredibly beautiful the way we hear about some of the powerful women from this period were. And that's, you know, that's obviously something that is worthy of respect and such a survival tool. And that's very, very interesting. I think because Napoleon hated intellectual women, it's a little unsatisfying to try to look at more of Josephine's accomplishments. But I could also be wrong.

As Ridley Scott said, were you there? Then you don't fucking know. I was not there. I am sure there are scholars of Josephine who would, set me to rights and tell me that she had a fascinating and rich in her life that I just wasn't as evident as it might have been with some other historical women. And one theme that I've found always so fascinating in Noble Blood is this stark juxtaposition, this like tragic juxtaposition I found between incredible glamour, like these people spending exorbitant amount of money.

She spent $800 a year on 800 francs a year. on perfume when the average Parisian family's income with 600 francs. So this just like extraordinary glamour in concert with these tragic mechanisms and feeling trapped, I just find it very interesting is this reinforcing idea where it's like it's a cliche that money doesn't buy you happiness and power doesn't buy you happiness. But it's like I think we as audience members and podcast listeners and writers are drawn to power and money and glamour. And then all the more interesting when there's this like deeply tragic undercurrent to it. It is a deeply tragic undercurrent.

Yeah, no, she or look, I think at least by the standards of the time, Josephine could count herself as someone who was deeply loved. Yeah. She obviously ended this a millionaire many, many times over. She had a very beautiful home and she had two children who seemed very devoted to her. This isn't a tragic story. It's just a story about the limitations that were placed on women at that time, which, I mean, do feel especially tragic if you believe that the revolution was supposed to create some kind of equality. I think that is a beautiful note to end on. Jennifer, where can the good people find you?

Oh, they should find me on threads because I don't do threads. Well, no one should. Nobody should. It's Jen Ashley Wright on threads or plug your lighting. Oh, and my most recent book is Madam Ristell, a history of New York's most fabulous, fearless, and infamous abortionist. And you can get it wherever books are sold. Fantastic. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Noble Blood is a production of IHeart Radio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Manky. Noble Blood is created and hosted by me, Dana Schwartz, with additional writing and reading and reading. researching by Hannah Johnston, Hannah Zwick, Mira Hayward, Courtney Sender, and Lori Goodman. The show is edited and produced by Noami Griffin and Rima Il Kali, with supervising producer Josh Thane and executive producers Aaron Manky, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick.

For more podcasts from IHeartRadio, visit the IHartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hey, I'm Dr. Maya Shunker, a cognitive scientist and hosts of the podcast, a slight change of plans, a show about who we are and who we become when life makes other plans. I wish that I hadn't resisted for so long the need to change. We have to be willing to live with a kind of uncertainty that none of us likes. You can have opinions. You can have like a strong stance. And then there's your body.

having its own program. Listen to a slight change of plans on the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.