(BTW, how's that for humiliation: having your marital sex life, or lack of same, discussed by the international press?)
I had two reactions to this: a) seems par for the course these days b) I guess it could be worse, it could be Marie Antoinette's marital sex life discussed by the international press? (Which I assume it wasn't.)
Johnson leaves you with the impression that he gained the money by taxing his poor subjects and never did anything with it but bath in it like Scrooge McDuck.
t could be Marie Antoinette's marital sex life discussed by the international press? (Which I assume it wasn't.)
Not sure about the international press, but the French press writing about her sex life was a flourishing industry that contributed to the sentiment against her in the last years of the monarchy and the first years of the republic (before her beheading). She was presented as a bisexual (without the era having that term already, of course) nymphomaniac who had sex with everyone who moved. (The three accusations that some modern biographers go "maybe?" about are Axel von Fersen - I've told you about him way back when - the Princesse de Lamballe and the Duchesse de Polignac, which were her two female bffs; Polignac made it out of France alive, and Lamballe's head was torn from her body and literally paraded in front of Marie-Antoinette so she should see it during one of the ugliest episodes of the Terreur.) I think the one story I'm sure at least the English press talked about when she was alive and the revolution hadn't started yet was the affair of the necklace which did so much to ruin her reputation but which she was really 100% innocent about. Short version: con woman and some con men, including Cagliostro, get together to con a Cardinal who has a crush on Marie Antoinette into believing she'll have sex with him if he buys her a necklace husband Louis, as part of his policy to show the French people he understands the country is in trouble and they need to save money, has refused to buy. Main con woman hires actress Marie Antoinette lookalike who rendez-vous with the Cardinal a few times at night in the park, Cardinal buys necklace, hands over necklace, later at Versailles meets Queen and is crushed that she ignores him (as she can't stand him in real life), complains about necklace expense, scandal. The main con woman later made it to England and gave interviews and wrote lurid memoirs saying of course Marie Antoinette did it with the Cardinal and a lot of other people, and she, con woman, was her special confidant for a while. The Brits, out of general anti-French sentiment, ate it up.
(This changed once the revolution had started and Marie Antoinette suddenly was a martyred Queen in the English press, when before she'd been an Austrian-French hussy.)
However, re: her marital sex life of the first seven years, well, there was of course speculation as to why she didn't get pregnant, since the Habsburgs were famously fertile (which not just her mother but also her sisters were proving). But I don't think anyone hit on the truth, not least because the marriage itself having been consumated had been a relatively public affair, with grandfather Louis XV. present, so no one thought young future Louis XVI was impotent per se, and the ejaculation problem was way too intimate for anyone to guesss until Joseph visited. (Especially since young Louis did not have mistresses who could have delivered comparative data.)
Man, poor Marie Antoinette. (And thank you for summarizing the affair of the necklace -- which I am sure I knew once upon a time when Awesome French Teacher was feeding me all the French Revolution books, but which I have totally forgotten by now.)
Heh, yeah, I would definitely not have guessed that problem either!
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
Re: Johnsonia
Date: 2021-02-28 01:05 am (UTC)I had two reactions to this: a) seems par for the course these days b) I guess it could be worse, it could be Marie Antoinette's marital sex life discussed by the international press? (Which I assume it wasn't.)
Johnson leaves you with the impression that he gained the money by taxing his poor subjects and never did anything with it but bath in it like Scrooge McDuck.
Heeeeeee! I laughed :D
Re: Johnsonia
Date: 2021-02-28 05:53 am (UTC)Not sure about the international press, but the French press writing about her sex life was a flourishing industry that contributed to the sentiment against her in the last years of the monarchy and the first years of the republic (before her beheading). She was presented as a bisexual (without the era having that term already, of course) nymphomaniac who had sex with everyone who moved. (The three accusations that some modern biographers go "maybe?" about are Axel von Fersen - I've told you about him way back when - the Princesse de Lamballe and the Duchesse de Polignac, which were her two female bffs; Polignac made it out of France alive, and Lamballe's head was torn from her body and literally paraded in front of Marie-Antoinette so she should see it during one of the ugliest episodes of the Terreur.) I think the one story I'm sure at least the English press talked about when she was alive and the revolution hadn't started yet was the affair of the necklace which did so much to ruin her reputation but which she was really 100% innocent about. Short version: con woman and some con men, including Cagliostro, get together to con a Cardinal who has a crush on Marie Antoinette into believing she'll have sex with him if he buys her a necklace husband Louis, as part of his policy to show the French people he understands the country is in trouble and they need to save money, has refused to buy. Main con woman hires actress Marie Antoinette lookalike who rendez-vous with the Cardinal a few times at night in the park, Cardinal buys necklace, hands over necklace, later at Versailles meets Queen and is crushed that she ignores him (as she can't stand him in real life), complains about necklace expense, scandal. The main con woman later made it to England and gave interviews and wrote lurid memoirs saying of course Marie Antoinette did it with the Cardinal and a lot of other people, and she, con woman, was her special confidant for a while. The Brits, out of general anti-French sentiment, ate it up.
(This changed once the revolution had started and Marie Antoinette suddenly was a martyred Queen in the English press, when before she'd been an Austrian-French hussy.)
However, re: her marital sex life of the first seven years, well, there was of course speculation as to why she didn't get pregnant, since the Habsburgs were famously fertile (which not just her mother but also her sisters were proving). But I don't think anyone hit on the truth, not least because the marriage itself having been consumated had been a relatively public affair, with grandfather Louis XV. present, so no one thought young future Louis XVI was impotent per se, and the ejaculation problem was way too intimate for anyone to guesss until Joseph visited. (Especially since young Louis did not have mistresses who could have delivered comparative data.)
Marie Antoinette
Date: 2021-03-03 06:08 am (UTC)Heh, yeah, I would definitely not have guessed that problem either!