How did my history teacher look at me when I told her that I liked the Napoleonic era...

I always get that sentence: “Oh, but he was a tyrant, he killed people.” oh no way! I didn't know that!

(It's humor... But it's true)

Similar experience from my long ago school days. The era was shown to us as one of constant bloodshed and oppression, dark and gloomy, with people mostly busy being ruined and getting killed.

I luckily haven't been told anything like that yet when expressing my deep interest in this era, not even when I show progress for my senior project ( the one where I drew all 26 marshals as chibis) in class. There was this one time where I was showing some stuff I had finished which included the first set of marshals and one of my friends commented that the style in which I drew the marshals in was cute even though some of them were "horrible people" and my professor stepped and added that depended on the political and economic state of the era which determined whether or not what they did makes them horrible people. My professor is a real one for saying that

It really does! Thanks you as always✨️

The brief screen time of Wendy Stockle as Marie Walewska in the miniseries Napoleon and Josephine: A Love Story. They have it on internet archive, has anyone else seen it and how did they like it?

Too me it wasn’t too bad, costumes kinda looked cheep but overall it was fine.

It's also on Youtube, divided in 2 parts. I'll leave the link down below.

Well it's the only good series about my favourite couple, so I'm obsessed with it. I'm struck by how the two main actors depict the protagonists really well despite they don't look that much like the real Napoleon and Josephine (Jacqueline Bisset mostly). I agree with the costumes take, I believe the budget was low. There's also one setting for every outside scene.

My favourite aspects of this is the unusual way both Napoleon and Josephine are portrayed. He finally emotes a great deal and even showcases genuine friendships instead of being the usual cold detached commander, while she first doesn't reciprocate his feelings not because she's a frivolous bimbo, but because she's very cautious, and you really get her perspective as a survivor.

Also they have good chemistry and nice banters.

Happy Birthday to the king and queen of Naples

Napoleon, Josephine and personal stuff - rant incoming brace yourself or scroll

I finally got a grasp on exactly why I was so struck by Napoleon at 13. And I kept being like that for many years later.

It was how desperately he opened his heart and threw himself in the arms of a nice and graceful woman, one he idealised maybe for just being kind to him.

I aknowledge how Josephine was mainly useful to him for very practical reasons, but I feel that, because of that, Napoleon felt genuine elation and gratefulness to her nonetheless. I think he valued her with an emotional response, even if the reasons of her being the best party were practical. In their marriage he would find social stability. In her house, domestic stability. In her presence, sentimental stability. He had not lived in a house of his own since he was 9, and now his home in Corsica was destroyed.

I feel he kinda put himself in a full psychological dependency to Josephine during the first four years of marriage, which seems uncanny from a character that usually valued logic, pragmatism and self-reliancy. But that was a personality based on what was needed to survive in very hostile environments, not on what he could openly wish on a serene path.

His love letters are said to be "romantic" and "passionate", and in some point they are indeed. (I also believe that Napoleon's letters to Josephine stand out mainly because people don't expect it, based on a certain image of Napoleon as stern and hyper-rational; but I remember some similar lovely passages from other people's letters too from the same age.)

But to me now in these letters he mostly sounds desperate to be loved, after so many years of being on his own on unstable situations. He feels relieved to have found someone he could be openly emotionally vulnerable to and relies in that joy; he shares so much things about his campaign, he was never so open about his feeling on things like in these written words. However, this all seems based on his expectations on how Josephine would be like, on an ideal rather than how Josephine actually was going.

He really idealised her and very much held on that image. In his letters, she is perfect, then she seemingly chooses to be evil to him on a whim. It's not like she was actually dealing with her own toll of traumas, insecurities, especially around husbands and their power, and was not on a condition of comforting another lonely person. Especially not with the dedication Napoleon seemed to pretend. It's still a big thing that she came to Italy while even being sick.

Besides, Napoleon had not lost his insecurities after their marriage nor after her arrival on Italy and she was not going to help him in that, because she couldn’t.

It was inevitable that she would defy him, and I'm not talking about the (not actually proved) affair with Charles. The smallest thing would have been hurtful to a starved and insecure person, who puts huge expectations on a single person and lets himself depend on her actions only to be happy. It doesn't help that Josephine was actively being defiant because of her reasons.

And I relate a lot to her too. I feel she was as hurt as Napoleon by her own experiences, maybe she has been socially and emotionally humiliated even more in her own contexts of living, despite her privilege.

So that's it, I was captured by the voluntary emotional dependency on specific people you hope to receive care from, because you have love starvation and you are desperate.

I personally did that a lot with specific people between long periods of distrust of everyone and of emotional avoidance of everything, because I was regularly deceived. Or wasn't corresponded. That's why I'm still fond of Napoleon and Josephine, and also sad for them. But I know that's a dangerous thing to do for both parties. Don't let others be the only ones to take the toll of your well being. Thanks therapy.

I don't pretend that this interpretation of Napoleon is correct; as you see there's a lot of self-projection in order to elaborate things from my personal life, which is also the reason why I felt passionate about those characters. Maybe it's also your reason too. So yeah, my words have no informative value. But I hope that still might resonate in someone else.

happy Valentine’s Day y’all

This formatting made it look like a brick wall…

Anyone read this?

I have been reorganizing my Napoleonic library and it’s taken days (ugh). I noticed that I have several books of Napoleonic fiction and I thought maybe this is the year to read them and report on them. Maybe. Let’s see how well I carry on this new goal.

So anyone read, Destiny by Bertram Fields? It has a four star rating on Amazon, so that made me hopeful.

I wasn’t that impressed. I always try to remember when reading Napoleonic fiction, it’s meant for a greater audience than just us. Billed as a novel, it’s almost reads like biography at times. Josephine isn’t really concentrated on except where she gets the first couple chapters to do some character development before Napoleon takes over the rest of the book. But there isn’t a lot of dialogue, a lot of paragraphs telling us what is going on.

Some dates are mucked with. Like the Duc D’Enghein’s death being later and being captured and shot in a field. Talleyrand starts off with rheumatism and then suddenly develops a club foot. Josephine meeting the King of Rome, has races with the little boy. And maybe the most glaring error Lucien divorces his wife and Napoleon gives him the title of Prince of Canino. In the end Napoleon is murdered by the Bourbons who sent agents to St. Helena to drop arsenic into Napoleon’s food.

It’s a quick read and a small book. And I know very well that most people who read this won’t know the errors or care that they are there.

Most disturbing image was post revolutionary France, at a party Napoleon and Josephine attend a woman brings her dog in and they proceed to have sex while the audience watches. A truly WTF moment if there ever was one.

The cover is neat though. Well photoshopped enough to make them seem like they're judging you together.

At least their chemistry is good in the book?

I agree, the cover is nice, but the fonts look off. The font used on "A Novel of Napoleon and Josephine" looks more appropriate for an action film/book rather than a "romance" novel. A serif font would've been better

The font chosen for "Destiny" is nice, but the stroke or sharp drop shadow is unnecessary. The spacing between all three words are off too 😬 the sub title could've been placed underneath "Destiny" to take away that awkward space or at the top maybe? Just make it a bit smaller