Welcome back! After a long break to buy new soundproofing equipment – which may or may not have been successful – we’re back with a new miniseries. I’m excited, as I think we’re covering one of the most interesting subjects this show has ever covered: the heiress, philanthropist and pioneering psychoanalyst Marie Bonaparte. Naturally, if we’re going to discuss a pioneering child psychologist we have to go back to the beginning and tell the story of her family – and oh, what a family!

Episode 71: “Marie, The Last Bonaparte”

Transcript

Bienvenue and welcome back to The Land of Desire. I’m your host, Diana, and each month I provide a glimpse into French history and culture. As I’ve settled into my new apartment, it took a little longer than I’d hoped to set up a new recording studio, and I had to order some new equipment. It was a blessing in disguise, as this delay gave me time to really luxuriate in the research of this month’s subject, someone who might be one of my favorite characters ever featured on this show.

Marie Bonaparte is what I like to call a fascinating woman, the kind of woman who spends her life being unconventional, pioneering, wildly interesting and getting away with it all by being very rich. Her life story is outrageous, shocking, and almost too on the nose metaphorically: she’s the descendant of the man who swept away the Ancien Regime, and used her inheritance to drag Europe into the modern age. Marie Bonaparte was blessed and cursed with a larger-than-life family, and this obsession with family brought her into contact with the ultimate expert on the subject: Sigmund Freud. From a line of tyrants, murderers and emperors, Marie’s own enduring legacy is that of an advocate for the refugee, the child, and the visionary. While her ancestors traded on their power, their money and their name to acquire more of the same, Marie Bonaparte used her influence to push for newer worlds, broader minds and safer harbors. She experimented with her sexuality, she launched an illustrious career, and she saved the life of one of the greatest minds of the 20th century. Marie Bonaparte’s life is far too interesting to fit into a single episode. To begin – and with Freud, where else could you begin? – we’ll focus on Marie Bonaparte’s family. Perhaps you’ve heard of them. Along the way, we’ll encounter royal refugees, lions, murderers, Hitler, a seriously weird uncle, Edgar Allen Poe, Queen Elizabeth, Leonardo da Vinci, and more. This month, settle in for the fascinating story of Her Royal Highness, Princess Marie of Greece and Denmark, the last Bonaparte.

“I do not believe that any man in the world is more unfortunate in his family than I am.” So wrote Napoleon Bonaparte in 1810, after facing another disappointment from his sprawling, fractious family. To give a little credit to the family in question, Bonaparte was as tyrannical over the dinner table as he was over the continent. In the first year of his empire, Napoleon wrote to one of his lieutenants that he expected absolute loyalty, subservience and obedience from his family if they wanted to share in his glory and power. “I recognize only those who serve me as relations. My fortune is not attached to the name of Bonaparte, but to that of Napoleon…those who do not rise with me shall no longer form part of my family.” Ruling over an enormous band of jumped-up Corsicans was like herding cats, and even General Bonaparte himself could barely manage the task. The easiest cat in the bag was Napoleon’s older brother, Joseph, with whom he had always been close. Joseph was the perfect family ally: smart, obedience, and less ambitious than Napoleon. Sometimes he was too unambitious. On the rare occasion that the brothers clashed, it was almost always because Napoleon was asking Joseph to do something besides sit around in the backyard watering tomato plants. In 1806, Napoleon ordered Joseph to go be king of Spain, which was absolutely the last thing Joseph wanted to do, and Napoleon fired back with that warning: cross me and I’ll scratch your name off the family tree. While Joseph eventually gave in, Napoleon faced stiffer resistance from his younger brother, Lucien.

Only sixteen during the French Revolution, in many ways Lucien was the “true believer” of the Bonaparte family. From the beginning, Lucien Bonaparte represented the radical branch of the family, an ominous position which would echo over multiple generations. A self-declared Jacobin, the dramatic teenager vowed to “die with a dagger in his hand” and as long as his older brother represented a threat to the Ancien Regime, Lucien would do anything to support his cause. In 1799, Lucien was elected president of the Council of Five Hundred, and his flair for drama played a pivotal role in securing Napoleon’s rise. On the infamous 18th Brumaire, when Napoleon attempted a coup d’etat, Lucien slipped out of the council room and told the guards that the Council of Five Hundred were being harassed by a bunch of terrorists. Then, in a supremely goth 20-something move, Lucien pointed his sword at Napoleon’s heart, and swore to plunge it through his brother’s chest if he ever betrayed the country. At that moment, Lucien ordered the guards to expel anyone who resisted Napoleon’s coup d’etat. The guards marched in, the opposition marched out, Napoleon became the First Consul, and the French Revolution came to an end. Without Lucien, Napoleon might never have come to power – but the moment he did, Lucien began to wonder whether he had not created a tyrant. Napoleon and Lucien clashed over Napoleon’s iron-fisted rule over Europe – but they exploded when Napoleon extended his rule over Lucien’s private life.

Before the French Revolution, the teenaged Lucien disobeyed his parents and married the illiterate daughter of an innkeeper. After bearing him two children, Lucien’s first wife died, and the Bonapartes couldn’t wait to marry their third son off to someone more suitable. Unfortunately for Napoleon and his parents, Lucien already had a new wife in mind: a scandalous young widow named Alexandrine Jouberthon. She was completely unsuitable. Despite the objections of his family, Lucien married Alexandrine, and launched another tradition which would continue down his branch of the Bonaparte family for generations...