I love you madly

January 2, 2016 12:38 PM

New book shows Marie Antoinette used invisible ink, secret stamps in love letters to Swedish count Touched on somewhat less sensationally in this article: From letters to apps, the secret code language of lovers

See also: Marie-Antoinette’s 30-year romance with a Swedish count revealed in new book

posted by Michele in California (12 comments total)

No doubt the skulduggery was part of the fun but I've always been struck by French court etiquette and how utterly restricting it was. As queen, M-A was never alone, literally. Waking, sleeping, eating, using the john (!), there were always other people around. Just thinking about it gives me hives.

(As an aside, her mom did a terrible job of preparing her for the life she was expected to lead, which is surprising considering what a tough nut Maria Theresia was.)
posted by orrnyereg at 1:27 PM on January 2, 2016 [7 favorites]

Well she was also never expected to marry anyone that important until smallpox took her older sisters off the market.
posted by The Whelk at 1:45 PM on January 2, 2016 [9 favorites]

The first article is rather heavy on the "ooh naughty" and light on the actual interesting bit, the codes and so on. But, it does have a pretty good headline linked halfway down: "BRITISH COPS RAID PUB IN SEARCH OF ALLEGED HOLY GRAIL"
posted by rifflesby at 2:03 PM on January 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

The author first wrote on the subject in 1995, updated the book in 2013, referring to the academic work of cryptologists Jacques Patarin and Valerie Nachez. Given that the new book isn't due out until August 2016, this somewhat cryptic teaser seems a little premature. Still, it will be interesting to see what all she's come up with.
posted by BWA at 2:30 PM on January 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

light on the actual interesting bit, the codes and so on

I was not able to find anything that went into that as much as I would like. I went looking for that angle and that is how I found the second article linked above.
posted by Michele in California at 2:48 PM on January 2, 2016

The epic 1970s manga Rose of Versailles goes into some detail on the relationship between Marie Antoinette and Von Fersen. At the time I read it I had no idea how much was fiction, how much history, and how much gossipy speculation -- so I couldn't help reading this with an attitude of "Wait, I thought we already knew that?"
posted by Jeanne at 3:59 PM on January 2, 2016 [3 favorites]

"BRITISH COPS RAID PUB IN SEARCH OF ALLEGED HOLY GRAIL"

They found it a year later, leading to the Daily Mail headline "Have POLICE found the Holy Grail? Wooden relic thought by some to be Christ's chalice is recovered a year after it was stolen by burglars", which nicely combines Betteridge's law with the TL;DR school of headline writing.
posted by effbot at 4:25 PM on January 2, 2016 [2 favorites]

The epic 1970s manga Rose of Versailles goes into some detail on the relationship between Marie Antoinette and Von Fersen. At the time I read it I had no idea how much was fiction, how much history, and how much gossipy speculation -- so I couldn't help reading this with an attitude of "Wait, I thought we already knew that?"

I've read a fair amount of stuff about 18th century royalty and/or the French revolution, and the general consensus is "while historical novelists claim the affair between MA and Fersen was real, the queen was under very, very close watch, and until there's further proof, the affair was most likely platonic." I think part of it comes from the fact that MA's character has been treated... not well... over the years. I also believe that many historians wanted to not rush to the conclusion that MA was committing adultery, which doesn't seem a big deal to us now, but back then it would have been incredibly damning.

But invisible ink? This is all very interesting.
posted by suburbanbeatnik at 6:08 PM on January 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

“‘I love you madly’ is a very strong phrase – you don’t say that to a good friend,” she told the London paper. “It’s really telling; it implies a physical relationship. They were lovers.”

If that's all they're basing it on then I'm making my skeptical face. Young people say this kind of thing to their friends all the time. You know when you're young and you use all kinds of big intense words to describe everything. I especially get the feeling like everything was over the top in Marie-Antoinette's world. I don't doubt they had friend-crushes on each other and probably other people too.
posted by bleep at 9:05 PM on January 2, 2016 [4 favorites]

The choices of queens and princesses in pre-modern times make a bit more sense if you think of them as essentially child sex-trafficking victims. Poor Maria Antonia! I probably shouldn't have read so many sympathetic historical novels about her.
posted by Countess Elena at 10:47 AM on January 3, 2016 [1 favorite]

I will suggest that a childhood friend trying to get you out of prison and save your life would be reason to love someone madly. Men go to war and keep each other alive and develop a bond stronger than family and we call them "blood brothers." But when a man and a woman have each other's backs in dire straits, everyone assumes the bond is sex based.

I honestly was more interested in the coded messages angle, which makes perfect sense if you are writing letters from prison, having nothing to do with it being an affair. Maybe there was a sexual angle. Maybe not. I wish the world would get over its tendency to view any strong bond between a man and a woman as "obviously: sex!"

These days, we know for a fact that sometimes gay men marry a woman and have a good relationship to her and it is absolutely not sexual. There are more powerful bonding forces in the world than sex. We recognize this when two men are involved. Man and a woman? "Must be about sex, never mind the circumstances that we would recognize as the type to forge blood brothers if it were two men."

It particularly annoys me because we simultaneously recognize that quite a lot of men treat sex as incredibly casual and not the basis of a relationship. But big feels? Must be sex.

Facepalms.
posted by Michele in California at 12:24 PM on January 3, 2016

I realize this thread is pretty much dead now, which is too bad, because a few days ago, I found some fascinating articles that go into more detail about the discovery of the-- until now-- lost passages in Marie Antoinette's letters by the CRCC (France’s Research Centre for the Conservation of Collections). It's really great stuff, because SCIENCE!

Science sheds new light on Marie Antoinette ‘love affair’ (Via France 24)

Revealed: Marie Antoinette’s Scandalous Secret Letters to Her Lover (via The Daily Beast)

Given the details revealed in the two articles, I think this particular relationship is more than a case of a "friend-crush" or a childhood friendship in a time of war, or Fersen's family wouldn't have gone to such lengths to destroy the passages in question.

IMO, I don't know how likely it is that MA or Fersen had sex, given the royal panopticon she lived in, but I wouldn't be surprised if she had wanted to have sex, but didn't because it would have been a bad idea, either because of love and/or loyalty towards her husband or she didn't want to end up like Sophia Dorothea of Celle. But we'll never know.

Anyway, SCIENCE!
posted by suburbanbeatnik at 2:57 AM on January 21, 2016