The Queen’s Fortune: A Novel of Desiree, Napoleon, and the Dynasty That Outlasted the Empire
The world-shaking romance of Napoleon Bonaparte and Josephine de Beauharnais is well known to readers of historical fiction, but Pataki takes a fresh look at its ups and downs from the point of view of Désirée Clary, Bonaparte’s first love and secret fiancée prior to his notorious marriage.
Ensconced in the household of her sister’s husband, Joseph Bonaparte, Désirée has the opportunity to witness her charismatic brother-in-law’s uneven political fortunes in post-Revolutionary Paris, while she stoically endures the heartache of watching her first love fall under the spell of Josephine. Her misery is short-lived, however, as she quickly meets and marries the steadfast Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, finding domestic happiness more appealing than imperial glamour. For this reason, it’s hard to develop much interest in Désirée, who has little to do but passively receive the admiration of powerful men. Not until the second half of the novel, when her husband rebels against Bonaparte, does her situation involve enough conflict to make a compelling narrative. As Pataki notes in her afterword, Désirée was present for some momentous events; however, what we get are mostly domestic details of clothing, food, and furnishings.
The most interesting part of her life is when she became the reluctant matriarch of the Swedish royal family after her husband was offered the crown purely on the strength of his military and diplomatic service to the nation. The fascinating politics of this event, and the interesting eccentricities that Désirée become known for in Sweden, are crammed into the last quarter of the narrative, while readers gets a little more of Napoleon and Josephine’s celebrity squabbles than they really need. That said, there’s no question that the events of the novel are worth dramatizing, that Désirée’s is a unique point of view on them, and that Pataki is an experienced novelist who keeps the plot and descriptions moving at an entertaining clip.
