My podcast feed and socials have been clogged up with episodes and posts about Napoleon recently, due to the release of the new biopic about him, so I figured I'd come at the subject from a different angle and read a book by one of my favourite historical fiction authors about his wife. No, not the one you're all thinking of... his second wife, Marie Louise, Archduchess of Austria, Empress of France and Duchess of Parma. 

When Josephine cannot provide the Emperor with the son and heir he needs, he looks to the marriage mart of European royalty for a replacement. The omens are not great when he settles on the great-niece of the last Queen of France. His sister Pauline also has designs on the throne, dreaming of imitating her Egyptian heroine, Cleopatra, and ruling as a sister-wife to her powerful, erratic brother. And then there's the ever-present elephant in the room... But of course, women, wives and wedlock all come second to Napoleon's thirst for absolute power...

This is the second book I've read about a Hapsburg Empress in as many months... I'm thinking I need to expand my historical research from the Tudors a bit, because the Hapsburg women so far have been quite fascinating! I'm certainly taking their fictional stories with a pinch of salt, but they are definitely a gateway to new and exciting reading material for me. In this case, I was particularly struck by the parallels and contrasts between Marie Louise and her great aunt, Marie Antoinette. 

However, I was disappointed by how little we actually got to know Marie in this book. Given the title, it would seem appropriate that she is the main character. But the narrative shifts between three perspectives; Marie's, Pauline's, and that of Pauline's Haitian chamberlain and staunch support, Paul. With Pauline being bold, brash and pretty outrageous; Paul's voice being that of an underrepresented group, and Napoleon taking up all of the room in every scene he's in, the docile, agreeable, dutiful Marie gets rather lost. I've only just finished the book and I can only really tell you two things I thought about her; she deserved the happiness she found with her second husband (even if this book does mess around with their tineline a bit for dramatic effect), and it would appear she was a lovely mother. Otherwise, the emotional impact of her character was minimal. 

Likewise, I felt that Pauline was only brought forward to be the shocking foil to Marie's stability. From the author's notes, it would appear that she probably was somewhat like this, but I'm unclear on how much liberty the author has taken simply to provide a layer of entertainment? Exaggeration? Ridiculousness? To her character. 

It's odd; I can see the story the author was trying to convey through the eyes of these three people, but equally I can't quite put my finger on how she's actually managed to move the narrative from A to B; the characters drown out the overall plot for the most part. While the writing does flow, it feels like we barely skim the surface of events and so it's quite hard to ground yourself in place. 

I really enjoy most of the other works by this author (her book about Madame Tussaud is a particular favourite), but this one just doesn't have the same effect or depth of feeling of her previous novels. I wouldn't not recommend it, but there's just nothing that hooks me in or makes me desperately want to read it again.