Bernardine Eugénie Désirée Clary (; 8 November 1777 – 17 December 1860) was Queen of Sweden and Norway from 5 February 1818 to 8 March 1844 as the wife of King Charles XIV John. Charles John was a French general and founder of the House of Bernadotte. Désirée Clary, the mother of Oscar I, was the one-time fiancée of Napoleon Bonaparte. She was also the sister of Julie Clary, the queen consort of Spain and Naples. Her name was officially changed in Sweden to Desideria although she did not use that name.

Background and education

Désirée Clary was born in Marseille, France, the daughter of François Clary (Marseille, St. Ferreol, 24 February 1725 – Marseille, 20 January 1794), a wealthy French silk manufacturer and merchant, by his second wife (m. 26 June 1759) Françoise Rose Somis (Marseille, St. Ferreol, 30 August 1737 – Paris, 28 January 1815). Eugénie was normally used as her name of address. Her father had been previously married, at Marseille on 13 April 1751, to Gabrielle Fléchon (1732 – 3 May 1758).

Clary had a sister and brother to whom she remained very close all her life. Her sister, Julie Clary, married Joseph Bonaparte; she later became Queen of Naples and Spain. Her brother, Nicolas Joseph Clary, was created Count Clary. He married Anne Jeanne Rouyer, by whom he had a daughter named Zénaïde Françoise Clary (Paris, 25 November 1812 – Paris, 27 April 1884). Zénaïde would marry Napoléon Alexandre Berthier (the son of Marshal Louis Alexandre Berthier) and have several children, among them the first wife of Joachim, 4th Prince Murat.

thumb|left|An early portrait by [[Robert Lefèvre]]

As a child, Clary received the convent schooling usually given to daughters of the upper classes in pre-revolutionary France. However, when she was barely 11 years old, the French Revolution (starting in 1789) took place, during which convents were closed. Clary returned to live with her parents, where she was perforce home-schooled thereafter. Later, her education was described as shallow. It has been observed by several historians that Clary was devoted to her birth-family her entire life.

Meeting the Bonapartes

In 1794, Clary's father died. Shortly after, it was discovered that in the years before the revolution, he had made an appeal to be ennobled, a request that had been denied. Because of this, Désirée Clary's brother Etienne, now the head of the family and her guardian, was arrested. Désirée Clary went to talk on his behalf and seek his release from the holding. In the process, she met Joseph Bonaparte, inviting him back to their home. Joseph was soon engaged to her elder sister Julie, while Napoleon was engaged to Désirée Clary on 21 April 1795. In 1795–1797, Clary lived with her mother in Genoa in Italy, where her brother-in-law Joseph had a diplomatic mission; they were also joined by the Bonaparte family. In 1795, Napoleon became involved with Joséphine de Beauharnais and broke the engagement to Clary on 6 September. He married Joséphine in 1796.

In 1797, Clary went to live in Rome with her sister Julie and her brother-in-law Joseph, who was French ambassador to the Papal States. Her relationship with Julie remained close. She was briefly engaged to Mathurin-Léonard Duphot, a French general. The engagement has been assumed to be Napoleon's idea to compensate her with a marriage, while Duphot was attracted to her dowry and position as sister-in-law of Napoleon. She agreed to the engagement though Duphot had a long-term relationship and a son with another woman. On 30 December 1797, on the eve of their marriage, Duphot was killed in an anti-French riot outside of their residence Palazzo Corsini in Rome. Clary eventually met her future spouse, Jean Baptiste Jules Bernadotte, another French general and politician. They were married in a secular ceremony at Sceaux on 17 August 1798.

Queen Charlotte, who wanted to remain the center of attention at her own court, was not pleased with Desideria and also influenced King Charles against her. In Sweden, her husband took a mistress, the noblewoman Mariana Koskull.

Under the same alias, Desideria officially resided incognito in Paris, thereby avoiding politics. However, her house at rue d'Anjou was watched by the secret police, and her letters were read by them. She had no court, just her lady's companion Elise la Flotte to assist her as hostess at her receptions, and she mostly associated with a circle of close friends and family. Her receptions were frequented by Talleyrand and Fouché, who upon the mission of Napoleon tried to influence her consort through her. At this point, she often spent time with Germaine de Staël and Juliette Récamier. In 1817, Desideria's husband placed a Count de Montrichard in her household as his spy to report if she did anything which could affect him.

230px|thumb|Desideria's Swedish coronation in 1829, by Fredric Westin.

On 21 August 1829, she was crowned Queen of Sweden in Storkyrkan in Stockholm. Her coronation had been suggested upon her return, but her husband had postponed it because he feared there could be religious difficulties. There was actually a suggestion that she should convert to the Lutheran faith before her coronation, but in the end, the question was not considered important enough to press, and she was crowned all the same. She was crowned at her own request after having pressed Charles John with a wish that she should be crowned as "otherwise she would be no proper Queen". A reason for her insistence is believed to have been that she regarded it as protection against divorce. She was, however, never crowned in Norway because of her status as a Catholic, despite requesting to be crowned there as well. She was the first commoner to become a queen of Sweden since Karin Månsdotter in 1568.

The relationship between her and her husband King Charles XIV John was somewhat distant, but friendly. Charles John treated her with some irritability, while she behaved very freely and informally toward him. The court was astonished by her informal behavior. She could enter his bedroom and stay there until late at night even though he hinted to her that he wished to be alone with his favorite Count Magnus Brahe. and she was also regarded with some snobbery because of her past as a merchant's daughter and a republican.

Consequently, it was difficult for her to discipline her aristocratic ladies-in-waiting, whom Charles John appointed without consulting her, and who preferred to sort out conflicts regarding etiquette among themselves instead of asking her to mediate, which on at least one occasion led to a scene which caused Charles John to reprimand her: "Try to make your ladies not to announce their actions and conflicts to the public as it happened the day you departed from Stockholm", after an incident when two ladies-in-waiting had "screamed like rower madams" about precedence in the seats of the queen's carriage during a journey.

Arms and monogram

{| class="wikitable" style="margin:1em auto;text-align:center;"

| 220px<br>Desideria's coat of arms as Queen of Sweden and Norway

| 140px<br>Royal monogram of Queen Desideria

|}

Honours

  • 23px Bavaria : Dame of the Order of Saint Elizabeth.

In fiction

Désirée Clary has been the subject of several novels and films.

  • Désirée (1951), by Annemarie Selinko, a novel in the form of a mock autobiography. It was originally published in German, by Kiepenheuer & Witsch, and became a worldwide best-seller. It has been translated into many languages, including Chinese, Dutch, English, Estonian, French, Italian, Greek, Hungarian, Spanish, Persian, Slovenian and Turkish.
  • Le Destin fabuleux de Désirée Clary (also Mlle. Désirée) (1942), a French film by Sacha Guitry.
  • Désirée (1954), an American film based on Selinko's book, with Jean Simmons and Marlon Brando.
  • The Bernadotte Album (1918), a "screen treatment" by John B. Langan on the lives of Clary and Joséphine (née Marie Tascher), which purported to be "Founded on the memoirs of Marie Tascher and Désirée Clary."
  • The Queen's Fortune: A Novel of Desiree, Napoleon, and the Dynasty that Outlived the Empire (2020), by Allison Pataki, a first-person narrative covering Clary's life.

Notes

References

  • Désirée Clary d'après sa correspondance inédite avec Bonaparte, Bernadotte et sa famille, Gabriel Girod de l'Ain, Paris: Hachette (1959).
  • Lindwall, Lilly: (Swedish) Desideria. Bernadotternas anmoder.[Desideria. The Ancestral Mother of the Bernadottes] Stockholm. Åhlén och Åkerlunds Förlag A.-B. (1919)
  • Desideria, Svenskt biografiskt lexikon (SBL)
  • Desideria, Norsk biografisk leksikon

Further reading

  • Désirée Clary
  • The story of Desiree (ger.)
  • Désirée Clary: d’après sa correspondance inédite avec Bonaparte, Bernadotte et sa Famille (French)