Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette's marriage is annulled?

Accodring to Antonia Fraser's 'Marie Antoinette- The Journey' due to Louis, the dauphin and Marie Antoinette's marriage not being consummated for several years, the possibility of annulment was discussed. If the marriage had been annulled who might have been chosen as Louis' second wife?
 
Accodring to Antonia Fraser's 'Marie Antoinette- The Journey' due to Louis, the dauphin and Marie Antoinette's marriage not being consummated for several years, the possibility of annulment was discussed. If the marriage had been annulled who might have been chosen as Louis' second wife?

It would have had to be done in the reign of Louis XV, Louis XVI seems to have been content with Marie Antoinette as his wife, even after annulment was suggested to him privately several times.

Besides by the time Louis XVI was King it was becoming obvious that the problem was on his end of things, though I'm still not clear on if he actually had phimosis or if Louis XVI was so unworldly that he didn't really know HOW to have sex and lack the courage to ask anyone how it worked.
 
It would have had to be done in the reign of Louis XV, Louis XVI seems to have been content with Marie Antoinette as his wife, even after annulment was suggested to him privately several times.

Besides by the time Louis XVI was King it was becoming obvious that the problem was on his end of things, though I'm still not clear on if he actually had phimosis or if Louis XVI was so unworldly that he didn't really know HOW to have sex and lack the courage to ask anyone how it worked.
I was under the impression he basically had to be "shown" but I can't recall where I got that impression from so I have no real idea.
 
It would have had to be done in the reign of Louis XV, Louis XVI seems to have been content with Marie Antoinette as his wife, even after annulment was suggested to him privately several times.

Besides by the time Louis XVI was King it was becoming obvious that the problem was on his end of things, though I'm still not clear on if he actually had phimosis or if Louis XVI was so unworldly that he didn't really know HOW to have sex and lack the courage to ask anyone how it worked.
I read that he had to get surgery.
 
I was under the impression he basically had to be "shown" but I can't recall where I got that impression from so I have no real idea.

Is it possible, that it was "Josef Balsamo" by Alexandre Dumas?
The episode with pictures, that are shown to Louis XVI?
 
It would have had to be done in the reign of Louis XV, Louis XVI seems to have been content with Marie Antoinette as his wife, even after annulment was suggested to him privately several times.

Besides by the time Louis XVI was King it was becoming obvious that the problem was on his end of things, though I'm still not clear on if he actually had phimosis or if Louis XVI was so unworldly that he didn't really know HOW to have sex and lack the courage to ask anyone how it worked.

Probably the second one. And IDK if Louis XV will have the marriage annulled - although he was reportedly rather surprised at the comment of "rien" when it was reported that no consumation had taken place. And I would say, Maria Theresia is the one that would work to see that the marriage stays in place - not the dauphin's grandfather.

I was under the impression he basically had to be "shown" but I can't recall where I got that impression from so I have no real idea.
Didn't one of Marie-Antoinette's brothers supposedly help him out?

Thank the Emperor Josef II for that. He wrote a long letter to Pietro Leopoldo about the French royal couple and that Louis apparently didn't know that he had to actually get a rhythm going, and ejaculate before pulling out. So, he'd put it in, move it around a bit, and then go off and have a "happy ending" on his own.

What made it even more "puzzling" for the royal doctors sent from both Louis XV and Vienna was that there didn't seem to be any physical impairment to this.

I read that he had to get surgery.

No one's quite sure that he had the surgery. Fraser outlines this in her book IIRC. Since the day after he supposedly had the surgery, he went hunting, and according to the medical experts that she spoke to, it would have been impossible for him to sit a horse so soon after it (and that's with today's medicine). As I say, I think it was more a combo of naïveté and a psychological block (his mother and aunts had basically badmouthed all things Austrian to him since he was a kid, so in addition to not knowing how to do it, he didn't want to do it). Nagel, in her book on Madame Royal, points out that there is the existence of a purported bastard daughter of Louis XVI Philippine 'Ernestine' de Lambriquet, who was roughly the same age as Madame Royal. Now, whether Mlle de Lambriquet was a sort of Comte Léon type baby (to prove that the king could procreate) or just a result of her mother having to show Louis what he needed to do, I have no idea.

Accodring to Antonia Fraser's 'Marie Antoinette- The Journey' due to Louis, the dauphin and Marie Antoinette's marriage not being consummated for several years, the possibility of annulment was discussed. If the marriage had been annulled who might have been chosen as Louis' second wife?

Probably a Saxon princess like what had been envisaged before Antoinette got to Versailles. Obviously depends which year the marriage is annulled, but Maria Anna of Saxony (b.1761) never married, and her elder sister, Maria Amalie (b.1757) only married in 1774 to Antoinette's sister, Amalie's former sweetheart, the Prince of Zweibrucken. IIRC there was some snobbishness on Antoinette's part, and she refused to receive the Princesse Palatine de Deux-Ponts (Zweibrucken) at Versailles, although she had no problem receiving Princess Maximilian of Zweibrucken (Auguste of Hesse-Darmstadt).

If not a Saxon, then perhaps a Savoyard princess (doubtful, unless Provence/Artois/Clothilde's triple marriage hasn't happened). He wanted to marry Mme Élisabeth off to the heir to the throne of Portugal, Prince José, but she didn't want to leave France (she wanted to be a nun, but Antoinette begged Louis to not let her join an order), and he wouldn't make her. So, he might take a Portuguese infanta to wife, but he might not. They might decide on a native candidate - the last prince de Condé's sister was originally slated for the Comte de Artois but then it didn't take off, or he might marry Bathilde d'Orléans.
 
I'm surprised no one has yet asked the most important question: would the Pope grant an annulment? The Pope at the time would be Clement XV, a fairly weak willed and reconciliatory Pontiff by all accounts. He yielded to Austria over the question of Parma (whether or not it was a fief of the Papacy or the Empire) and bowed to the demands of the Bourbons by finally suppressing the Jesuit order. He doesn't strike me as the kind of man able to make a decision that would alienate half of Catholic Europe. Plus there's the fact that he was surrounded by Antoinette's relatives; her sisters Carolina and Amalia were Queen of Naples and Duchess of Parma, respectively, while her brothers Leopold and Ferdinando ruled Tuscany and Milan. I'm not saying a war would break out by any means but the Habsburgs are certainly going to remind his Holiness of the need to be a good neighbor.

Also, what grounds would be used to obtain the annulment? Both were of the age of consent, so that's out. A papal dispensation had been produced, so Consanguinity is out. I guess grounds of non-consummation could work, but then someone's going to ask just why the marriage wasn't consummated. Finally, Antoinette was barely eighteen when Louis XV died, so realistically the idea that she was barren couldn't have been all that accepted.
 
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