As it says on the tin, Pauline Bonaparte's only child died young, of an illness which also affected Lucien and his children. They survived, Dermide did not. But what if he had?
As it says on the tin, Pauline Bonaparte's only child died young, of an illness which also affected Lucien and his children. They survived, Dermide did not. But what if he had?
I was actually thinking that Dermide's survival would influence Pauline's behavior during the empire. For instance, if Caroline's maternal instincts are anything to go by, Pauline's gonna be ambitious for her son, if not for herself. So, she might accept Napoleon's nomination as duchess of Guastalla solely for her son, rather than OTL where she politely told him to go smoke some more of whatever he had.
=Uhura's Mazda;10946388]That's interesting. Certainly Pauline was maternal enough that she had a major breakdown after Dermide's death - she went a bit wonky, circulating around the spa towns of Europe for a year or two, and stopped responding to correspondence. I've read that she refused Guastalla because she saw the writing on the wall and didn't want to spend the last nine years of Imperial life opening schools and all that. She was mainly self-centred and obsessed with beauty and matarial possessions, according to the one biography of her that I've read, so she'd naturally stay in the salons of Paris once her brother was ensconced. Leclerc (and, later
, Dermide) might have different ideas, though, and if Leclerc accepted Guastalla, or an equivalent vassal state, Pauline probably would have hated it (unless it was Lucca - she loved Lucca, IIRC) and fallen into Borghese-era shennanigans.
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