Charlotte-Rosalie de Romanet, Comtesse de Choiseul-Beaupré
Ah, Rosalie, Rosalie, Rosalie. A few people have asked why I picked the rivals to highlight that I did (out of say, 57 possibilities...). Rosalie was definitely important as she was the first serious contender to emerge after the King and Jeanne stopped sexual relations.
Not much is known about Rosalie. We know the dates of her birth, and marriage, and death, her presentation at court and appointment to Mesdames les Ainées' household (the King's daughters Henriette and Adelaide). Rosalie's father was in the Parisian parliament and her mother was the sister of Elisabeth, the Comtesse d'Estrades. There are only a few commentaries on her and her affair with the king; most of what we know comes from the memoires of her relative by marriage the Duc de Choiseul (still the Comte de Stainville during her time at Court). His memoires were written long after the facts and doubtless full of half-truths. He wrote that Rosalie looked like a kept woman who knew too much of the world, and described her as 'as loose as her mother'. He also said her husband was bête, claquedent, grossier = idiotic, snaptoothed (?!) and rude.
There are a few versions of how exactly she was banished - the version I have picked, with betrayal via letters, comes from Choiseul's memoires - but all agree that she was banished from court in late 1752 and died in childbirth several months later.
Not much is known about Rosalie. We know the dates of her birth, and marriage, and death, her presentation at court and appointment to Mesdames les Ainées' household (the King's daughters Henriette and Adelaide). Rosalie's father was in the Parisian parliament and her mother was the sister of Elisabeth, the Comtesse d'Estrades. There are only a few commentaries on her and her affair with the king; most of what we know comes from the memoires of her relative by marriage the Duc de Choiseul (still the Comte de Stainville during her time at Court). His memoires were written long after the facts and doubtless full of half-truths. He wrote that Rosalie looked like a kept woman who knew too much of the world, and described her as 'as loose as her mother'. He also said her husband was bête, claquedent, grossier = idiotic, snaptoothed (?!) and rude.
There are a few versions of how exactly she was banished - the version I have picked, with betrayal via letters, comes from Choiseul's memoires - but all agree that she was banished from court in late 1752 and died in childbirth several months later.
Much to my sorrow, I could not find a portrait of Rosalie - I always like seeing the people I write about. Here are a couple of portraits I like to think could have been of her:
I think this portrait - 'from a follower of William Hoare' - depicts a girl younger than Rosalie (18 in our story) but goodness, she's definitely got the look.... On the internet this is dated to late century because of the slightly Grecian hairstyle, but the bodice to me cries out 1750, and look how similar it is to the hairstyle of the portrait beside it, one of Boucher's mid-century works.
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This is my personal favorite of what she might have looked like. Unknown Girl by Boucher. And she's got a rose she's about to chuck on the floor, to see if you will love her...
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This painting is also by Boucher and was controversial because instead of the usual full-on or half-side look, with relatively similar & innocuous expressions, this portrait shows a woman who seems to be lying back on a bed in what could be the throes of... um... ecstasy... This was very shocking, and definitely appropriate for Rosalie! |
Writing Rosalie was fun. I took the line about her supposed looseness and made her in to a very sex-driven character, enjoying all the delights around her. Certainly the rules I highlighted in The Sisters of Versailles still applied: sleeping around before marriage was unthinkable, while sleeping around after marriage wouldn't raise too many eyebrows - but there would have been exceptions to that rule! I also liked her arrogance and haughtiness, and the usual disdain that younger girls have for older women (in this case the Pompadour).
Many of the silly incidents in her courtship with the King are based on fact - apparently the king did slip and twist his ankle while ascending dimly lit stairs for a tryst, and there is even mention of a giant spider found that year at Fountainebleau (though in a wall and not during a tryst). Even the scene where she and Louis finally get together and then she rushes into the war room next door to report her triumph to the 'generals' - that supposedly happened!
As noted above, all versions of her banishment differ slightly, but they are consistent in that it happened at the end of 1752, and that it was a banishment. Then, a small line from the ever-reliable diary of the Duc de Luynes, mentioning her on duty with Madame Adelaide at Versailles, pregnant, in February of 1753. What? That discovery really brought home to me the unreliability of all these memoires used as primary sources, and then the subsequent use of those memoires as fact by historians. Who knows what the truth is? We'll probably never know, unless someone writes an in-depth biography of her - but really, why would they?
Many of the silly incidents in her courtship with the King are based on fact - apparently the king did slip and twist his ankle while ascending dimly lit stairs for a tryst, and there is even mention of a giant spider found that year at Fountainebleau (though in a wall and not during a tryst). Even the scene where she and Louis finally get together and then she rushes into the war room next door to report her triumph to the 'generals' - that supposedly happened!
As noted above, all versions of her banishment differ slightly, but they are consistent in that it happened at the end of 1752, and that it was a banishment. Then, a small line from the ever-reliable diary of the Duc de Luynes, mentioning her on duty with Madame Adelaide at Versailles, pregnant, in February of 1753. What? That discovery really brought home to me the unreliability of all these memoires used as primary sources, and then the subsequent use of those memoires as fact by historians. Who knows what the truth is? We'll probably never know, unless someone writes an in-depth biography of her - but really, why would they?