The Empress Josephine @ MySpace.com

While looking up information on Josephine's best friend during her society "girl" years, whom I will present in an upcoming post, I happened to run across on Google information about a MySpace page for the empress. The page is a beautiful and delightful place to explore for those who are Josephine lovers and other things and people who are French. Here you can also see some of Josephine's personal treasures.

I feel I am too mature to haunt places like MySpace, but in the future, I will be seeking out other historical figures there.

Enjoy, and also read my other two posts for today;)!

Empress Josephine de Beauharnais

For some reason Josephine's surname from her first marriage is used more often even in history books than her maiden name or her surname from her second marriage to Napoleon.

Aimee du Buc de Rivery: Cousin of the Empress Josephine & The Ottoman Turkish Connection

No one will know the actual fate of Aimee du Buc de Rivery who was the empress Josephine's cousin. Nevertheless for almost two hundred years there has been so much speculation that the story of two empresses who were related and ruled simultaneously has captured the imaginations of writers as diverse as Prince Michael of Greece to the African-American fiction writer Barbara Chase-Riboud.

The story of Aimee du Buc de Rivery runs basically that she was a cousin of the empress Josephine, and like her more well-known cousin was born on the island of Martinique . When both were 12 they went to a famous black fortune teller on their island who told Josephine that her second husband would be so powerful and glorious that she would be more prestigious than the queen of France. Aimee was told an even more incredible prophesy. She would be captured by pirates and sold to a powerful ruler who because of her beauty, would make her his mistress and favorite. When she had a son by this ruler this would increase her position. Through her son, she would have great power and influence.

The legend of Aimee goes on to say that when she was returning to Martinique from studying in a convent in France, her ship was hijacked by Barbary pirates. She was captured and given to the Bey of Algiers. In order to garner favor with the Ottoman sultan, this girl of great beauty was sold into the harem in Topkapi Palace in Istanbul. There Aimee captured the eye of the sultan and became his wife. She was given the name of Nakshedil, and is said to have taught her husband French, thus opening up the Ottoman Empire to France and ultimately the west. Because of her, other reforms were introduced during her husband's and son's reign.

Aimee proved to be a survivor in the violent, political atmosphere of the harem and Topkapi Palace. Though she converted to Islam, she was always in her a heart a Christian. When she was dying, her son allowed for the first time for a priest to come into the palace to administer the last rites to his mother. So ends the story of the girl whom history and legend says was a cousin of Josephine, born to a wealthy family on Martinique and who died in a palace in Istanbul, the most powerful woman among the Turks.

I first heard about Aimee du Buc de Rivery when I read Barbara Chase-Riboud's novel, Valide: A Novel of the Harem while I was a graduate student. A black Muslim woman, whom I am not sure was orthodox or a member of The Nation of Islam, told me about Aimee and the book. Life is unpredictable, so when I read this novel of Romance, violence, and intrigue, I had no way of knowing that Turkey would become a part of my life in so many ways years later.

In conclusion, here is a long, but interesting article from Journal of World History entitled Royal French Women in the Ottoman Sultans' Harem .

The Original French Romance: Napoleon and Josephine

My title is not quite accurate because really the original French Romance could be said to have been between the medieval Heloise and Abelard, which hopefully I will get around to writing about in the future.

The present first couple of France Nick Sarkozy and Carla B. seem to have inflated egos too along with all their other unappealing qualities, so I would not be surprised if they start advertising themselves as the new Napoleon and Josephine. Well, these two do not have an ounce of class compared to Napoleon I and his first empress.

Napoleon and Josephine are my favorite of all the Romantic couples of history. Their's was a passionate, but extremely rocky Romance. In the beginning Josephine was the one who supposedly cheated. Disillusioned and angered by her unfaithfulness, Napoleon took on a string of lovers, but his attachment to them was never as passionate or enduring as his feelings for Josephine. In the 1987 Emmy nominated mini-series, Napoleon and Josephine: A Love Story, Napoleon played by Armand Assante tells Josephine played by Jacqueline Bisset, "You are my obsession; my addiction." To me, Assante and Bisset will always be Napoleon and Josephine. They brought the two historical lovers completely to life.

Both Napoleon and Josephine were born on islands. Napoleon was born on the island of Corsica in 1769. His family was of the minor Italian nobility. Josephine was born on the Caribbean island of Martinique in 1763. Her family was also well to do, but had fallen on hard times after a hurricane wiped out their sugar plantation. Napoleon's family had also fallen on difficult times when his father, and attorney, died. However he was rescued some from hardship at home when he was sent as a child to study at a military academy in France. Napoleon's first language was Italian. He was never able to relinquish his Italian accent even though he ruled the French people, and actually became more French than the French. Josephine was rescued from her family's circumstances by marriage to a cousin, Alexandre de Beauharnais, who was a part of the French nobility. Josephine had two children, but had to endure the unhappiness of having a husband who was a habitual womanizer. Once the French Revolution brewed, she, her husband, and their children were imprisoned. Her husband was condemned to death and was executed on the guillotine. Josephine and her children just narrowly escaped the knife.
After the Revolution and she was freed, Josephine become a celebrated socialite and the reputed mistress of several men in the French government. While being kept by the top man in the government at the time, Paul Barras, Josephine met Napoleon. For the younger, extremely serious and ambitious Napoleon, it was love at first sight. He was already a general in his 20s when he met the older more sophisticated Josephine. For Josephine, it was just another seduction. She had been hurt so much in her marriage and had gone through so much doing the Revolution, that she had developed a carefree cynicism about life and men. But undeterred by her slight indifference, Napoleon wrote to her not long afterwards:

"I awake full of you. Your image and the memory of last night’s intoxicating pleasures has left no rest to my senses."

The painfully passionate love letters would keep pouring in. In this, Paul Barras saw his chance. He really wanted Josephine off his hands because she was proving too expensive to keep, so he encouraged the affair between Napoleon and Josephine, keeping his fingers crossed that the end result would be marriage. They did marry, and the rest is history.

Napoleon eventually divorced Josephine, not because of the turbulence in their relationship, but because she could not produce the heir he needed to carry on the Napoleonic line. Napoleon had wrestled with the issue of Josephine's or his possible infertility for years. He had even designated Josephine's daughter Hortense's son as his heir. Hortense was married to Napoleon's younger brother Louis. Steadfast in his hope for an heir, Napoleon coaxed Josephine into seeing his logic, and so she agreed to a divorce.

When Napoleon divorced Josephine, it seemed that his star began to wan. Before he had been unstoppable in his conquests and moves to unite Europe. After the divorce came the disasterous Russian campaign, which destroyed his Grand Army. Of the 690,000 men who marched in this army only 93,000 survived the retreat from the Russian steppes.

Josephine did not live to see Napoleon go into his final defeat and second exile. She caught a chill and died in 1814 at age 50. Napoleon died in exile on the island of St. Helena off the coast of Africa in 1821 of stomach cancer. There have been occasional disputes that he was not ill with the disease but was actually poisoned. On his deathbed Napoleon's final words were:

"France, the Army, the Head of the Army, Josephine."

In 2003 another mini-series was shown in the US. It was called Napoleon and starred Isabella Rossellini as Josephine and the French actor Christian Clavier as Napoleon. These two were not as softly cute and youthful as Assante and Bisset had been in the 1987 mini-series; plus I did not get to watch this version of the lives of my favorite Romantic couple. I still have the series with Assante and Bisset on a cassette which I recorded from the original program. I plan to eventually buy or rent the Napoleon DVD. I hope also that Amazon will eventually offer the 1987 series before my cassette disintegrates.

This video with scenes from Napoleon is wonderful to watch if you are a fan of N & J and a Romantic. The song Anytime, Anywhere is sung by Sarah Brightman.

More of Carla Bruni

Internation Musing/Hans posted private photos of the new first lady of France, Carla Bruni, on his new blog. They can be accessed here. Please note the apparent themes of the photos: primness, purity, the intellect, modernity, music, and a hint of sensuality...

Are these photos a prelude to a better, responsible, and dignified Bruni, a woman worthy of her position? Let's hope that if she changes, her husband will have sense enough to realize that he needs to grow up and be responsible too.

There is an old saying, "There's no fool like an old fool."

Shameless "Romance"

Nicholas Sarkozy, the current president of France, and his new wife former model Carla Bruni are not the kind of people I have warm feelings for or respect. In this day and age I can understand where some people who see themselves as progressive and hip might feel enthusiasm for these two. One blogger mentioned in a post weeks ago "that the only good thing about Nicholas Sarkozy was Carla Bruni." Another one who seems to see himself as Don Juan but is really a Don Quixote or perhaps better Sancho Panza, said he would love to go with Sarkozy on a tour of the wine country in his area. I am being cruel here... But these comments were written.

Some people don't know how to pick friends or spouses carefully, which Sarkozy showed last weekend when he married Ms. Bruni after only knowing her for 11 weeks. Perhaps the times have moved too fast for me and I am out of touch, but Carla Bruni with an illegitimate child and past numerous lovers including Donald Trump and Mick Jagger is just not first lady material. Sarkozy's mama must not have told him that "son, there are some you marry, and others just you have a good time with."

I see Sarkozy and Bruni as the king and queen of shameless "Romance" and just bad taste. There is an arrogance about both that is very unsavory. Bruni luxruriates in her bad and shallow reputation. On her man-eating persona she has said:

“I’d rather be called a predator than an old flea-bag. Predator — it’s not that bad for a woman.”

and

“I’m monogamous occasionally but I prefer polygamy and polyandry.

MADAM, it is not about being a stuffed shirt, but it is about having class and being a lady. But perhaps my ideas on life like beauty, truth, class, and dignity are concepts that are alien to this era and therefore, gone with the wind. And I will not even bring up the term honor, because that went out in the 19th century, but still it should apply to your position, MADAM.

Sarkozy has shown a level of immaturity and recklessness which has already hurt his position with the older French citizenry. Most French presidents have conducted discreet affairs. The late Francois Mitterand even had an illegitimate child. With French men, c'est la vie la affaire. Nicholas Sarkozy needs to know that when you are in a position of leadership, you should try to set a good example. Have some dignity, and stop intentionally creating a public soap opera!

Nicholas Sarkozy has tried to bring the office of the president of France far too down to earth. Sadly, President Bush has shown himself to be too down to earth also at inappropriate times on several occasions, but not in the unfaithfulness department. Bush's last publicly shocking faux pas was winking at the Queen when she was here in 2007. The queen played it off well with only an, "Oh dear." I cringed.

So will this quicky marriage between "Speedy Sarko" with his Napoleonic height (5'5") and his femme fatale with the lovely eyes last? I doubt it. Some have predicted that it will be over with "Sarbruni" or "Brunkozy" (my own inventions:)) by 2009.

Other heads of state have married shady dames but some of the dames calmed down considerably and became honest women. Look at Evita, once she settled down with Juan Peron. Or remember the Byzantine emperor Justinian the Great who married Theodora? Both Evita and Theodora were actresses who were said by some to have slept their way to the top. Both women cleaned up their acts. Theodora made such a monumental change that she is a saint in the Eastern Orthodox church. Some have even pushed to have Evita canonized as saint in the Catholic church because of her philanthropy and kindness to the poor.

Being in the current generation, I do not see Carla Bruni moving beyond a selfish, self serving vision of herself. I may be wrong, but when one has a husband like Nicholas Sarkozy whose ex-wife Cecilia, whom he recently divorced, and who has accused him of being a stingy philanderer who is indifferent to his children, I do not see anything good happening in the end for these two. There is no one on either side doing rational thinking. They do not strike me as two people who want to change their ways. At their ages (Sarkozy is 52 and Bruni just turned 40) they are probably too set in their ways to really change.

France is having economic problems, but its' president continues to live a trivial jetsetting lifestyle. I guess for Nicholas Sarkozy and Carla Bruni, Paris can burn. Here in America, we witnessed a train wreck on a different level for 8 years next year. For the French people who have had Sarkozy for their leader for less than a year, I seems the train wreck has just begun.

Here is a video of little Nicky in all his glory.



Here is the new first lady of the French showing one of her talents outside the bedchamber.

The Legend of A Female Pope

For centuries there have been whispers of a woman of great learning who donned the clothes of a man and was elected pope by cardinals who had no idea that they had chosen someone of the "weaker sex" to sit on the highest throne of the Roman Catholic Church. This legend of a female pope had largely been unknown to most in the current generation until Donna Woolfolk Cross resurrected it in her amazing and controversial novel, Pope Joan, published in 1997. I read Pope Joan a few years ago, and the novel is one of a few books where I actually saw aspects of myself in the character.

Pope Joan is the story of a girl born in the 9th century to an English canon and his Saxon wife in Frankland in what is now Germany. The canon had come to Frankland as a Christian missionary to convert the heathen people to Christ. There he had spotted and fallen reluctantly in love with a pagan Saxon woman. The marriage is very unhappy because the canon despises his wife because he sees her as an instrument of the devil, seducing him away from his Godly mission and causing him to lose his purity in the possess. He goes into violent rages when his wife seems to hang on to her heathen gods and passes the stories on their daughter. He hates just about every thing about women because like the Biblical Eve, he believes women are always the impetus for sin and trouble. He is abusive of his wife and daughter, whereas he is more lenient with his two sons whom he encourages to be scholars.

Early on Joan has strong curiosity about learning. When a Greek scholar in exile from Constantinople (modern day Istanbul) comes to their town, he teaches Joan's brothers not only about the great authors of the church like Augustine, but also those from classical Greek and Roman history like Plato, Seneca, Ovid, and Homer which were almost unknown or banned by the western church, but appreciated by the church in the east. The 9th century is at the tail end of the Dark Ages in Europe. Learning and scholarship have moved east to Constantinople which is the capital of Byzantium which was the Byzantine Empire (Rome in the east). The Greek scholar witnesses Joan passion for learning and stands up to her father, demanding that he be allowed to teach her as well. Like the slogan for the National Negro College Fund here in the US, to him "a mind is a terrible thing to waste," even if it is a female mind.

The patience, devotion, and attention that the Greek gives Joan plants a seed that will eventually carry her to a Benedictine monastery where she will further her learning. After her last surviving brother is killed in a Viking attack she cuts her hair and dresses in his clothing. No longer does the questions she has asked herself plague her, "Why am I different? What is wrong with me?" She has come to terms with the fact that she and no woman with potential should be confined to a life dictated by men and society. She will go her own way, but living as man because she knows that in her world, women are confined to the home as only wife and mother. Learning and scholarship are not an option.

In time, Joan goes to Rome posing as John Anglicus. She wins the respect and envy of many. During her years of study she has become a physician, eventually becoming the personal doctor of the current pope. She is the one person who inspires this pope who is a fat overeater and a crybaby to be courageous. The Rome of Joan's era is a place of piety, corruption, nepotism, sexual licence, competition, and murder, even in the halls of the Vatican. In the meantime, Joan has also fallen in love with a handsome, open-minded German landowner and minor noble named Gerold. Gerold was married when she first met him, but his family and estate is wiped out in the same Viking attack in which Joan's brother was killed. Gerold follows Joan to Rome, and when she is elected pope he remains faithfully by her side, keeping the secret that the most powerful personage in Christendom is a woman.

Joan's robes and mien conceals her deception until she becomes pregnant by Gerold. Joan is so ambitious that she is set on never allowing her secret to come out, even to him. She knows that Gerold would tell her to stop her act, vacant the papal throne, and marry him. Stubbornly Joan concocts a potion that she takes to abort her child. The potion does not work until a terribly violent tragedy happens in the streets of Rome one day to Gerold right within Joan's view. Now without her lover and best friend, Joan miscarries and dies in the street to the horror and fascination of the people in her papal entourage and the general populace. As Joan dies moving from grief to fear to peace, the people around her nearly riot believing that it is witchcraft that has gripped their beloved pope or that "he" is possessed by a devil. Others think it is a miracle because a tiny premature infant has appeared beneath the pope's robes. For almost 2 years, Joan named Pope John, has been the supreme leader of the church. She had come a long way, extracting herself from a limited life to a life of power and prestige. But in the end, in her 40s, even though she had played the role of a man, the reality of her sex had come to haunt her in a way she had not expected at her age to have happened. Since Gerold her friend, adviser, protector and lover was even older than she, she never believed that she might become pregnant.

The legend of Pope Joan has been around since the Middle Ages. The legend was once as popular as that of King Arthur. Writers such as Boccaccio even mentioned the female pope. However, the Catholic church has vehemently denied the existence of an amazingly scholarly woman who tricked the church establishment and ascended to the throne of St. Peter over 1000 years ago. The Catholic church has viewed the legend as a weapon of the Protestant Reformation to discredit the church. Arguments by some who say that the church waged an active campaign after Joan's death to expunge her from history are championed by other scholars as unfounded. They feel she never existed. The first mention of La Popessa was in the 13th century 400 years after the time of Joan. So the skepticism remains, but I love the idea of a woman who overcame the chains of her age to go out into the world to seek her fortune.

In 1972 the Swedish actress Liv Ullman starred in a filmed entitled Pope Joan.

Now I have learned that next year Donna Woolfolk Cross' novel is slated to be brought to the big scene. Franke Potente, a German actress, recently seen in the US movies Blow and The Bourne series starring Matt Damon will be playing Joan.

The novel Pope Joan brought to life a time of savagery, brutality, and Romance. The novel is a fast read even though it is a little over 400 pages. All the elements of human drama, life in The Dark Ages, and of even our time can be found in the novel. Joan's story is timeless and universal, because as Cross said in an interview at the back of the novel:

"I want readers--particularly women--to understand one basic truth: to empower yourself in this world you must learn. Joan armed herself with the power of knowledge. This knowledge allowed her to rise to the very highest rank of the most powerful institution of her day. Even today in countries such as Iran, Afghanistan, Algeria, the first priviledge that is taken away from a subservient group such as women is the right to an education."

As an African-American woman and being a part of an group where too many now encourage mediocrity and low achievement because to learn and to be articulate is "being white" or to be a "real woman" you must have a child before you are 15 or 16 by some immature teenager or some worthless guy with no intention of being a man and responsible, Cross' words speak volumes to me. Most of my life, I have gone against the grain of what it means to be a black woman in America. I have flown and fell down, but always with the determination to be unique and to go totally against the grain.

British sculptor Philip Jackson's piece called Pope Joan.

The official website for Joan Woolfolk Cross' novel Pope Joan can be accessed here.

A Rare Love: Sergei Grinkov and Ekaterina Gordeeva

I wonder what he would have been like if he had lived, but Sergei Grinkov died at 28. On Monday, February 4th he would have been 41.

Sergei and his wife Ekaterina Gordeeva or Katia were two of the greatest figure skating pairs in history, winning gold medals at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary and in 1994 in Lillehammer. They literally grew up together on the ice and fell in love skating. Both were Russians born in Moscow, Sergei in 1967 and Katia in 1971. Like many children born in the Soviet Union who appeared to have talent, both Sergei and Katia began training early in their craft. Sergei was 5 when he began ice skating. Katia was only four with feet so tiny that ice skates to fit her were impossible to come by, so her mother had her wear several pairs of socks in order to keep her too big skates on her feet. Katia would remain alway petite even into adulthood which would be an advantage for the much taller, bigger, and athletic Sergei who would in the future lift and toss her as if she were light as a feather. Katia's father had planned for her to go into ballet, but Katia was determined to do otherwise. Her determination to go her own way would put her and a boy she was yet to meet in the history books, and also lead to the creation of one of the great love stories of our time.

Alone Sergei showed early signs that he would have only been an mediocre skater, but when he was paired with 11 year Katia when he was 15, the magic began. By 1985, Sergei and Katia had burst onto the world scene. Throughout their career, they rarely faltered and lost a competition.

Katia was the first to fall in love, developing a shy, but intense secret crush on Sergei. In 1989 while touring in Europe, they had fallen in madly in love with one another. 1991 was the year they married in Moscow. Sergei and Katia became professional skaters with the show Stars on Ice. They relocated to the US where their daughter Daria was born in New Jersey. The family finally settled in Connecticut.

This happy family did not know that over them a very dark cloud hung. In 1990, Sergei's father had died of a heart attack because of a weak heart. Sergei unknowingly carried the same propensity for heart attacks like his father. On November 20, 1995 in Lake Placid, New York Sergei collapsed and died of a heart attack while practicing with Katia for an upcoming Stars on Ice tour. His body was later taken to Moscow where he was buried.

Watching Sergei and Katia skate was to see their grace, artistry, professionalism, and love. They were artists of the highest level and order. Few ranked with them before or since. Fans and admirers of their art and love have created sites honoring them like Ekaterina Gordeeva & Sergei Grinkov , gg-corner.de and Ekaterina Gordeeva: A Kind of Magic.

During their brief time in the international spotlight, Sergei and Katia offered a rare example of love and Romance both on and off the ice.

One of my favorites of their performances can be seen in this video.