Joséphine Bonaparte Was Older Than Napoleon, Yet 20 Years Younger in Jodie Comer/Joaquin Phoenix Casting
Sources close to Deadline says that Jodie Comer is currently Ridley Scott’s choice to play Napoleon Bonaparte’s beloved (for awhile) first wife Josephine in Apple Studios’ upcoming epic Kitbag.” Joaquin Phoenix will be playing the role of Napoleon Bonaparte. Well, the internet was quick to point out that Marie Josèphe Rose Tascher de La Pagerie, a.k.a. Joséphine Bonaparte, was six years older than her husband! In contrast, Comer is twenty-seven and Phoenix is forty-six.
So, not great casting.
At the time of their marriage, Joséphine was a widow (her first husband was killed during the Reign of Terror) and had two children already.
Joséphine met her second husband in 1795 and became his mistress. Joséphine was getting it in quite often around this time, so good for her. However, she must have laid it down very well because Napoleon simped and simped hard. The love letters between them are still known for being very spicy.
One in particular goes: “I awake full of you. Your image and the memory of last night’s intoxicating pleasures has left no rest to my senses. Sweet, incomparable Josephine, what a strange effect you have on my heart. My soul breaks with grief, and there is no rest for your lover; but how much the more when I yield to this passion that rules me and drink a burning flame from your lips and your heart? Oh! This night has shown me that your portrait is not you! You leave at midday; in three hours I shall see you. Meanwhile, my sweet love, a thousand kisses; but do not give me any, for they set my blood on fire.”
Y’all nasty.
A year after meeting, Napoleon proposed to her and they were married on 9 March. There is that famous picture of him crowning her himself, and he was deeply in love with her until she had an affair with another man. From then on, it was always different. Napoleon would go on to have a number of affairs in response, while we don’t know if Joséphine did.
Despite their issues, Napoleon still loved his wife, but there was an issue. Despite their years of marriage they had no heir. The big blow came when Joséphine’s grandson, Napoléon Charles Bonaparte, died after having been considered and adopted as Napoléon’s heir before.
Joséphine agreed to the divorce so the Emperor could remarry in the hope of having an heir, so this wasn’t a full Katherine of Aragon situation. Both were sad about it and read a statement of devotion to the other during the process. Allegedly, when Napoleon learned of her death while in exile, he stayed locked in his room for two days. His last words on his death bed at St. Helena were: “France, the Army, the Head of the Army, Joséphine.”
A simp to the end.
Fun fact 1: Until meeting Bonaparte, she was known as Rose, but Bonaparte preferred to call her Joséphine, the name she adopted from then on.
Fun fact 2: Joséphine was born into a wealthy French family that owned a sugarcane plantation on her birth place of Martinique, where a statue was built. It was beheaded in 1991 because, after France initially got rid of slavery, but it is believed that Jo was part of reinstating slavery in the French colonies to help her family. The statue was torn down in 2020 during BLM protests.
(via Deadline, image: Andrea Appiani/Public Domain)
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