#I have a feeling it's going to be very romantic & sentimental

[ic-napology]

Napoleon, Josephine and personal stuff - rant incoming brace yourself or scroll

I finally got a grasp on exactly why I was so struck by Napoleon at 13. And I kept being like that for many years later.

It was how desperately he opened his heart and threw himself in the arms of a nice and graceful woman, one he idealised maybe for just being kind to him.

I aknowledge how Josephine was mainly useful to him for very practical reasons, but I feel that, because of that, Napoleon felt genuine elation and gratefulness to her nonetheless. I think he valued her with an emotional response, even if the reasons of her being the best party were practical. In their marriage he would find social stability. In her house, domestic stability. In her presence, sentimental stability. He had not lived in a house of his own since he was 9, and now his home in Corsica was destroyed.

I feel he kinda put himself in a full psychological dependency to Josephine during the first four years of marriage, which seems uncanny from a character that usually valued logic, pragmatism and self-reliancy. But that was a personality based on what was needed to survive in very hostile environments, not on what he could openly wish on a serene path.

His love letters are said to be "romantic" and "passionate", and in some point they are indeed. (I also believe that Napoleon's letters to Josephine stand out mainly because people don't expect it, based on a certain image of Napoleon as stern and hyper-rational; but I remember some similar lovely passages from other people's letters too from the same age.)

But to me now in these letters he mostly sounds desperate to be loved, after so many years of being on his own on unstable situations. He feels relieved to have found someone he could be openly emotionally vulnerable to and relies in that joy; he shares so much things about his campaign, he was never so open about his feeling on things like in these written words. However, this all seems based on his expectations on how Josephine would be like, on an ideal rather than how Josephine actually was going.

He really idealised her and very much held on that image. In his letters, she is perfect, then she seemingly chooses to be evil to him on a whim. It's not like she was actually dealing with her own toll of traumas, insecurities, especially around husbands and their power, and was not on a condition of comforting another lonely person. Especially not with the dedication Napoleon seemed to pretend. It's still a big thing that she came to Italy while even being sick.

Besides, Napoleon had not lost his insecurities after their marriage nor after her arrival on Italy and she was not going to help him in that, because she couldn’t.

It was inevitable that she would defy him, and I'm not talking about the (not actually proved) affair with Charles. The smallest thing would have been hurtful to a starved and insecure person, who puts huge expectations on a single person and lets himself depend on her actions only to be happy. It doesn't help that Josephine was actively being defiant because of her reasons.

And I relate a lot to her too. I feel she was as hurt as Napoleon by her own experiences, maybe she has been socially and emotionally humiliated even more in her own contexts of living, despite her privilege.

So that's it, I was captured by the voluntary emotional dependency on specific people you hope to receive care from, because you have love starvation and you are desperate.

I personally did that a lot with specific people between long periods of distrust of everyone and of emotional avoidance of everything, because I was regularly deceived. Or wasn't corresponded. That's why I'm still fond of Napoleon and Josephine, and also sad for them. But I know that's a dangerous thing to do for both parties. Don't let others be the only ones to take the toll of your well being. Thanks therapy.

I don't pretend that this interpretation of Napoleon is correct; as you see there's a lot of self-projection in order to elaborate things from my personal life, which is also the reason why I felt passionate about those characters. Maybe it's also your reason too. So yeah, my words have no informative value. But I hope that still might resonate in someone else.