Marie Antoinette's Adultery Unmasked by Modern Science [View all]

[Zorro]

In a recent study employing a technique called X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy, scientists discovered formerly redacted phrases on eight letters between Marie Antoinette and the Swedish count Axel Fersen, who was rumored to have been her lover. Further analysis revealed that the correspondence had been censored by Count Fersen himself. The altered words, which included “beloved,” “adore,” and “madly,” have now sparked something of a controversy: Are these recovered phrases additional evidence of an affair, or are they not?

The answer to this is a resounding yes. Just to set the record straight, no queen, Marie Antoinette included, used a word like “beloved” lightly to a man other than her husband. She could be punished for adultery, and even possibly executed, for doing so. That’s a pretty big risk to take if you don’t mean it, and it is why Fersen, who kept copies of these letters and feared they might fall into the wrong hands, edited those particular words.

It has long been suspected that Marie Antoinette was in love with the Swedish count. In 1779, her attraction to Fersen was so obvious that the Swedish ambassador noted that the queen could not disguise her feelings in public. The diplomat was thrilled when his countryman left to fight in the American Revolution and a scandal was avoided. But after Fersen returned in 1783, there is substantive evidence of intimacy. The documentation includes the exchange of secret letters, as well as Fersen’s diary, which is filled with entries detailing how much he loved someone named “Elle” (his code name for the queen), but how he couldn’t wed her because she was already married. But the most significant disclosures came from the head of the royal guard at Versailles, the Comte de Saint-Priest, who reported that, when Fersen was in town, he stayed over, often for days at a time, at Marie Antoinette’s private sanctuary, the Petit Trianon, and that the king was aware of the affair but the queen had somehow gotten around him.

Then there are Marie Antoinette’s pregnancies. Before the arrival of Fersen, it took her seven years to conceive her first child, a daughter. Nearly three years elapsed between the birth of this first girl and her next child, a son. This latter period corresponds to the years that Fersen was away fighting in America.

https://news.yahoo.com/marie-antoinettes-adultery-unmasked-modern-025251858.html