The main character Diseree is painfully lackluster. In the beginning she is young and inexperienced so the fact that she just goes with the flow and does what is expected of her makes sense. However, in some instances she behaves in ways that are hard to understand and the author never attempts to provide any explanation. For example. as a woman whom Napoleon basically discarded in favor of Josephine, she suffers horribly as she is forced to watch Napoleon's budding love affair and then marriage. Diseree's sister is married to Napoleon's brother Joseph and Diseree lives with them in Paris thus spending a lot of time with the Bonaparte family. She chooses to never confront Napoleon about his actions, and silently endures her pain. Moreover she is forced to spend a lot of time with Josephine. In the book, this relationship comes through as very strained and superficial. Yet, the author never discusses how a young woman, replaced by such an enigmatic personality and beauty would feel about it. Or how that relationship would change over time.
Apart from her sister Julie, Deseree does not have any friends. As a person, she seems to be quite unremarkable: no personality, no accomplishments, no ambition. Things just sort of happen to her. She is caught up in the circumstances, but there is absolutely nothing remarkable that can be said about her own role in history or the lives of the people around her. She is said to have been pretty. But even in her family life, she makes zero effort to be a good wife and mother. After her husband becomes the king of Sweden, she leaves him and her son for years at a time and spends time in France. We never get any information as to what exactly she did in France during the many years she spent their. She complains about Swedish winters, but never goes to see her son and husband even in summertime. I found this particular aspect of the book frustrating. Since it is fiction, nothing precluded the author to at least speculate why she would stay in France.
Unlike other characters in the book, Deseree also seems wholly unconcerned about the fact that she only ever had one child early on in her marriage. At a time when children died frequently in infancy, it seems unbelievable to me that a woman in her position would not want more children especially since in her case providing an heir to the throne was so important.
Aside from poor character development, the book also does not provide a good sense of Napoleon's genius. In addition, very little information is given about his military campaigns. Desiree sees him as overly ambitious, proud, and increasingly, almost manically power-hungry. Perhaps the whole point is that Desiree herself was just a simple girl from Marseille who somehow due to a remarkable chain of events got sucked into the whirlwind of events and people surrounding Napoleon. She never wanted to be a queen, thus on become one, she made zero effort to use her position to accomplish anything. Judging from this book, hers was a life spent in the shadow of other great people, and thus the history simply forgot about her. Even the book that is supposed to be about her life reads more like the story of Josephine. The only bit of her story that I found interesting was the fact that her son married Josephine's granddaughter. Thus, the two women loved by Napoleon founded the Swedish royal dynasty that is still in power today. I gave this book 3 out of 5 stars.
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