When I started to write for publication a few years ago, I dabbled with a regency romance, but felt that I wanted to do something a bit different to the thousands of Regencies that are out there. So I thought it would be interesting to set a story in the same era but rather than in regency England, it would be in Napoleonic France. I was interested in Napoleon and in Josephine ever since I was a teenager... About the same time that I discovered Georgette Heyer.
I now admire Napoleon a lot less as a person and as a politician than I did as a kid but I still respect him for much of what he achieved. I found his court and love life very interesting. In England at the same time the Royal family were either very louche or very dull. (Or both!). George III was increasingly ill and unable to do his duties and the Prince Regent was a selfish and rather useless individual. The Royal dukes were not particularly attractive and most of them had a rather dull love life. The princesses were secluded like nuns and had a dreadfully dreary time of it. Napoleon on the other hand, had a charming wife, who in spite of not being royal, was very good at the job of being Empress. He had numerous mistresses and his court was full of lively young women and men. In addition, while n Regency England divorce was very rare, and usually resulted in social ostracism, in Directorate France it was common and carried no social stigma. Napoleon tightened up the laws because he felt that marriage was very important and that easy divorce gave women too much freedom. However there was a more liberal attitude towards divorce and affaires in France, and so I thought it would be more fun to write about life there, than the English social scene.
In the 1800s in France, the Bonapartes, while somewhat vulgar, in many ways, were young, intriguing and invvold in love affairs, politics and having their families. Caroline Bonaparte was married to a cavalryman Joachim Murat, and had her 4 children. Murat slept around, and Caroline had affairs with men whom she thought would be useful for her political ambitions, such as Napoleon’s friend Junot and Metternich. Pauline had been married twice; her first husband died abroad and her only child, Dermide had died as a little boy. She was lazy and good natured, and after she had made a second marriage to Prince Camillo Borghese, she amused herself with numerous lovers. She wasn’t interested in politics; her main interests were the arts, and taking care of her own beauty, and taking lovers. I was able to weave the Bonaparte siblings into my story, with Sebastian having had an indiscreet flirtation with Pauline... and Caroline’s husband making a pass at Blanche Janvier, which led to her leaving the Murats’ household to work for Josephine. Unlike George III’s court, the Napoleonic one was livelier and there were pretty young girls like Blanche and Corisande, working for the Empress and looking for husbands. I wanted to have a situation where my heroine could have some kind of a job, that wasn’t governessing, which was almost the only job available to well born young women in England. so my two young ladies were working as readers to Josephine….
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Court-Lady-Clova-Leighton-ebook/dp/B004LGTPLY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1455455725&sr=8-1&keywords=a+court+lady%2C+clova
