The story circulating among commoners about Marie Antoinette saying, "Why don't they eat cake?" might have been false, but it still reflected how commoners viewed the royal family.
The gap between court life and the lives of ordinary commoners was too vast. They seemed to live in the same world, yet not in the same world at all.
You could not control how others saw you.
In Napoleon's eyes, Georgiana's clumsy, unfashionable dress became thrift and noble character. Even her isolation was seen as living apart from the crowd in pursuit of inner peace.
In truth, compared with being called Caroline Margarita, Queen of Sweden, Georgiana was more afraid of becoming Christian VII's personal physician, Struensee. If reforms were carried out improperly, or harmed too many people's interests, they could provoke a coup. She had once been an idealist too.
Britain and France were separated only by a six-league channel. Rumors spread to France quickly, and compared with the Royalist newspapers' baseless slander, gossip about Saint-Domingue had a greater social impact. It would ruin the Little Corporal's image; people would compare him to the tyrants of antiquity.
The Swedish king might not have instructed his subjects to spread the "rumors." Someone who truly wished to spread rumors would often distance himself from the event itself. It might have been the Swedish people acting on their own, or they might have been directed by another power, such as Britain.
Drawing Sweden into the Anti-French Coalition would benefit Britain's pro-war faction. If Napoleon supported Denmark from behind the scenes, Britain could support Sweden in the same way. What they would fight over was control of the Øresund Strait.
Who could have imagined it? The flames of war on a tropical Caribbean island had drifted in this manner to Northern Europe, where cold