Count Hans Axel von Fersen (1755 – 1810) of Sweden is little known today, but he was the male half of one of history’s most tragic romances. He loved and was loved by a queen, upon whom he likely fathered one or more children. Amidst revolution and turmoil he tried to save his royal lover and her family by engineering an escape from their subjects, only for the attempt to backfire dramatically, and lead directly to the queen’s death. Below are twenty things about the life and love of the tragic Swedish count.
20. The Count and the Crown Princess
There was plenty of gossip that Marie Antoinette loved a Swedish aristocrat who might have fathered at least one of her children. When the correspondence between the queen and the nobleman was examined by modern technology, it lent credence to what had been mere rumor. Her lover was Count Hans Axel von Fersen, whose grand tour of Europe in his teens took him to France in 1774. Two months older than Marie Antoinette, von Fersen met the future queen at a ball when both were nineteen-years-old and she was the Dauphine, or French Crown Princess. The duo liked what they saw. For Marie Antoinette, the contrast between the handsome young man and her unattractive husband, the future Louis XVI, was great.
