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Axel von Fersen, the Tragic Romance of a Count Who Loved a Queen but Couldn’t Save Her

Khalid Elhassan April 16, 2025 16 min

Fersen - Hans Axel von Fersen — Hans Axel von Fersen. Wikimedia

19. The Queen’s Swede

Axel von Fersen returned to France in 1778. Marie Antoinette, who had been crowned queen by then, had not forgotten the dashing Swede. She often inquired about von Fersen, and complained when he missed some of her informal parties at her private chateau in Versailles, the Petit Trianon. In his diary entry for November 19^th, 1778, the count wrote: “The queen treats me with great kindness; I often pay her my court at her card-games, and each time she makes to me little speeches that are full of good-will. As someone had told her of my Swedish uniform, she expressed a wish to see me in it; I am to go Thursday thus dressed, not to Court, but to the queen’s apartments. She is the most amiable princess that I know“. Von Fersen saved much of his correspondence with Marie Antoinette.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.