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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

13. Marie Antoinette’s True Love

Fersen - Marie Antoinette — Marie Antoinette. Poster Lounge

Marie Antoinette miscarried her first pregnancy. Her second pregnancy produced a son, and the third a daughter who did not live long. The son – the future Louis XVII who died in captivity during the French Revolution – strongly resembled not the king, but von Fersen. Louis XVI was autistic, and although quite intelligent, had trouble looking people in the eye, was an obsessive-compulsive who needed to do things in accordance with a rigid schedule, and cried easily. He also did not seem to need sex. He liked his wife, but not for physical reasons: she was his emotional support. Marie Antoinette realized that, supported Louis emotionally, and did all she could to protect him. But as to love, her heart belonged to von Fersen, who was back in France as the king of Sweden’s personal envoy when the French Revolution began.

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.