Bonjour de Paris! J’aime le France!
And despite 6 months with Duolingo, that is the extent of my French skills.
Yawn. I feel like I crawled under an airplane seat in the middle of the night and got stuck on the grimy floor. Oh wait I did. My husband Dave and I just arrived in Paris after an overnight flight, and we are freakishly stupid right now, having slept a total of 12 hours in the past 3 days. We can’t check into our hotel in Montmarte until 3pm, and since I can’t wash my face or brush my teeth or pass the fuck out for several hours, I thought it would be the perfect time to introduce you to my very distant cousin, fellow libertine, and sister in promiscuity.
Introducing….Charlotte-Rose de Caumont de La Force!
Charlotte-Rose wrote the original* Rapunzel, mastered satire, gave wickedly delicious salon performances, and regularly slutted it up in the Court of King Louis XIV.
She’s also one of the stars of my TV pilot in development! More on that in a hot minute.
Dave and I will spend 3 delicious weeks in my ancestral homeland, the Perigord region, which we have justified because it was our 20th (!) wedding anniversary on October 4. (Yes you can have a long-term open relationship!) Perigord looks not unlike Appalachia, specifically the Cumberland Gap region, where the LaForces ended up when they arrived in the United States. My first known United States ancestor, Rene LaForce, arrived as a refugee in the United States around the turn of the 17th century, having fled the uber-Catholic reign of Charles IX after the St. Bartholomew Day Massacre when thousands of Huguenots were slaughtered in just a few days time.**
Because Charlotte-Rose’s grandfather and great uncle served the King, Charlotte-Rose was given a position at Court despite her trashy Protestant vibes. While many would find themselves feeling out of place, Charlotte-Rose embraced her unique position as an outsider and never stopped challenging conformity. She found self-expression in writing, penning the novel Persinette, a story about a princess born to a King who stole from a fairy’s parsley garden. Because of the King’s crime, the fairy imprisoned Persinette in a tower, and used Persinette’s long hair to climb up the tower and visit. Eventually a handsome prince discovered he can get laid if he simply climbs those long-ass silky tresses. The two fell in love and Persinette became pregnant. Drama ensued, but Persinette did get her happily ever after. Fairy-tales had recently become in-vogue, and Persinette drips with themes of oppressed love, which Charlotte-Rose experienced vividly in her own life.
While Persinette is Charlotte-Rose’s most famous work, I’d love to get my hands on (a well-translated version of) one of her several Secret History volumes, wherein Charlotte-Rose told satirical tales (under a pen name, Madame X) about families from Court, such as in The Secret History of Burgundy. (The modern version would be like my rarely-read Kardashian fan fiction.) Charlotte-Rose began to frequent salons, inspiring and wowing courtiers with her sharp wit.
Charlotte-Rose also became known for her exploits with male courtiers. She dated Michel Baron, a star actor in Moliere’s troupe. When she was 35 she fell in love with a 25-year old Charles Briou, although it was considered too scandalous to be an official relationship. Charles’ father forbade the two to marry, so Charlotte-Rose dressed as a dancing bear in a circus to visit Charles in secret. The two eloped, only to have their marriage annulled by the elder Briou.
After the ill-fated marriage, Charlotte-Rose continued to stir the vaginal pot at Court, including a possible inappropriate relationship with the Dauphin (the King’s adolescent son and heir). Finally, a weary King Louis XIV betrothed Charlotte-Rose to the relatively heinous Marquis de Nesle.
Shortly thereafter, during the infamous Affair of the Poisons, the ole Marquis looked in his sock drawer and was surprised to find suspicious toad parts, a commonly used ingredient in spell-casting. Women at Court often visited La Voisine for reproductive medicine and miscellaneous witchcraft. Charlotte-Rose was disciplined, but her witchy murderous antics did manage to turn off the Marquis.
Charlotte-Rose managed to then fly under the radar of the slut-shaming patriarchal Louis XIV (who himself had many mistresses) for a bit, but it’s believed that her satirical naughty Christmas letters were the final straw for the King, who promptly banished Charlotte-Rose to a nunnery in Brie. She begged for many years to come back, and when she was ultimately allowed at around age 70, she declined, choosing to move to Paris to live with the nuns there. Can’t say I blame her. The misogynistic court OR a posse of banished babes hanging out in Paris? I would also take the latter. (I imagine it playing out much like Aubrey Plaza’s killer feature The Little Hours.) Charlotte-Rose died in 1724; I have searched for her burial grounds online but haven’t been able to find the location.
I learned about Charlotte-Rose just a few years ago during COVID lockdown, when I was struggling to first write about my open relationship. Inspired by her zero fucks attitude, I began writing about Charlotte-Rose from the attic of a Vermont farmhouse, channeling her later years when she finally pushed the King too far and was banished to the nunnery towers.
Learning about Charlotte-Rose reminded me (not that I needed a reminder, hello Louisiana Congressman Mike Johnson) that religious men have largely, if not entirely, been in charge of setting society’s sexual norms. As someone who has dealt with a lot of shame for her sexual needs, I admired that Charlotte-Rose continued to do her thang without really hiding it regardless of the patriarchy. She’s an exciting historical female character, and I loooove writing in her voice.
Enter: The Almost Completely True Secret History of the LaForce Women, my original TV pilot about a modern day woman struggling with her identity as a slut and gaining confidence as she learns about the exploits of one Charlotte-Rose de Caumont de La Force. (The logline sucks I know.) While this project is super exciting and fun to write, I’m still working to better develop the half of the pilot that tells my stories. Charlotte-Rose has so much shit to pull from, I feel much more confident about her half of the pilot. I hope that writing these blogs/newsletters helps me better pull internal and external conflicts for the other lead character, one Melanie LaForce.
So we here.
In addition to visiting the town of La Force, we’re excited to visit the Chateau des Milandes, former Caumont family home, as well as the former home of Josephine Baker! With my limited French I’m doing my best to seek out more info about Charlotte-Rose and the Caumont family - I’d love to meet folks with historical connections to my old family, those crazy Protestants. Also, managers and producers. Obvs.
If you want to follow Dave and my exploits (and by exploits I mean shopping for black truffles and sipping herbal tea) in Perigord, the land of my peoples, you can follow me on IG at @melanielaforceofficial. I’m drumming up some motivation to get back on TikTok, but I’ll letcha know if/when I muster the energy.
Thanks for reading and listening as I figure out my story. If you want to read the current pilot, you can request it here.
*Technically, Charlotte-Rose’s Persinette is a deviation from Giambattista Basile’s 1634, Pentamerone (and god knows who before that), however, The Grimm brothers used a plot more similar to Persinette for their famous rewrite, Rapunzel.
** Despite refugee beginnings, The LaForce family held slaves in the United States at least until an incident wherein they were separated by a native tribe. It’s unclear what happened to the family after this point, but my line mostly became farmers in Appalachia, where some relatives still live. When you google LaForce family, the first thing that comes up is a website for ancestors of folks formerly enslaved by LaForces. If you have dark skin and are named LaForce, you are probably a descendant of slaves held by my ancestors. I can’t begin to make up for their crimes. Because of this history (and quite frankly, it doesn’t stop there - my family has Nazi and racist ancestors on both sides), I give half of my writing proceeds (someday this will be profits…someday) to charities that support folks oppressed by white supremacy culture, such as Last Prisoner’s Project and First People’s fund. If you want to support me and these charities, you can do so here. Maybe you’ll be the first.
