Jeanne Valois de la Motte aka Jeanne Valois, descendent of the Valois family was the daughter of Nicole Lamorlière and the adoptive sister of Rosalie Lamorlière. She is married to Nicolas de la Motte.
Appearance[]
A beautiful young woman, Jeanne has a slender figure and long brunette hair. She has green eyes and a small birthmark under her left eye. While still in poor conditions, she wore a simple red dress. Once she began living a wealthier life, she began wearing expensive dresses and jewelry.
Personality[]
Jeanne is a hard-working girl but strives for better things. Her desire to have a better life has revealed that she is a master manipulator and is able to easily deceive people when she needs to. Although having cared about her younger adopted sister, once she began having the life she always dreamed of having, Jeanne began to treat Rosalie poorly. Jeanne's manipulation and strive for greater things eventually led her to want to become queen of France and had attempted to ruin Marie Antoinette's reputation to do so.
Background[]
The daughter of Nicole Lamorlière and the adoptive sister of Rosalie Lamorlière. While she grew up in poor conditions, Jeanne is aware that she is of noble birth and that her father passed when she was very young. She eventually grew tired of living in horrible conditions and was able to work her way into the home of a wealthy woman who was aware of Jeanne's noble family.
Plot[]
Introduced early in the story, Jeanne is right away shown to hate her current lifestyle but not willing to get a job and work to make things better. She requests her mother once more tell the story of how they are from a noble family but fell from their ranks after her father died. Wishing to be part of that better life, Jeanne exclaims how she cannot stand wearing dirty clothing and eating potato soup every day. This quickly earns a scolding from her ill mother who says that Jeanne should be grateful for what they do have and get a job to earn money. Jeanne refuses to follow her mother's advice and decides to leave home to make her dream of living as a lady come true. Later that same day, after several failed attempts, Jeanne is able to find an older noble woman, Marquise Boulainvilliers, to take her in after telling her she is from the fallen Valois family and thus begins her new life as a lady.
After some time had passed, Jeanne is revealed to still reside with Boulainvilliers and has quickly mastered everything she needs to know to live a lady.
While she gained pity from Marie Antoinette, the money she gave Jeanne, according to her, was not enough for her lifestyle. Finally at her breaking point, Jeanne decides that she actually wants to become queen of France and plotted to frame Marie Antoinette, when she finds out about the diamond necklace that the late king was making for Madame du Barry was finally finished, that's when she devised a plot that would become the most famous crime in French history, the Affair of the Diamond Necklace
When she was caught, she was taken into France's criminal court where she stood trial. At first, she was denying everything, but when the judge brought in Nicole d'Oliva, a blind prostitute who she hired to impersonate Marie Antoinette in the crime, she tells the truth and Jeanne had no choice but confess. However, she still lied about Marie Antoinette being involved and said she and Marie were lesbian lovers who conspired the plot together, and that part ruined Marie's Antoinette's reputation even more.
Before being sent to jail, she was marked with a hot iron that had a symbol on it meaning "Thief", and since then people have been supporting Jeanne, begging for her release and the public went against Marie Antoinette. Soon she escapes and when her failed attempt to kill Oscar is about to kill her, she kills her devoted husband Nicolas, the one person in the world (except Rosalie) who is still on her side, because she does not wish to die alone and knew Nicholas couldn't live without her and did not want her husband to be put in prison and executed for her crimes, showing her deep love for Nicholas after years of using him. Nicholas happily accepted his death as he would go wherever Jeanne is, Jeanne was happy when he said that, the two share a passionate kiss before their death.
Despite Jeanne's selfish actions, she still had a few tender spots in her heart, when she intended to kill Nicole d'Olivia to not have a witness to confess, she was unable to bring herself to do it. Apart from Nicole and Rosalie, Jeanne treated no one else like a human being. She has a deep love for her husband, despite the abuse she put him through, she is a highly fictionalized Jean de Valois Saint Remy, the mastermind behind the infamous Affair of the Diamond Necklace. [1] [2]
Relationships[]
- Nicolas de la Motte: Jeanne's husband. While Jeanne is shown to care for her husband, she clearly views him more as a means to obtain more wealth and power by having him do various tasks and jobs.
- Rosalie Lamorlière: Jeanne's adoptive sister. The two appear to have had a typical but at times strained relationship. While they were still living in poor conditions, Jeanne did little to help her family due to her wanting to achieve her own goals of having a better life. After Jeanne gained her better life, she attempted to ignore Rosalie at great costs and would act like she never knew Rosalie.
- Cardinal de Rohan: Knowing of Rohan's affections toward Marie Antoinette, Jeanne used his feelings to her advantage and conned a great amount of money out of him through a series of false bribes, letters, and meetings.
- Nicole d'Oliva: Jeanne hired Nicole to pose as Marie Antoinette due to her appearance being incredibly identical to that of the queen's. Despite that, when Jeanne's participation in taking the diamond necklace was discovered and she attempted to kill Nicole, she found herself unable to go through with it as she appeared to have grown fond of Nicole.
- Marquise Boulainvilliers: The woman that Jeanne had tricked into taking her in. Jeanne used the kind woman in order to become a proper lady and eventually had her killed so that she could obtain her wealth through a forged will.
Quotes[]
Trivia[]
- According to Jeanne, the Valois family ruled France before the Bourbon family.
- The real Jeanne was an impoverished descendant of the Valois royal family through an illegitimate son of King Henry II. Her father, Jacques de Valois, Baron de Saint-Rémy (1717–1762), was a direct male-line descendant of Henri de Saint-Rémi [fr] (1557–1621), an illegitimate son of King Henry II and Nicole de Savigny.
- Jeanne's mother was Marie Jossel, a court servant girl.
- Jeanne was the third of six children. Three of Jacques de Valois de Saint-Rémy and Marie Jossel's six children died in infancy: Joseph (9 March 1753 – 9 December 1753), Marie Marguerite Anne (17 February 1759 – 23 May 1767) and Jean (5 March 1760 – 9 March 1760). The three surviving de Valois de Saint-Rémy children, Jacques (25 July 1751 – 1785), Jeanne, and Marie-Anne (2 October 1757 – 1786) were neglected, went barefoot, tended the cows, and often found it necessary to beg for food. According to Count Beugnot as written in his Mémoires, they were rescued by his father and the abbot of Langres. According to another source, the family moved to Boulogne near Paris where a priest and one of his rich parishioners, Madame de Boulainvilliers, took care of them.
- At the time of her wedding, Jeanne was heavily pregnant; only one month later (7 July) her newborn twins were baptized as Jean-Baptiste and Nicolas-Marc de la Motte. Both children lived only a few days.
- She died on August 23, 1791, two years before Marie Antoinette. She was living in London as an exile at the time.
Gallery[]
References[]
- ↑ The Rose of Versaille. en.wikipedia.org. Retrieved 2015-07-05.
- ↑ Characters: Rose of Versailles. TV Tropes. Retrieved 2015-07-05.