Historical fable set in France

Submitted: 25th March 2025

Historical fable set in France

Bitter Greens is the new novel from Kate Forsyth that gives a voice to the women behind the beloved fairytale Rapunzel.

Kate has a Doctorate of Creative Arts in fairy tale studies. She is also an accredited master storyteller with the Australian Guild of Storytellers.

The woman in the novel Bitter Greens – Charlotte-Rose de Caumont de La Force – was a French novelist and poet. Her best-known work was her 1698 fairy tale Persinette which was adapted by the Brothers Grimm in 1812 as the story Rapunzel.

Map of locations in Bitter Greens

Bitter Greens Kate Forsyth

My novel Bitter Greens is a dark and sensuous retelling of Rapunzel. Braided together with the dramatic true-life story of the woman who wrote the tale.

Or, at least, what I imagine her life might have been. For although the lives of male fairytale tellers like Charles Perrault and the Brothers Grimm are well-documented, this is not true of the female storytellers whose work they drew upon or, in some cases, stole.

Charlotte-Rose de la Force (c) Wikipedia

Map of locations in Bitter Greens

Charlotte-Rose de la Force, the woman who wrote Rapunzel, was one of the most fascinating women ever forgotten by history. She was related to the Sun King, Louis XIV, and became lady-in-waiting to the queen at the age of sixteen. A few decades later, she was banished to a convent by the king for her wild and wicked ways. She had an affair with an impoverished actor, used witchcraft to try and ensnare a husband, disguised herself as a dancing bear to rescue her much younger lover, and wrote a series of erotic novels about the king’s ancestors.

Map of locations in Bitter Greens

While locked in the convent, Charlotte-Rose composed a collection of fairy stories that included ‘Persinette’ (renamed ‘Rapunzel’ by the German author Friedrich Schultz, the first translator of the tale). Her extraordinary wonder tales were so successful, she was able to buy her way free and spent the rest of her life running a Parisian literary salon.

Map of locations in Bitter Greens

Dramatic and fascinating as Charlotte-Rose de la Force’s life was, it was very difficult to research. When I began, she was little more than a paragraph in fairytale scholarship. A brief volume recounting her life was only available in French, while her own memoir was recorded in a 17th century typeface where all the Ss looked like Fs. I had to dig deep to discover the bare bones of her story, including travelling to France with my three children so that I could follow in her footsteps.

Chateau de Cazeneuve Gironde (c) Wikipedia

Map of locations in Bitter Greens

Charlotte-Rose was born at the Chateau de Cazeneuve in Gascony. I was lucky enough to be given a private tour by its owner, the Comte de Sabran-Pontevès, who is descended from her elder sister.

Originally a medieval castle owned by the kings of Navarre, it was built on a crag of stone above the wild Ciron River. The chateau has two tall stone towers with only two small windows, which look very much how I’ve always imagined Rapunzel’s tower. I saw the room in which Charlotte-Rose was born, her pram, and her baptismal records. (Therefore, I was able to prove that Wikipedia was wrong about her birthdate.)

The Chateau de Cazeneuve was the most amazing and beautiful place, steeped in history and old tales, and the children and I were incredibly privileged to see it.

Map of locations in Bitter Greens

Versailles

We also went to the Louvre and to Versailles. This is where Charlotte-Rose lived at the Sun King’s opulent and corrupt court for most of her adult life. I was able to imagine myself into her skin, wearing a heavy silken gown almost as wide as she was tall. She would also have had a tall lace headdress that would have dug deep into her scalp. Heels whose height was predetermined by the blueness of her blood.

Charlotte-Rose’s feet must have hurt all the time, I thought. I know mine did after a day of walking on those hard marble floors, and I was wearing sneakers!

Map of locations in Bitter Greens

One of the saddest places on our schedule was the Église Saint-Sulpice. This is the grand and gloomy church in Paris where Charlotte-Rose finally married her lover, Charles de Briou. It was only a few weeks after he reached his majority at the age of twenty-five. but it was no use. They had ten days of happiness before the marriage was annulled,. Her husband locked away in a madhouse by his parents.

Writing the story of Charlotte-Rose de la Force was the most extraordinary adventure. It took me to the most amazing fairytale-like places. All in all, it greatly helped me imagine her life. What it must have been like to be a woman in 17th France!