Letizia Ramolino

Eugene de Beauharnais (1781-1824) was the son of Josephine de Beauharnais by her first marriage and thus the stepson of Napoleon I, who adopted him as a French prince in 1806. Born in Paris, he served as his stepfather's aide-de-camp in Italy and Egypt and proved the most capable soldier of the imperial family, commanding the Army of Italy and fighting in the Russian campaign of 1812, where he took over the retreating army's rearguard. From 1805 he governed the Kingdom of Italy as Viceroy at Milan, and was widely respected there as an administrator. He married Princess Augusta of Bavaria, and after the Empire fell he settled in Munich as Duke of Leuchtenberg, where he died in 1824. He was the elder brother of Hortense de Beauharnais.

Hortense de Beauharnais (1783-1837) was the daughter of Josephine de Beauharnais and Alexandre de Beauharnais, the stepdaughter of Napoleon I, and the link between the two imperial generations of this family. Born in Paris, she was married in 1802 to Napoleon's brother Louis Bonaparte and became queen consort of Holland in 1806. Of their three sons, the youngest, Louis Napoleon, became Emperor Napoleon III, so Hortense was at once Napoleon I's stepdaughter, sister-in-law and the mother of his successor. Separated from her husband, she was created Duchesse de Saint-Leu and lived after 1815 in exile at Arenenberg in Switzerland, where she raised her surviving son. An accomplished amateur musician, she wrote romances including Partant pour la Syrie, which became an anthem of the Second Empire.

Napoleon Eugene Louis Bonaparte (1856-1879), the Prince Imperial, was the only child of Napoleon III and Empress Eugenie and the heir to the Second Empire. His birth at the Tuileries was celebrated across France as securing the dynasty. He accompanied his father to the front in 1870 and was under fire at Saarbrucken at the age of fourteen, weeks before the Empire fell. The family took refuge in England, where he completed his education at the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich and became, on his father's death in 1873, the Bonapartist claimant recognised by the party in France. Seeking active service, he joined the British forces in the Anglo-Zulu War and was killed in a skirmish in Zululand in June 1879, aged twenty-three. His death passed the family's claim to the descendants of Jerome Bonaparte.

Prince Charles Napoleon Bonaparte, born in 1950, is the son of Prince Louis Napoleon and a senior living descendant of Jerome Bonaparte, Napoleon I's youngest brother. Trained as an economist, he has worked as a consultant and written books on his family and on Napoleonic history, and has been active in local politics in Corsica and in Provence, serving as a municipal councillor and deputy mayor of Ajaccio, the town where the family began. He has helped found associations that promote Napoleonic heritage sites across Europe. His father's will named his son Jean-Christophe rather than him as head of the house, a decision he has publicly disputed, and Bonapartist opinion has been divided between them since 1997. His children with Princess Beatrice of Bourbon-Two Sicilies are Caroline and Jean-Christophe.

Jean-Christophe, Prince Napoleon, born in 1986, is the current head of the House of Bonaparte and the senior representative of Napoleon I's family today. The son of Prince Charles Napoleon and Princess Beatrice of Bourbon-Two Sicilies, he was named heir in the will of his grandfather Prince Louis Napoleon, who died in 1997 and passed over his own son, a decision that has been contested within the family. He studied at HEC Paris and took an MBA at Harvard Business School, and has worked in private equity and investment banking in London and Paris. He takes part in Napoleonic commemorations in France and abroad, including the bicentenary observances of 2021. In 2019 he married Countess Olympia von und zu Arco-Zinneberg at Les Invalides in Paris, where Napoleon I is buried.

Prince Victor Napoleon Bonaparte (1862-1926) was the elder son of Prince Napoleon Joseph Charles Paul Bonaparte and Princess Maria Clotilde of Savoy, and head of the House of Bonaparte from 1891 until his death. Born in Paris during the Second Empire, he grew up in exile after its fall in 1870. Bonapartists who found his father's radicalism unacceptable transferred their allegiance to him in 1884, and his father's will confirmed the breach; the French law exiling pretenders kept him out of the country, so he settled in Brussels and lived there for the rest of his life. In 1910 he married Princess Clementine of Belgium, daughter of King Leopold II, and their children were Princess Marie Clotilde and Prince Louis Napoleon, his successor as head of the family. He died in Brussels in 1926.

Prince Louis Napoleon Bonaparte (1914-1997) was the son of Prince Victor Napoleon and Princess Clementine of Belgium, and head of the House of Bonaparte from 1926, when he succeeded his father at the age of twelve, until his death. Born in Brussels during the family's exile, he was still barred from France by the law on pretenders when the Second World War began, so he enlisted in the French Foreign Legion under an assumed name and later joined the Resistance in the Alps, for which he was decorated. He was able to live in France after the exile law lapsed, and worked in business while maintaining the family's historical role and its archives. He married Alix de Foresta in 1949; their children included Prince Charles Napoleon. His will named his grandson Jean-Christophe as his successor.

Eugenie de Montijo (1826-1920) was the wife of Napoleon III and the last Empress of the French. Born in Granada to a Spanish noble family, she married the Emperor in 1853 and gave birth in 1856 to their only child, the Prince Imperial. She served as regent during her husband's absences in 1859, 1865 and 1870, took a close interest in foreign policy, and was a famous patron of fashion whose court style influenced dress across Europe; she also supported the building of the Suez Canal, whose opening she attended in 1869. After the collapse of the Empire at Sedan she fled to England and settled at Farnborough in Hampshire, where she built a mausoleum for her husband and son. She lived until 1920, outliving the Empire by half a century.

Felice Pasquale Baciocchi (1762-1841) was a Corsican army officer who married Elisa Bonaparte in 1797 and became, through her, Prince of Lucca and Piombino. He came from a minor noble family of Ajaccio and served in French regiments before the marriage brought him into the imperial circle as a senator, general and prince of the Empire. In practice his wife governed their Italian states while he attended to military and ceremonial duties and to music, which was his real interest. After the fall of the First Empire the couple lost their territories and retired to Austrian Italy; he survived Elisa by twenty-one years and died in Bologna in 1841.

Josephine de Beauharnais (1763-1814) was the first wife of Napoleon I and Empress of the French from 1804 to 1810. Born Marie Josephe Rose Tascher de la Pagerie on a sugar plantation in Martinique, she came to France for an arranged marriage to Alexandre de Beauharnais, by whom she had two children, Eugene and Hortense, and was widowed during the Terror. She married Napoleon in 1796 and became the presiding figure of his court, remembered for her patronage of painters and cabinetmakers and for the rose garden at her house of Malmaison. The marriage was annulled in 1810 because it produced no heir, but she kept the title of Empress and remained on good terms with Napoleon until her death at Malmaison in 1814. Through her daughter Hortense she was grandmother of Napoleon III.