Napoleon III Bonaparte

Joseph Bonaparte (1768-1844) was the eldest surviving son of Carlo Buonaparte and Letizia Ramolino and the elder brother of Napoleon I. Trained as a lawyer, he served the Republic as a diplomat and negotiated the Treaty of Luneville with Austria and the Treaty of Amiens with Britain. Napoleon made him King of Naples in 1806 and then King of Spain in 1808, a throne he held uneasily through the Peninsular War until 1813. He married Julie Clary in 1794, and their surviving daughters were Zenaide and Charlotte. After the fall of the Empire he lived for many years in the United States, near Bordentown, New Jersey, under the title Comte de Survilliers, returning to Europe late in life and dying in Florence.

Lucien Bonaparte (1775-1840) was the third surviving son of Carlo Buonaparte and Letizia Ramolino, and the brother whose nerve secured Napoleon's seizure of power. As president of the Council of Five Hundred on 18 Brumaire 1799 he rallied the troops when the deputies turned on his brother, making the coup succeed. He served as interior minister and as ambassador to Spain, but broke with Napoleon over his second marriage, to Alexandrine de Bleschamp, which the Emperor refused to recognise, and over his refusal of a throne. Lucien withdrew to Italy, received the title Prince of Canino and Musignano from the Pope, and was briefly held by the British while trying to sail for America. A collector and amateur archaeologist, he excavated Etruscan tombs on his estates and died at Viterbo in 1840.

Elisa Bonaparte (1777-1820) was the eldest surviving daughter of Carlo Buonaparte and Letizia Ramolino, and the only one of Napoleon's sisters to govern a state in her own right. Educated at the royal school of Saint-Cyr, she married the Corsican officer Felice Baciocchi in 1797. Napoleon granted her the principality of Lucca and Piombino in 1805, where she reformed the administration, revived the Carrara marble quarries and founded an academy of fine arts, and in 1809 added the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, which she ruled from Florence until the Empire collapsed in 1814. Known for a businesslike style her brother respected more than he did most of the family, she spent her last years near Trieste and died there in 1820.

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.

Charles Lucien Bonaparte (1803-1857) was a naturalist and one of the founders of modern ornithology, and the eldest son of Lucien Bonaparte and Alexandrine de Bleschamp. A nephew of Napoleon I, he grew up in Italy and spent the years 1822 to 1828 in the United States, where he studied the birds of the eastern states and published a continuation of Alexander Wilson's American Ornithology; Bonaparte's gull carries his name. Back in Europe he worked on the classification of birds and mammals, produced the Conspectus Generum Avium, and helped organise the first Italian congresses of scientists. He succeeded his father as Prince of Canino and Musignano, took part in the Roman Republic of 1849 as a member of its assembly, and spent his last years in Paris, where he died in 1857.

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 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.

Princess Beatrice of Bourbon-Two Sicilies, born in 1950, is a daughter of Prince Ferdinand, Duke of Castro, head of the royal house of the Two Sicilies, and the former wife of Prince Charles Napoleon Bonaparte. Their marriage in 1978 joined the House of Bonaparte to the Neapolitan branch of the Bourbons, the dynasty that Napoleon I's brother Joseph had displaced from the throne of Naples in 1806, a symmetry much remarked on at the time. Their children are Caroline Bonaparte, born in 1980, and Jean-Christophe, Prince Napoleon, born in 1986, the present head of the House of Bonaparte. The marriage was dissolved in 1989.

Pauline Bonaparte (1780-1825) was a sister of Napoleon I, celebrated in her own lifetime as one of the beauties of the imperial court. Born at Ajaccio, she married General Charles Leclerc in 1797 and went with him on the expedition to Saint-Domingue, returning a widow in 1803. Her second marriage, to the Roman nobleman Camillo Borghese, made her Princess Borghese, and Napoleon added the duchy of Guastalla in 1806. She sat for Antonio Canova's marble Venus Victrix, still in the Villa Borghese in Rome, and was the only one of the siblings to visit Napoleon on Elba and to offer her jewels to fund his return. She died near Florence in 1825.

Caroline Bonaparte (1782-1839) was the youngest sister of Napoleon I and queen consort of Naples from 1808 to 1815. Born at Ajaccio, she married the cavalry general Joachim Murat in 1800; the couple were made Grand Duke and Grand Duchess of Berg and Cleves in 1806 and then king and queen of Naples in 1808. Politically the most ambitious of Napoleon's sisters, she governed Naples as regent during her husband's long absences on campaign and pressed him to make terms with Austria in 1814 to keep their throne. The attempt failed and the kingdom fell in 1815. She spent the rest of her life in Austria and Italy as the Countess of Lipona, an anagram of Napoli, and died in Florence.