At the time of his coronation, the man born (not "known", as the now famous series states) as Nabullione Buonaparte - an Italian-scented name - on just-annexed Corsica would have been called many things now though illicit, grandiose, or even admirable. At 35, he crowned - so to speak - his hitherto achievements by raising and lowering, by his own hand, the crown he reinstated quite incredibly, as if humiliating the enemies and friends of the revolution alike.
Twenty years ago, a TV series - then, also incredulously, French - marked as the most expensive ever was released, starring Christian Clavier as the grandiose, but doomed (and decidedly diminutive) emperor, the inevitable (as far as a French production is concerned, with even Francois Cluzet blazing from his absence) Gerard Depardieu as the useful but fickle Fouché, and John Malkovich as the emblematic, enigmatic, ethereal Talleyrand (titles are useless). In this recognition of the bicentennial, the motif was clearly one more favourable than the image of the tyrannical, if doomed, Napoleon lasting as far as memories - and survivors - of the regime and its wars persisted. While recognising his ruthlessness (which was, by a turn of phrase, not his alone) it was clearly shining gold through the gloom of a Medieval, pre-modern Europe as the act of the great man took himself, and us, into a new era - destroying himself, indeed, but not so much by evil, or even corruption of the powerful by power, but rather the less significant, small-minded and vile which surrounded his genius. More recently, a biopic by the emblematic
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