#Books on Napoleon

[emeraldlabyrinth]

I really enjoy seeing someone so interested in history

Got a dozen Napoleon books for 50% at a bookstore that's going out of business 😁 unfortunately, that meant I had to drive in the city 😵

[napoleonicdodofan]

Okay hi whatever

[divorcedwife]

more novels for babies

[alter-koker]

my school library regularly purges its outdated books and just gives them away for free. usually theyre just technical books that arent interesting to anyone, but i found an old book on fan culture, which contained this gem

[miffy-junot]

OKAY HEAR ME OUT:

All of these edgy science fiction / fantasy novels about overthrowing evil empires and then becoming the very thing that you sought to destroy and the main character ending up as bad as the regime they overthrew and all that, you know?

You could very easily make a dramatised version of the life of Napoleon Bonaparte, transplant it into generic fantasy evil empire world, change the names of the historical figures to fictional names, and all the tumblrinas would eat that up.

Picture this: Napoleon Our protagonist is born the second child in a large family on Corsica generic fantasy island, is sent to a military academy in France evil empire, and begins to rise through the ranks of the army. A revolution occurs, in which the French evil empire monarchy is overthrown, and our protagonist, a supporter of the revolution, fights for the revolutionary government against royalist uprisings and the first coalition other evil empires. Along the way, our protagonist becomes increasingly powerful, as well as being an absolute slut. After a series of military campaigns, our protagonist, seeing the corruption of the directory new evil government, stages a coup and becomes first consul generic fantasy leader. However, over the course of the book, our protagonist has acquired a huge ego and lost many morals, and ends up themself the emperor of France fantasy kingdom. "Morally grey" shenanigans ensue. (Of course, our protagonist would have many many love interests, such as Josephine de Beauharnais hot milf, Jean-Andoche Junot hot best friend, and Tsar Alexander I enemies-to-lovers-to-enemies-again.) (Main character would be characterised as being the most pathetic little person to ever exist who is frequently bullied for being quirky and not-like-other-girls)

[apurpledust]

guys I was reading this book written in the 1950s, which is basically a fictionized retelling of Napoleon's life, but it really reads more like a romantic biography. The author includes this Napjuno crumb,,,,

oh my goddddd someone sedate me also there's this scene with Napoleon sort of joking with Murat before revealing his displeasure of Junot's "indiscreet disclosures"

the part mentioning Junot's death😭

[wazili]

Rare Chéché portrait

Don't bother him, he's doing his homework

From Le Grand amour de Fouché : Ernestine de Castellane, 1931

[vorbarrsultana]

i finished rereading the first four vorkosigan books (+ "the flowers of vashnoi" because ekaterin!!!), and you really have to feel for piotr vorkosigan because what a nightmare life, truly.

imagine you are born just in time for your world to be unified by dorca vorbarra and rediscovered by people from wider galaxy. things are finally looking good, for the first time in 600 years of isolation there is no more feudal infighting, and the promise of galactic medicine and technologies being available lightens everyone's perspectives. sure, your grandpa is called count pierre "le sanguinaire", but who doesn't have terrible relatives?

then you are 15, and suddenly your planet is attacked by the aggressive eugenecist space empire hell-bent on subjugating your people and turning them into disposable material for unethical genetic experiments. you flee into the mountains, away from your family, and create guerrilla forces from locals sworn to your dad, and it's really terrible for a very long time. you have no high-tech weapons and no food, you sleep in a cave in the dead of winter, and the cetagandans try everything (from carpet bombing to chemical weapons) to murder you.

but hey, at least you now have your bff ezar vorbarra, and (from the bff's words on his deathbed) it sounds like you two had so much fun between unimaginable horrors and despair, and it's not surprising, since no one really believes in death after life at 20. then the emperor makes you a general at the tender age of 22. fortunately for him, you & bff make a frighteningly competent dream-team, and the joke's on cetagandans.

then, several years later, you ask the emperor for weapons, because you still sleep on the bare cave floor, there are little resources, and every ghem on the planet is trying to murder you. he offers you the hand of his granddaughter instead, like it's some sort of twisted fairytale, but you grow to love your olivia more than anything, and the tide of war is finally turning, and you allow yourself to entertain the idea of peaceful life, and then...

the space eugenecist empire nukes your hometown, killing your mom, dad, surviving brothers, and two hundred thousand of your people. plus your bff (ezar) gets a radiation doze large enough for it to cause severe cancer thirty years later. great.

but you win! your district is in shambles, your capital is an irradiated crater, your castle is in ruins, but you win! the old dorca dies, and yuri ascends the throne, but politicking is secondary to the fact that you are alive.

yes, you are probably not entirely sane, and you've long forgotten what the peaceful times look like, but you are alive, just under 35, and your entire life is ahead of you. olivia is alive too, and ezar, and you now have three wonderful children, and the extended vorpatril-vorbarra family that hosts regular get-togethers. sure, your mom-in-law is a betan with all sorts of crazy ideas in her head, but she is not pierre vorrutyer. small mercies.

but then the new emperor goes mad, and decides to murder your entire family overnight. your brothers-in-law are gone, one of your sisters-in-law too, and all your nephews and nieces except little padma. but all of this pales in comparison to the facts that olivia is murdered, and that your heir and daughter lay dead beside her.

all you have left of her, of your house, of the family you've lost in vashnoi not a ten years ago, is aral, whom you keep by your side throughout the bloody civil war to put your bff on the throne.

but you win again. you are 43, and ezar vorbarra is now the emperor. you are responsible for the imperium's entire ground forces. you are also responsible for a severely traumatized boy of 13, and the only children you've interacted with without olivia's genle guidance were little messengers of guerilla companies.

what a mess.

[akaryotic]

some of my favourite lines from the mfu books so far (1-6) (p. 2) (p. 3)

ive been making a tally just for fun to keep track of how many times solo and kuryakin get shot/drugged/captured/tortured respectively and i might post it when i finish the series if anyone would like to see it LMAO

[cedyat]

PSA: Tsar Alexander I liked dick jokes!

I think. Little Explanation: On the 5th of May 1807 while the war of the fourth Coalition is in full swing Frederick William III writes this inconspicuous sentence in a letter to his wife:

"The grand duke [Constantine] is in Schwansfeld, a name whose double meaning has greatly amused the Emperor [Alexander]."*

Schwansfeld can be translated literally as "swan's field" or "field of swans", but what is the other meaning?

Well, "Schwans-" sounds very similar to "Schwanz", a word meaning "tail". However, "Schwanz" can also mean dick. I looked up whether it was already used in this way 200 years ago and in fact: yes! It was already slang all the way back in the 1600's and even Goethe uses it. So with that in mind the other meaning would be "dick field". A theory that I feel is even backed up by the fact that the full name of this town is "Großschwansfeld" so -> "big dick field".

TL;DR: Either I am too dumb to understand a simple pun or one of the most powerful man of his time had the humor of a 12-year old.

* Briefwechsel der Königin Luise mit ihrem Gemahl Friedrich Wilhelm III, p. 299

[microcosme11]

Old YA book about Napoleon

A Boy of the First Empire by Elbridge Streeter Brooks, 1913

I've seen some of its illustrations before, not knowing where they came from. This book was originally serialized in St. Nicholas Magazine (1873).

google books

[chirp-a-chirp]

Napoleon: Everyone keeps flirting with you.

MC: You’re exaggerating!

Napoleon: In front of me.

MC: T-that can’t be!

Vlad: Here are flowers. Free of course.

Le Comte: Let me dress you, Ma Cherie.

Arthur: Wanna makeout luv?

Napoleon: NO.

[vintagehomecollection]

Interior Visions: Great American Designers and the Showcase House, 1988

[mmkayokay]

I DID IT I FINISHED IT!!!!

it's a book cover for my favourite muncle book (so far) because the original covers were a travesty!!!

more versions below & process stuff

the vampire is loosely based on christopher lee but i was tempted at one point to draw him as vincent price lol just the vibes

also how ridiculous is this book? a scooby doo ass plot that had our boys shooketh and shooting at nothing. loved it 5/5 stars would eat here again

mcdaniels just understands napoleon and illya on such a deep level

closeups!

spent hours on those wolves only for them to be nothing burgers that look far too pettable rip also the two wolves at the back are just flipped twins we dont talk abt them

but yay!!!!! i'm so happy with how this turned out and i def want to do another! maybe for the dagger affair because that was quite fun too!

[ciderbird]

ok so while compiling the masterpost for the tournament I finally found an English version of Sophie de Choiseul-Gouffier memoirs so I wanted to share my favorite exchange from it between her and emperor Alexander

he’s like yeah Napoleon didn’t impress me at all. Did you notice his eyes, though? His clear piercing grey eyes?

And she’s like your majesty what the HELL are you talking about?

They talk a lot about Napoleon but I find these passages particularly interesting:

“to make one’s self feared, or to make one’s self loved”

I mean I already knew they were narrative foils in real life but to see it come out of Alexander’s mouth so blatantly is something else…

And yet another curious observation

seems not so immune to Napoleon’s charms as he would later have people believe. To put things in perspective this conversation takes place in Vilna after Napoleon’s retreat from Russia

[miffy-junot]

Napoleon-Andoche Junot writing six books about his sex life, spilling his father's secrets and implying that Napjuno is canon.