Born Napoleone di Buonaparte in Corsica, became a moderately influential and militarily astute general in the French Army at the time of the _Directoire_, from which standpoint he was roped into a coup d'etat which made him First Consul in a Consulate of three. Not content with that, ol' Boney proceeded to turn his position into a quasi-military quasi-dynastic dictatorship (making several siblings rulers in their own little patches of his European monarchia, while he proceeded to try and expand his empire even further east into Russia). However, he was responsible for the bringing in of the _Code Civile_ and of the modern system of French schooling, both of which, fundamentally, have remained to this day. Forced to abdicate from his rule as Emperor Napoleon I in 1815, died in St Helena in 1820 (there are several conspiracy theories surrounding precisely how he died: the most prosaic hypothesis is simple illness), but still a powerful figure in France's imagination. --TL _(This is why historians are useful in an SF society!:))_ ObSF: appears in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, as himself. ArnoldJudasRimmer's all-time favourite fascist dictator. This despite the fact that he existed long before the term 'fascism' was coined. CategoryOUSFGElder, perhaps?