History is written by the victors. In this case, Michelle Moran took up the pen for the victors and wrote the historical fiction “The Second Empress” about the court of Emperor Napoleon. Told from the perspective of his second wife, his sister Pauline, and his sister’s chamberlain, the novel follows Napoleon’s rise and fall with an insider’s perspective. After reading Moran’s book, though, I began to question how far the emperor truly had to fall. Of course, you could disregard everything I am about to say: who knows if one day I will side with a victor or a loser. Thus this might determine whether my writing is deemed historical, apocryphal, or simply unworthy of note.

If you have chosen to keep reading the ramblings of a yet-undetermined source, consider whether a leader can still be called a hero when his home life is fraught with suffering of which he is the cause. Such was the case with Napoleon. Moran provides a window into his family life, showcasing his quick and violent temper and poor treatment of his wife. The titular character, Empress Maria Lucia, was taken from her homeland of Austria, likely never to see it or her family there again because Napoleon wanted a Hapsburg bride and was willing to threaten her father’s kingdom in order to get her. Once blackmailed into uprooting herself and marrying Napoleon, Maria Lucia faced torment from his sisters and her husband himself whose temper tantrums only subsided for the duration of his wife’s pregnancy. One of Moran’s most harrowing scenes shows Napoleon bursting into Maria Lucia’s room, screaming and accusing her of adultery with her true love, Adam, despite her heartbreaking resistance of her own feelings. Moran has Napoleon go so far as shoving food in his wife’s face and mocking her weight, bullying her until she reveals her pregnancy, at which point he suddenly attempt to reconcile himself with his miserable wife. The scene may not have taken place exactly as portrayed by Moran, but the author states in her afterward that the novel is a faithful representation of the goings-on at the Bonaparte court as conveyed in primary sources.

Which makes Moran’s beautifully written but heart-wrenching portrayal of the emperor’s treatment of his family even more tragic. He kept his son, Franz, away from his mother, forcing him to spend his days studying and not allowing the toddler any time to play. When the Austrian army invaded Paris, Napoleon wrote to then-regent Maria Lucia that he would rather his son be killed than taken back to the safety of his mother’s home in his grandfather’s Austrian court (a letter Moran uses to explain Maria Lucia’s justified abandonment of France when it fell).

Napoleon’s dealings with the rest of his family were not much better, as Moran shows. His sister, Pauline, had a propensity toward dalliance. Her primary lover during the period over which the novel takes place is de Canouville, a military man to whom the princess grows steadily attached. Upon seeing this, Napoleon promptly sends de Canouville on a mission from which he will undoubtedly never return, accompanied by the innocent man whom Pauline suggested take de Canouville’s place. Napoleon’s disguised murders are not fueled by a pious indignation at his sister’s adultery: Pauline’s casual lovers remain unscathed. Instead, it appears that the emperor is fueled by jealousy toward the men who try to take what he can never have. The emperor of half of Europe behaves like a child following the logic of “if I can’t have it, no one can,” leaving broken hearts and broken bodies in the wake of his tantrums.

Perhaps one might argue than Napoleon’s personal life and public life should be kept separate and he could then still be seen as a hero. Moran does not allow this hero worship to go unmarred either. She highlights Napoleon’s cowardice in his failed invasion of Russia, using Maria Lucia’s disgust at his actions to cast a negative light on his flight home on a sleigh, leaving what remained of his troops to struggle their way out of the winter wasteland. If this was not enough, Napoleon and his endless parties were not to be deterred by a little horrible loss, to the horror of Maria Lucia. Though it was under the pretense of “keeping spirits up” and maintaining an image of power and hope, Napoleon’s parties were celebrations in times of mourning. While thousands of families grieved over fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons killed or frozen to death in Russia, the Bonaparte court and the man who was willing to sacrifice those thousands of men danced and dined the nights away.

Such parties were not unprecedented: while lauding himself as the champion of the French Revolution, Napoleon behaved like the party-loving, big-spending Bourbons who had been ousted before him. Coming from the court of her financially savvy father, Maria Lucia is shocked to see the exorbitant spending of the Bonaparte court, their constant spending on feasts and clothes and jewels while the recently-revolutionary people lived lives little improved by the overthrow of the ancien regime.

Moran seems to be in the minority, however. Napoleon ultimately lost his crown, but history still primarily remembers him as a hero (with the occasional exception in an AP Euro prompt or a book like Moran’s). Maria Lucia is remembered in the demonized version of her that the Bonapartes invented. Josephine is the one whose name is associated with Napoleon, their love held up as an example, their letters published in books of great historical love letters, disregarding the fact that Napoleon wrote many of said letters while married to another woman. Maria Lucia is portrayed as a usurper, little more than a pretty little pawn and a traitor to her adopted country and her husband.

Napoleon’s victories are celebrated (even the costly or exaggerated ones) and his fall has somehow become that of a tragic hero rather than an abusive tyrant getting his just desserts. He is remembered for his conquests and his Code, seen as the savior of the Revolution despite his betrayal of it. The man revoked some women’s rights won in the Revolution, refused to abolish slavery in France and her territories, and established himself as an emperor with a hereditary crown in place of the hard-won republic. The savior of the Revolution took to behaving like and trying to imitate the fallen Bourbons, including allying himself to the Hapsburg family (a la Marie Antoinette, even getting married in the same place she did) and living in their palaces.

He has been immortalized in books, in statues, in songs (such as Coldplay’s “Viva La Vida”). Revolutionary Victor Hugo himself could not resist the romanticization of Napoleon’s final battle at Waterloo. Moran breaks the mold, providing three different opinions, each valid based on the individual experience of each and each different from the widely accepted historical perspective of Napoleon. For Maria Lucia, Napoleon is an abusive villain who took everything, even her name, from her. For Pauline, Napoleon is her brother and the man she loves but can never have. In her narrative, his childhood is taken into account and his humanity is acknowledged as she looks at him in a way only a sister can. To Pauline’s chamberlain, Paul, Napoleon is a tyrant, a disappointment of a leader who promised freedom for all and failed to uphold his word.

Moran’s harrowing, beautifully written novel pulls no punches and hides no flaws, and yet “The Second Empress” does not reflect the widely accepted view of the former emperor of France. This discrepancy left this reader questioning the old adage that “history is written by the victors.” Who, then, writes history? Is there truly such a thing, or are we just decided to agree upon a possibly completely false opinion? When a novelist gives a broader perspective than a history textbook, one must wonder ...