Word: aiglon
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...lovers, longer runs and growing fame on the stage. She was the queen in Victor Hugo's Ruy Bias, Phèdre in Racine's classic, and she donned trousers as Napoleon's hapless son, the Duc de Reichstadt, in Edmond Rostand's L'Aiglon. Kings mooned over her, and audiences wept torrents over her magnificent death scenes...
...Aiglon, the only son of Napoleon and Empress Marie Louise, was the principal martyr of the Bonapartist tradition. The child was only four when his father was sent to St. Helena, but it was already clear, says Stacton, that he was "preternaturally intelligent, as precocious as Macaulay or J. S. Mill." In Austria, however, he was placed with tutors who were instructed to retard his development as much as possible. After a few years of repressive treatment, the boy became withdrawn and watchful. At 16, he developed tuberculosis. At 21, ignored by his mother and surrounded by doctors who tried...
...Louis Napoleon, son of Brother Louis, was the second and last of the Bonaparte emperors (L'Aiglon was proclaimed Emperor in 1815, but he never actually ruled). In Stacton's opinion, he was merely "a paper demagogue" who wrote lively pamphlets and had "the dignity of a toy lion." Carried into office on a flood tide of Bonapartism, he soon made it clear that his resemblance to Napoleon was merely nominal. He became a sort of Gallic Coolidge decorated with Continental charm, and he presided over an era of prosperous inanition that collapsed in the debacle...