Since Aristotle, it has been known that there are certain truths that are best told in fiction. However, there are certain fictions that pervert the truth, otherwise there would have been no need for dozens of societies all over the world working to rehabilitate the reputation of good king Richard III, which had been besmirched, for pro-Tudor reasons, by William Shakespeare.
Napoleon’s hard-nosed Corsican mother, Laetitia (Madame Mère she was called), believed that her – in her view – over-imaginative son was grossly misguided when he decided to become emperor. Pourvue que ça dure [as long as it lasts], she was quoting as saying, shaking her head in disapproval. That is why she conspicuously cold-shouldered his coronation in Notre Dame on December 2, 1804 – the only member of her sizeable clan who stayed away.
During that ceremony, Napoleon took the crown from the hands of Pope Pius VII, whom he had invited for the purpose, and put it on his head, to make it clear to the world that he owed it to nobody but himself. Fully grasping that posterity would believe fiction rather than truth, he ordered his court-painter, Jacques-Louis David, to paint his mother in the centre of the picture he commissioned to mark the event.
In that fiction there was not an ounce of truth.
You can see part of Laetitia in the top-left corner of the picture posted here.
