Succession to the former French throne (Bonapartist)

The succession to the throne of the French Empire was vested by Bonapartist emperors in the descendants and selected male relatives of Napoleon I (r. 1804–1814/15).

Following the end of the Second French Empire in 1870, Bonapartist pretenders descended from Napoleon I's brothers have maintained theoretical claims to the imperial office.

They also gave him crucial political support for the 1852 coup d'état, which overthrew the Republic and paved the way for the proclamation of the Second French Empire the following year, with Napoleon III as emperor.

In 1870, Napoleon III led France to a disastrous defeat at the hands of Prussia in the Franco-Prussian War, and he subsequently abdicated.

Bonapartism faded from a civic faith and monarchist bloc to an obscure predilection, more akin to a hobby than a practical political philosophy or movement.

Upon the extinction of legitimate natural and adopted male, agnatic descendants of Napoleon I, and those of two of his brothers, Joseph and Louis, the throne was to be awarded to a man selected by the non-dynastic princely and ducal dignitaries of the empire, as ratified by a plebiscite.

At the time the law of succession was decreed, Napoleon I had no legitimate sons, and it seemed unlikely that he would have any due to the age of his wife, Joséphine de Beauharnais.

In December 1852, with the imperial crown on his head, Napoleon III, still a bachelor, exercised the authority granted him by a decree in the form of a Sénatus-consulte (and confirmed by plebiscite), to enact a new organic law on the succession (in the event he himself were to leave no legitimate descendants).

(During Napoleon I's reign, Jérôme had been one of the Bonaparte brothers who was bypassed in the order of succession, his first marriage having been an elopement with the American commoner Elizabeth Patterson over the emperor's objections.

In 1856, Eugénie gave birth to a legitimate son and heir, Napoléon Eugène Louis, the Prince Imperial who, upon his father's defeat in battle and deposition in September 1870, went into exile.