Jack of Harts

President Napoleon never claimed the title of Emperor of France, but his time in office was unparalleled. The elected bureaucrats and the military became staunch allies in the effort to reinvent France for the new age of space exploration. On the day he stepped down in favor of the next president, France was one of the foremost spacegoing powers of Earth. The people of France voted to name him Honorary Emperor of the Fourth French Empire. And so the Fourth Empire announced itself to the world, declared itself a decade old, and then became the Ninth Republic. Historians are still arguing over how to address that government in textbooks.