Wellington and Napoleon

Abstract

This chapter conflates both fact and fiction by introducing the main characters of the juvenilia through the siblings’ transmogrification of the Duke of Wellington and Napoleon Bonaparte. It transitions from the representations of both military icons in a contemporary cultural context to the siblings’ literal adoption of their names and characteristics within their early fantasy saga, to, finally, the reinvention of these influential names as the siblings’ main protagonists: Zamorna and Alexander Percy . The chapter demonstrates the siblings’ changing and diverse understandings of war and military masculinity generated by the literature they read, alongside an acute awareness of Wellington and Napoleon ’s rivalry, which captivated the imaginations of the British reading public. First, the chapter explores how Wellington and Napoleon ’s relationship was dramatised and enflamed by the post-war media, and then goes on to discuss how the Brontës understood, responded to, and reimagined this rivalry within their saga, experimenting with their characterisation through representations of heroism, fatherhood, sexuality and homosociality.