Eugénie de Montijo

Born to Spanish nobility in 1826, María Eugenia de Palafox y Kirkpatrick was educated across three countries before marrying Napoleon III on 30 January 1853. As Empress, she pushed authoritarian and clerical policies hard enough to draw sharp contemporary criticism for her political meddling. She and Napoleon had one son, Louis-Napoléon, born in 1856. In July 1870 she briefly ran France as de facto head of state, but by September the empire was finished. The three fled to England, where Napoleon died, then the Prince Imperial in 1879. Eugénie lived another forty-one years, a widow and a mother with no child, curating the vanished empire's memory until her death in 1920.