Talk:Jérôme Bonaparte

Given name

Why would a Corsican christen his son Roland? The name is unpronouncible in Italian! The language only allows two consonants before and one after each vovel. I think his christan name was eather Geronimo or Girolamo. Both are Italian counterparts of the name Jérôme.

2006-11-23 Lena Synnerholm, Märsta, Sweden.

The Italian version of this article have the headword “Girolamo Bonaparte”. So his Christian name was most likely Girolamo Buonaparte. There is already a discussion about the prefix “di” at the article Napoléon I entitled “DI Buonaparte?”.

2007-08-11 Lena Synnerholm, Märsta, Sweden.

Jerome by Baron Gros, 1808

WikiProject class rating

This article was automatically assessed because at least one article was rated and this bot brought all the other ratings up to at least that level. BetacommandBot 04:31, 27 August 2007 (UTC) ---

Portrait

When the article is expanded and improved, the very telling portrait at right would give a good idea of the somewhat preposterous official style of the Bonapartes during their peak decade. --Wetman (talk) 12:18, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Portrait for lack of photo

Jérôme lived long enough to be photographed. However, I have never seen any photo of him. It is entirely possible that he did not accept being photographed. The portrait of Jérôme showing the least degree of beautification is found here. If this picture originally had any copyright it has most likely expired by now.

2010-12-29 Lena Synnerholm, Märsta, Sweden.

There is indeed a photo of the guy. I've got it in a book somehwere....Ericl (talk) 14:50, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

If such a photo is found anywhere on the Web it would be nice if someone links to it.

2012-08-01 Lena Synnerholm, Märsta, Sweden.

I have managed to fund it now on the German-language version of his page. It turned out that my “portrait” is a heavely cropped version of this photo. For years I have thought he may very have looked precisely as in my picture. Since the photo shows no sign of manipulation I now know he did.

2014-01-11 Lena Synnerholm, Märsta, Sweden.

Marriage or cohabiting?

Apparently, it is controversial if Jérôme was ever married to Elizabeth Patterson. Did they ever have a marriage ceremony? If so they should be considered married, regardless if his older brother Napoléon approved of it or not.

2012-08-01 Lena Synnerholm, Märsta, Sweden.

removal of "the infamous" regarding J. Edgar Hoover

Notice yesterday's change where I removed "the infamous". As I already commented, its use damaged the neutral tone which is to be used on Wikipedia. J. Edgar Hoover might be controversial, but elsewhere on line I read of something else he did: Recommend that schools have a system to identify who is authorized to pick up each child; this was in aftermath of Bobby Greenlease kidnapping/killing in 1953. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.63.16.20 (talk) 14:06, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Napoléon III has turned out to not be his nephew

Napoléon III is mentioned as the “nephew” of Jérôme. The identity of his biological father has been discussed for more than 200 years. Charles Louis Napoléon Bonaparte based his claim on the French throne on being the son of his mother's husband. On the other hand his mother Hortense has been known all the time to have laid with several men during the period she could have fallen pregnant (6th of July – 3rd of August 1807). Theoretically, any of them could have been the father of her son.

In 2013 the Y-chromosomes of Charles Louis Napoléon and his son Napoléon Eugène were tested from hair samples. While these two matched as expected they were very different from that of Charles Napoléon Bonaparte. As the great-great-grandson of Jérôme he had his Y-chromosome tested in 2011. (He is the oldest son of Louis, who was the only son of Victor, who was the oldest son of Napoléon Joseph, who was the youngest son of Jérôme.) This means they was unrelated or at least on their father's side.

These test results might be interpreted to mean that Jérôme and Louis had different fathers. If so, Charles Louis Napoléon would have been the son of Jérôme's half-brother. There were some rumours of their mother Maria Letizia being unfaithful to her husband. It is known that the Buonapartes had a lodger named Louis Charles René de Marbeuf. Also, it is known that her husband Carlo was away for long periods. Louis Charles claimed to have fallen in love with Maria Letizia. She never either confirmed nor denied their rumoured relationship. So we don't know if she ever had sex with Louis Charles. Furthermore, “sex” does not have to mean “unprotected sexual intercourse”. Hey, even 18th century Europeans knew better than that!

Anyway, it has been demonstrated that Napoléon and Jérôme had the same Y-chromosomes. In connection with Charles Napoléon's Y-chromosome being tested Napoléon's was also tested from a hair sample. As I expected these turned out to be the same. Since Charles Napoléon is a male line only descendant of Jérôme this means he and Napoléon had the same father. The difference in age between these two brothers was 15 years and three months. If his mother have had the same lover for this amount of time I think Napoléon would have noted it. Yet his only reason to doubt that Carlo was his father was wondering where he got his military genius from. The last few decades of research in behavioural genetics has made such arguments obsolete. It has turned out that human mental variation is only partly hereditary. To the extant mental characteristics are hereditary they are not so much due to individual genes as to combination of genes. These combinations are either unlikely or impossible to be inherited altogether from the same parent. So similarity in personality can't be used as arguments for fatherhood.

I think all Maria Letizias eight surviving children had the same father. This is based on similarity in looks combined with modern knowledge of genetics. I know how Jérôme looked from this photo. His seven older siblings have been judged by the portraits showing the least signs of beautification. From these I can tell that all eight had black hair, a slightly curved nose and a protruding chin. Napoléon, Lucien, Élisa, Louis and Jérôme also had the same shape of face. What I mean is that the exact distances between the features of their faces matched. Joseph, Pauline and Caroline had a different shape of face. However, this one was the same as their mother's. For other hereditary physical traits I know about I have made this table:

Hereditary characteristic	Joseph	Napoléon	Lucien	Élisa	Louis	Pauline	Caroline	Jérôme
Hair texture	strait	strait	strait	wavy	wavy	wavy	strait	strait
Eye size	medium	small	large	small	small	small	medium	small
Eye colour	dark	light	dark	dark	light	dark	light	dark
Nose length	short	short	medium	short	medium	short	medium	medium
Lip size	thin	thin	thin	medium	medium	thin	medium	thin
Cleft chin	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	no	no	no

Dark eye colour refers to green, greenish brown or brown while light refers to blue, blue-grey or grey. I know that Napoléon had blue-grey eyes and Lucien had brown ones. For the others I am not sure what eye colour they had.

Nose length and lip size are with reference to the European average. Except for eye size all the variation in traits listed were rather evenly distributed amongst the siblings. At least to me this makes it highly likely that they all had the same father. Please note that Joseph was already born when Louis Charles René de Marbeuf moved in. So if they all had the same father that would have been Carlo Buonaparte.

2014-02-01 Lena Synnerholm

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Reference

"Burn" is not a sufficient reference. Dioskorides (talk) 14:11, 28 June 2024 (UTC)