His full name was Napoléon François Joseph Charles Bonaparte and was known as King of Rome since his birth. His true title was Prince Imperial and thus the heir apparent. After his father lost at Waterloo, he abdicated in favor of Napolean II...but, in reality, the Bourbon restoration had already happened and Napolean II never ruled.
He was originally buried in Vienna, but Adolf Hitler arranged to have most of his body placed here. (His heart, intestines and viscera remain in urns in Vienna.)
His tomb is located at Les Invalides which houses his father's tomb as the main attraction. He is buried under a statue of his father in full imperial regalia.
The marker reads:
"NAPOLEAN II
ROI DE ROME
1811 1832"
Wikipedia (
visit link) further informs us:
"Napoléon François Joseph Charles Bonaparte was born at the Tuileries Palace in Paris to Emperor Napoleon I and his second wife, Marie Louise of Austria in 1811. As Napoleon I's eldest legitimate son, he was already constitutionally Prince Imperial and heir-apparent, but the Emperor also gave his son the style "His Majesty the King of Rome". Three years later, the First French Empire, to which he was heir, collapsed. Napoleon wanted to abdicate the throne in favour of his toddler son, but the Allied Powers, at the insistence of the Emperor Alexander I of Russia, refused.
On 29 March 1814, accompanied by her suite, the empress left the Tuileries Palace with her son. Their first stop was the Château de Rambouillet; then, fearing the advancing enemy troops, they continued on to the Château de Blois. On 13 April, with her suite much diminished, Marie-Louise and the three-year-old King of Rome were back in Rambouillet where they met her father, the Emperor Francis II of Austria, and the Emperor Alexander I of Russia. On 23 April, escorted by an Austrian regiment, mother and son left Rambouillet and France forever, for their exile in Austria.[2]
In 1815, after his defeat at Waterloo, Napoleon abdicated in favour of his son, whom he had not seen since his exile to Elba.
The day after Napoleon's abdication, a Commission of Government of five members took the rule of France,[3] awaiting the return of King Louis XVIII, who was in Le Cateau-Cambrésis.[4] The Commission held the power for two weeks, and it never summoned Napoleon II as emperor, and no regent was ever appointed. The entrance of the Allies into Paris on 7 July brought a rapid end to his supporters' wishes. Napoleon II, aged 4, was residing in Austria with his mother and was probably never aware at the time that he had been proclaimed Emperor on his father's abdication. The next Bonaparte to come to the throne of France (in 1852) took the name Napoleon III in deference to his cousin's titular reign.
After 1815, the young prince, now known as "Franz" (after his maternal grandfather, Emperor Francis of Austria), lived in Austria. He was awarded the title of Duke of Reichstadt in 1818.
Upon the death of his stepfather, Neipperg, and the revelation that his mother had borne two illegitimate children to him prior to her marriage, Franz said to his friend, Prokesch von Osten, "'If Josephine had been my mother, my father would not have been buried at Saint Helena, and I should not be at Vienna. My mother is kind but weak; she was not the wife my father deserved."