Brandon follows Faustin Soulouque from his freeing by Andre Rigaud in 1793, through his unexpected elevation to the presidency in March 1847, to his coronation as emperor and his flight to Jamaica in January 1859. The ministers who chose him wanted a figurehead, and Brandon uses his early retention of Riche's cabinet and his blunt dismissal of Celigni Ardouin to present a ruler governing on his own judgement. Drawing on Dorsainvil, Rayford Logan, J. N. Leger and a dispatch from Daniel Webster, she treats the Tripartite Intervention of 1851 as the reign's most telling episode: Soulouque read correctly that Britain, France and the United States would check one another, and he extended a truce over Santo Domingo while holding to his claim of sovereignty. The failed invasion of 1855, the cost of the eastern campaigns and Fabre Geffrard's rising then end the empire. A long eyewitness passage from H. P. Davis supplies the coronation scene.