User blog:HowtobeaGrimm/Grimm Brothers and Napoleon Bonaparte

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm were German linguists, cultural researchers and academics at a time when their native Electorate of Hesse was occupied by Napoleon's troops from 1806 to 1813. Since the French ran the government, French language and culture was promoted by the occupiers over German native language and culture.

The Household Tales of the Brother's Grimm, published in 1812, became immediately popular with other German academics as a sort of intellectual resistance to the occupying French. In that regard the Grimm fairy tales are connected closely with tyranny (as Germans saw it) of Napoleon Bonaparte.

NBC's Grimm has quoted Ferdinand Foch's non fiction work on the Napoleonic Wars in the episode Face Off. And many of Nick's actions mirror broadly the life of Napoleon Bonaparte. Since Napoleon started out as a reformer, a hero general of revolutionary France and the anti-monarchy movement against royalty it was painfully ironic when Napoleon Bonaparte, turned his position as First Consul into a new French Empire. He "put aside" the love of his life, Josephine in order to found a dynasty with the daughter of his hated enemy the "royals" of Vienna.

Juliette accused Nick of choosing pregnant Adalind over her in the police station. Nick denied it and Juliette then told him to "step aside" then. Nick did not. Juliette, like rejected Josephine, is now dead. And while Nick has shown no love for Adalind herself, he seems to want to protect his son very much. At the same time he is straying from the type of lawabiding Cop/Grimm he started out in season 1.

Like Napoleon Bonaparte, Nick Burkhardt, the reformer is becoming the autocrat. It destroyed Napoleon Bonaparte and his son. It looks like Nick's spiral into paranoia is destroying Nick's world as well. Perhaps his son will be redemptive for a short time. But how long can it last? Waterloo was only 3 years after Bonaparte's young son was born. There's not much time.