This a mini-TL is based on some ideas I had in mind for some times. It's a French wank and I don't think that there would be more than that update. The POD is the successfull acquisition of Luxembourg in 1867 by France.
GRAND DUKES AND EMPERORS
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A little history of France
Napoleon Eugene, Grand Duke of Luxembourg and Emperor of France
On September 4th of 1870, the Prince Imperial learned at Landrecies the scale of the disaster of Sedan and fled to Belgium after his former preceptor announced him the proclamation of the Republic. Three days later, he was in Luxembourg. A week later, he became Grand Duke Napoleon II of Luxembourg after his father signed his abdication as overlord of Luxembourg. Despite the personal union which existed since it was approved by the Luxembourgers during the Referendum of May 1867, Luxembourg had remained neutral in the Franco-Prussian conflict. To avoid that Luxembourg depose him because of his capture, Emperor Napoleon III signed before of representatives of Prime Minister Emmanuel Servais the document of abdication.
The said document also barred Empress Eugenie from becoming Regent of the Grand Duchy and gave instead the position to Napoleon Jerome, 3rd Prince of Montfort. This fact was due to Prince Napoleon who had lived in the Grand Duchy as personnal representative of the Grand Duke and had befriended with Prime Minister Servais, a radical with whom he shared many ideas and a man who quickly came to dislike the Empress' conservatism. Both men would dominate politics of the Grand Duchy throughout the 1880's.
As to the Grand Duke bride, British Princess Beatrice was initially envisaged but was abandonned because of Queen Victoria's great reluctance not to say opposition. Finally, choice was settled on Princess Hilda of Nassau to strengthen the legitimacy of the Bonapart rule over Luxembourg and the marriage took place in 1882.
Prince Napoleon Jerome (left) and Emmanuel Servais (right), key men of early Bonapart Luxembourg
For the first twenty years of the Grand Duke's rule, Luxembourg became the rallying point for French Bonapartists. But if Prince Napoleon had effectively smashed the conservative Bonapartists in Luxembourg, it wasn't the same case in France where he struggled with Rouher, Cassagnac and the socialists of Amigues in a lesser scale. The Bonapartists reached their height at the elections of 1877 with a hundred of deputies but this number was cut half during the following decade. Finally, the Republic came to be hit by numerous scandals over President Grévy and led to the rise of the popular General Boulanger, several times War Minister. After having been dismissed in 1887, the general came to collude with the Bonapartists after he secretly met Prince Napoleon in early 1888, a meeting that later historians would make a key element of the ''Restoration plot''.
The elections of 1889 came to confirm the rise of the Bonapartists as General Boulanger made campaign for the Bonapartists, getting the party 137 sieges, but the Republicans made use of questionable electoral proceedings such as barring candidates and redrawing electoral map to keep the majority. Already splashed by numerous scandals, the Republicans were discredited and General Boulanger, brought by the enthusiasm of nearly 50,000 supporters come to meet him, launched a coup d'état. After some resistance from the Republican Guard, President Sadi Carnot was forced to resignation and the Chamber of Deputies was dissolved. Shortly after the coup, the Panama Canal Company bankrupted, ruining tens of thousand of little subscriptors, and dozens of arrests were made among company and former government officials after an enquiry alledgely revealed cases of bribery. Boulanger skillfully used the scandal by blaming the Republicans to legitimize his coup. The ''French Monck'' as he was nicknamed later, established an emergency government and began to write a new constitution, heavily influenced by the Constitution of 1870, which restored the Empire. Without credible Republican alternative, the Referendum of April 15th gave a large majority for the Empire.
One week later, the Prince Imperial and Grand Duke made his entry in Paris to be crowned.
Marshal Georges Boulanger, nicknamed the French Monck
Boulanger, promoted Marshal of the Empire, remained in power until he resigned in January 1890 to be succeded by a civilian government under Déroulède. The different governments which assumed power until the Great War pursued the colonialist agenda started by Jules Ferry, expanding in Indochina and West Africa, but led to clashes with Great Britain and Germany. In 1898, the French relented before the British during the Fachoda Crisis under the impulsion of Foreign Minister Delcassé who was the main proponent of an alliance with the British that he finally realized with the Entente Cordiale formally established in 1904. The policy worked as London came to support France in its rivalry with Germany over Morroco during the Morrocan Crisis of 1905 and 1911. The other pillar of French foreign policy was the Franco-Russian alliance that was signed in 1892 to counter the Triple Alliance and break French diplomatic isolation.
In domestic affairs, the first important reform was the military reform, begun under Boulanger and achieved by Déroulède, with one of the more important acts being supression of lottery to make conscription an equalitarian institution. The first major scandal faced by the Third Empire was the Dreyfus Affair. Beginning as a spying scandal, it became a major social issue that the Republicans attempted to use. Finally, Dreyfus received Imperial Pardon and was later acquitted.
Paul Déroulède, Prime Minister of the French Empire from 1890 to 1914
Paul Déroulède remained Prime Minister from 1890 to 1914, winning four successive elections, only halted by death. His successor was Aristide Briant, a moderate, who led France until 1917. When Russia collapsed that year and that Germany seemed to be winning, General Boulanger was recalled from retirement and successfully led France through the summer 1918 when the German offensive seemed to overwhelm the frontline. General Boulanger was among the main artisans of the harsh Treaty of Versailles which he wanted so to avenge 1870. He retired once again after the treaty was signed in June 1919 and died two years later, being offered national funerals.
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Emperor Napoleon IV died in 1931, but without any surviving male heir. The thrones of France and Luxembourg passed to the Louis Napoleon, 5th Prince of Montfort, who became Napoleon V of France and III of Luxembourg.
Louis Napoleon, Grand Duke of Luxembourg, Emperor of France and Regent of Algeria
He had to face the Great Depression which followed the 1929 Crisis and the rise of the Communists who were considered by radicals a more credible alternative to the Republicans, especially after the Russian Revolution. Opposed to the ultra-nationalists of Doriot, he eventually appointed the Social-Democrat Paul Faure as Prime Minister after the elections of 1935 which saw the left taking control of the Chamber of Deputies. Faure's Government began by social reforms such as improvement of workers' rights but the one which affected the more the French society was the annual leave which allowed twelve days of leave and trigerred a touristic boom as the beaches were litterally assaulted.

But Faure's foreign policy was a big failure. In early 1936, he signed with the Soviets a mutual defense pact that allowed to calm down communist agitation and that he designed to keep Germany at bay by mere dissuasion. But Hitler remilitarized Rhineland in 1936 and annexed Austria in 1938 with only diplomatic protest as a reaction. He even abandonned Czechoslovakia at the Munich Conference, forcing her to give up the Sudeten to Germany against assurance of no further demand. The straw that broke the camel's back arrived when the Germans invaded in March 1939 Czechoslovakia, breaking the Munich Agreement. Paul Faure's government fell and was replaced by the more agressive Social-Democrat Léon Blum which immediatly launched an emergency program of rearmament. However, it came too late. In late August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union signed a non-agression pact, and Poland was invaded a week later.
France and Great Britain declared war but didn't move. Blum was faced with generals who claimed the army not ready for offensive and blamed Faure for that. All the autumn 1939 until late spring 1940, the Phoney War took place in France with no real action. Poland fell to Germans and Soviets within five weeks and in April, the Germans invaded Denmark and Norway. On May 10th however, Germany launched offensive on the western Front. Belgium and Holland were invaded as a diversion while the Panzers of Guderian crossed the thought uncrossable Ardennes almost unopposed and reached sea ten days later, trapping the bulk of Allied forces in Flandres. Despite the succesfull evacuation of Dunkirk, the Germans pursued their advance south, crossing the Somme River in spite of the efforts of General Weygand.
As stopping the Germans seemed impossible, Léon Blum changed strategy at the instigation of General de Gaulle, an officer which had recently distinguished himself by seriously threatening German advance with his armored division, failing only because of the inefficiency of the High Command, and had entered in the government as deputy War Minister. With the support of the Emperor who considered defeat an unacceptable option, his plan to withdraw to North Africa was accepted by Blum. The Great Evacuation as was called the evacuation of France's assets to North Africa ended in August when the last holdouts in southern France fell. Already by this time, Italian Libya had been almost overrun by the Allies and Corsica remained in French hands until assaulted by the Germans and Italians in late 1941. Meanwhile; the Nazis established a puppet Government with Doriot as Leader of the French State. The resistance began to operate as soon, bombing, sabotaging, spying, and was the fact of all factions, even Republicans and Monarchists, and later Communists.

France was relieved when the USA joined the war on its side after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour and the German declaration of war on them in December 1941, followed by the Soviets in May 1942 after Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa. Indochina was invaded and the lowlands were overrun by the summer but the French Imperial Army retreated into the mountains where a guerilla was organized with support of the Viet Minh after Léon Blum conceded independence in the event of victory against Japan. Reconquest of France reconquest didn't began until late 1943 with the Provence landings but the fights raged in the Rhone Valley until the Normandy landings in spring 1944 allowed to break the stalemate and forced the Germans to withdraw from France to avoid being trapped. War in Europe was over by Christmas with the fall of Berlin to a join American-Soviet assault in early December. France then sent an expeditionnary corps to participate to the final operations against Japan in the Indochinese peninsula and Taiwan.
The postwar France was devastated and had to face a mini civil war when a witch hunt began in the aftermath of the liberation against collaborators. Despite being bloody, it was quickly ended by the French government when it came to establish its authority. The elections of 1945 saw the first time the women voted, a right that Léon Blum had introduced into law as a war measure and that he forced the adoption by the exiled member of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies with the Emperor's support. Blum's government received large support but the Communists grew in size while the Republicans were almost disappearing.
Léon Blum, Prime Minister of the French Empire from 1935 to 1950
For the remainder of the reign of Napoleon V, France took part to the Cold War against the USSR, which began as a consequence of multiple incidents in central Europe. It was part of NATO, an alliance founded in 1947 after the Czechoslovak crisis between nations of Western Europe and North America. Along Great Britain and the USA, France was one of its leading members although the London-Paris axis often clashed with Washington DC. The nuclear bomb, developped by the Western Allies to fight Germany and Japan but never used as the war ended before the first prototype was achieved, became an essential component of the war. The French only got this technology in 1950. These were fission bombs and were followed by fusion bombs some years after. Aside of the standoff in Europe, the main fighting of the Cold War took place in South Asia, Africa and South America, everywhere where were the interests and colonial empires of Washington DC, London and Paris.
In 1946, France had formally given independence to Vietnam, Laos and Cambodge, beginning the process of decolonization. African colonies were given autonomy status but Algeria, not considered a colony, was excluded. Algerian independentists rose up in 1954, prompting the rise of former General De Gaulle to the office of Prime Minister in 1960. By 1963, the insurrection was over and a permanent political settlement was found in making Algeria a Regency, on the model of the British Dominion and in reference to the pre-French Algeria, a state in personal union with France. In the facts, the European community, scared by the war, began to imitate South Africa and set up a segregation regime against non-European Algerians. Meanwhile, the remainder of African colonies excepted for Djibouti and the Comores became independent. Overall, France managed to keep its former colonial empire outside of Soviet or Chinese influence and kept strong influence with the Françafrique and Françindochine. Military interventions to keep favourable regimes in power or instigation of coups to overthrow unfriendly leaders were commonplace until the end of the Cold War in 1989.
Charles de Gaulle, Prime Minister of the French Empire from 1960 to 1970, the man who ended French colonial age
Until the late 1970's, French economy was relatively strong and vigorous, but the Oil Crisis caused by the Arab-Israeli War of 1973 and the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-1988 plundged it into decline and stagnation until the ultra-liberal Prime Minister Jacques Chirac enacted shock reforms, joining British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and US President Ronald Reagan in the club of ultra-liberal nations.
In 1989, as Algeria seemed on the verge of civil war, France strengthened its military presence but the situation returned to calm as Algerian Prime Minister Jacques Attali freed Ahmed Ben Bella, a spiritual leader of the Muslim community who defended pacifism and was jailed after the uprising of 1954. Like his South African counterpart, Ben Bella came to assume power in 1993 after the segregation laws were abolished and was appointed Prime Minister during a ceremony personally attended by Emperor Napoleon. His policy first aimed at healing the interracial hate existing in Algeria and improve life conditions of the poor Muslim Algerians.
Algerian Prime Ministers Jacques Attali (left) and Ahmed Ben Bella (right), artisans of the end of Algerian segregation
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Emperor Napoleon V died in 1997 and was succeded on the Imperial and ducal thrones by his son as Napoleon VI of France and IV of Luxembourg.
Charles Napoléon, Grand Duke of Luxembourg, Emperor of France and Regent of Algeria,
the face of France at the eve of the 21st century