Prince Jean-Christophe Louis Ferdinand Albéric Napoléon with his wife, Princess Olympia, née Countess von Arco-Zinneberg, at the premiere of Ridley Scott's "Napoleon"
Jean-Christophe is a direct male-line descendant of Joseph, the eldest of Napoleon's brothers.
Napoleon's only legitimate son, Napoleon II, died young and childless, while the numerous progeny of Napoleon's second son, the illegitimate Count Alexandre Colonna-Walewski, cannot lay claim to the headship of the House of Bonaparte. Napoleon IV, the only son of Napoleon III, who had actually reigned, perished without issue, and seniority in the dynasty therefore passed to the descendants of Joseph.
Hence the head of the house today is considered to be Jean-Christophe, styled Napoleon VII, or Napoleon VIII, or even Napoleon IX, whichever one finds more convenient. Along with his claim to the headship of the House of Bonaparte, Jean-Christophe nominally lays claim to the French imperial throne.
Napoleon's heir lives, to the sorrow of Bonapartist-minded monarchists, in the capital of England, France's chief rival among the powers, and appears in his historic homeland only on special occasions. Naturally, in his pretensions to the French throne he has rivals who have nothing to do with the Bonaparte legacy: on the part of the Legitimists, the Duke of Anjou, Louis XX of the Spanish Bourbons, and on the part of the Orléanists, the Count of Paris, Jean IV.
