Joséphine de Beauharnais

Some women are remembered for a throne; Joséphine de Beauharnais is remembered for the way she filled a room before she ever wore a crown. Born Marie Josèphe Rose on the island of Martinique in 1763, she rose from a Caribbean planter's daughter to Empress of the French, first wife of Napoleon, keeper of a thousand of his love letters. Her Cancer Sun is the great clue: this is the emotional Sun, the one that shines by nurturing, guarding a soft heart inside a careful shell. Placed in the eleventh house of tribe and network, it made her a gatherer of people, the warm centre of a circle who could hold a whole social world together, even a court.

Her Moon in Sagittarius sat in the fifth house of love, children and creation, and her peace of mind lived there entirely: in romance, in her descendants, and in the rose garden and art collection she cultivated at Malmaison, her true baby. Widowed by the guillotine, imprisoned during the Terror, later set aside because she bore Napoleon no heir, she still shone. A Leo Ascendant gave her that regal, magnetic presence, the queen's mask worn with unmistakable grace. Warmth was her power, and it outlasted the empire.