Man of my Dreams is a German time-travel romance novel by Nicole Knoblauch. It was originally self-published in 2017.
Marie is a huge history nerd. Especially Napoleon Bonaparte and his time strike her fancy. So she isn’t amazed at all when she meets him in a dream one night…she rather enjoys it. But then, the dreams become a regularity – and strangely real. And she gets that she is falling in love with the young military cadet she met in her dream.
And there is another guy in the French military, who is close to Napoleon. A handsome blonde man with amber eyes who gives Marie a strange sensation whenever he touches her.
Contains examples of the following tropes:
- Adventures in Comaland: The reason for Tristan Beriere being around in the Napoleonic Age, and for Marie’s and his strange Psychic Link with each other. He is in fact a 21st century man who is in a coma after a vehicular accident, and also time-traveled to Napoleon in his dreams. But since he is in a coma, he is always around and dreams of the bleeping medical machines that surround his real body when he is asleep in the early 19th century.
- All Just a Dream: Subverted. When Marie meets Napoleon for the first time, she believes it to be nothing but a normal dream and has fun in a conversation with him about his future, which she details to him exactly in the manner she knows. After more dreams happen, she realizes that these aren’t just dreams - rather supernatural time travel. And that she is meeting the real Napoleon and episodically sharing his life.
- Awesome Moment of Crowning: Marie comes to Napoleon’s coronation in a dream and finds a fitting dress prepared for herself. She witnesses the event in Notre-Dame, and Napoleon raises the crown a little into her direction, crowning her his Empress in his heart. Marie blushes.
- Babies Ever After: The epilogue shows Marie and Tristan as married parents of Charles and Pauline, living in Paris together and visiting Napoleon’s tomb in Les Invalides on the 15th August (birthday of both Napoleon and Charles).
- Bungled Suicide: Marie meets a very sick Napoleon in 1814. He just abdicated and tried to swallow poison, what just gave him a terrible stomachache since it was long over the spoiling date.
- Deliberate Values Dissonance: Shown several times.
- Kissing in public is frowned upon in the late 18th century. You also usually don’t go fast, even when you really want it. The fact that Marie is very fast with kissing him makes Napoleon think that she is a prostitute.
- Marry for Love is a rare, special and a little odd thing. Marriages are largely about material possessions and status, what’s the reason why Napoleon disproves his brother Lucien’s decision regarding a wife.
- Marital Rape License is very much in effect. Napoleon believes to have the right to have sex with Marie whenever he wants, since she gave her consent in his opinion when they got married.
- Domestic Abuse: Marie’s ex-partner Stefan was an emotionally abusive Hypocrite who left her alone most of the time, didn’t care for or even tolerated her interests and only ever told her that he loved her when he was drunk.
- Driven to Suicide: Subverted for Marie in her backstory. After leaving her abusive former lover, she thought about just ending her life, just to find new hope at Napoleon’s tomb in Paris.
- Dude, She's Like in a Coma: Gender-Inverted. When Marie visits Tristan, she holds his hand, not realizing that his parents come for a visit in the same moment. They are puzzled by her behavior. Subverted, since Marie realizes that she can dive a little into the past by holding his hand and makes Tristan’s real body react to some kind of stimulus for the first time since he is in the coma.
- Fan of the Past: Marie loves to educate herself about the Napoleonic Age and hoards a whole collection of stuff about him, just for fun. Same goes for Tristan, who is a present-day military historian specializing in the Napoleonic Age in his research and had just habilitated at Sorbonne University in Paris when he had the accident that sent him into his coma.
- Fourth-Date Marriage: When they meet for only the third time, Napoleon (then still going by the Italian name Napoleone Buonaparte) proposes to her and surprises her with the arrangement of a secret marriage in the Ajaccio cathedral, presided over by Napoleon’s maternal uncle Joseph Fesch. Marie goes along with it.
- Good Parents: Laetitia Bonaparte is presented as a stern but good mother for her many children. She especially cherishes her second-born Napoleon and tries her best to keep him happy and sane when he is Emperor.
- Hereditary Wedding Dress: A variation with a veil. Marie is given his mother’s old veil by Napoleon for their secret wedding.
- Historical Hero Upgrade: Averted for Napoleon, who has all flaws of the real one. A bad temper and a big ego to begin with and it only gets worse. Marie even states that she only loves the young Napoleon she met in the beginning, not Emperor Napoleon I, who is a blood-thirsty egomaniac in her opinion.
- Hypocrite: Stefan, Marie’s ex-lover, flirted with everything wearing a skirt and was nevertheless still jealous when she pinned a picture of Napoleon (who is, you know, dead) over her bed.
- Love Triangle: Marie has two men she loves and has to choose from: Napoleon Bonaparte, the Emperor of the French, and Tristan Beriére, one of his closest acquaintances. She chooses Tristan in the long run because he is a really good man – and also from her century.
- Psychic Link: Marie and Tristan always get a strange, tingling feeling with each other when they touch, like if something would be linking them with each other. It is there because they are both time travelers from 2010.
- Sweet Polly Oliver: Invoked at the Battle of Austerlitz by Napoleon and Marie. Marie, who is wearing a French soldier’s uniform, is introduced as Napoleon’s nephew and adjutant.
- Their First Time: For Napoleon and Marie in a cottage in the Corsican hills. For Marie and Tristan later in Paris.
- Time-Traveler's Baby: In the end of the story, Marie assumes to have gotten pregnant from Napoleon. They make arrangements for the child, and Tristan proves to be okay with it. In the epilogue, their son Charles is old enough to have been conceived during Marie’s time travel dreams, implying him to be this.
- Weaker in the Real World: Downplayed. When Marie is dreaming, she speaks French on native speaker level, appears in situation-fitting clothing immediately and can skip time, but without the ability to control when. While she is also able to speak some French in the real world, her clothing isn’t immediately appropriate and the time-skipping of course doesn’t happen.
- Winter Warfare:
- Seen at the Battle of Austerlitz. Justified since it is the 2nd December.
- Later, defied. In 1812, Marie meets Tristan to her own surprise in Paris instead of Russia, where Napoleon is getting his ass handed by winter at the moment. Tristan explains that he talked at least himself out of the Russia Campaign out of the knowledge how it will end – and has to end for the sake of not messing up history.
