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As a satirical paper and practitioner of a type of black humor it calls “absurd and wicked” in the style of its “big brother Hara-Kiri,” Charlie Hebdo has for its thirteen years of existence exercised its sarcastic and provocative verve at the expense of the four heads of state who served during this period. A publication of the left, the paper was at its most ferocious toward the three presidents of the right, with de Gaulle represented as a megalomaniacal sovereign from another era, Pompidou as a debonair tyrant, and Giscard d’Estaing as a pretentious monarch. By way of the presidential image, the values of the right were attacked, mocked, and exposed to derision, with the monarchical regime that is the Fifth Republic making the head of state the favored target of Charlie Hebdo’s polemicists. By contrast, the election of François Mitterrand to the presidency as well as the first measures he took at the start of his term often generated the enthusiasm, if not the outright support of the paper, leading to questions regarding its standing as a thorn in the side of authority.