Christophe assassinated Sans-Souci and sparked a lasting internal war among rebels.

Evidence

Both Pétion and Dessalines sought to paper over the differences between Christophe and Sans-Souci, and the latter seems to have agreed to submit to the authority of Dessalines. Christophe, however, seeing the leader of the Congos as a threat to his authority, invited him to a meeting and then had him assassinated. The enraged Congos attacked Christophe’s troops, sending them into a retreat, and captured Paul Louverture, executing him in revenge. Dessalines then led troops against the remaining Congos, who retreated further into the mountains but continued to harass the insurgent army. The unfinished “war within the war” weakened the insurgent position in the north and continued to haunt postindependence Haiti. After Christophe made himself king of the north of Saint- Domingue, he built a great palace called Sans-Souci, whose name was probably meant in part to erase the memory of his Congo victim. — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 1036

Categorization

• BMF: Christophe building a palace named Sans-Souci to erase the memory of his assassinated Congo rival evokes how powerful figures in fiction overwrite inconvenient origins with grand edifices—strongest echo with White Noise’s theme of buildings as memory-erasing monuments, though the fit is loose.
• STORYSTEM: The detail of a victor naming his palace after his murdered victim as an act of deliberate memory-erasure is a strong ironic motif that could seed fiction about monuments and guilt.