Questions about the status of heads of state in Francophone African countries regularly follow observations about their rule-of-law progressions or their democratic regressions. Updating an analysis of this status poses challenges, since these countries' histories - from the oldest to the most recent - remain intimately tied to the personality of their heads of state, and the hopes he or she inspired. Fabrice Hourquebie identifies the main features of a theory about Francophone African heads of state, suggesting guiding principles that may be used to genuinely analyze constitutional trajectories without falling into a summarily descriptive factualism.