Probably the most notorious contemporaneous fabricator of fake proclamations and fake tales of Emperor Norton was Albert S. Evans — editor of the Daily Alta California newspaper from 1863 until his death in 1872. 

We've unearthed a previously unreported little cache of Evans's Norton tales which never appeared in the Alta — but which did appear in Evans's late 1870 Mexico travel memoir Our Sister Republic. 

By way of hedging bets on the reliability of the book's content, the Alta's own review of the book noted that "[t]he author has a lively sense of the grotesque and humorous, which finds ample opportunity for gratification wherever he goes."

One question that hovers over our discovery... 

Did Emperor Norton see Evans's misrepresentation of him in this book — and, if so, did this play a role in the Emperor's decision, a couple of months later, to designate a different paper, the Pacific Appeal, as the official platform for his public communications?