This paper discusses the role and use of emotion in public policy. Approaching emotions from the standpoint of narrative analysis, it offers a detailed account of the way emotions were storied and enrolled in a specific local policy process: the construction of a memorial to the abolition of slavery between 1998 and 2012 in Nantes, France, a former slave trade port. The article finds evidence that emotions are a powerful instrument for framing problems and solutions and making sense of a new policy instrument. However, it also argues that the ability of policy actors to enroll emotions in meaning-making operations is structured by dominant policy beliefs and constrained by power relations