Tea at Trianon: Claimants to the Throne of France

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Sunday, September 1, 2024

Claimants to the Throne of France

I have never heard of this one, a descendant of Louise d'Artois. From The Financial Times:

Charles has fashioned his claim to the legacy of one of history’s most powerful families with care, and Bostz and his two other châteaux, Château Du Vieux Bostz and Fourchaud, both in the Bourbonnais, are central to this. But he didn’t grow up here. The son of financier Edouard de Lobkowicz and Princess Marie Françoise of Bourbon-Parma, Charles had a charmed upbringing in Paris. He was educated in the French capital, then briefly in England, and even more briefly in Germany, then Switzerland and the US, at Duke University in North Carolina. He did a brief stint in the French army before following his father into investment banking. After Wall Street, he worked as an art consultant, selling Anselm Kiefers and Damien Hirsts in London as well as owning a smaller gallery in Beirut, before becoming a luxury goods ambassador for Chopard and then Moët & Chandon.
[...]
But the prince has competitors. The Spanish Bourbons, a cadet branch of the family that went off to rule Spain from the 18th until the 20th century, have Prince Louis Alphonse, Duke D’Anjou. His followers call themselves “Legitimists”, believing that the crown belongs to the eldest male heir, while conveniently ignoring that their ancestor, Philip V, surrendered his claim in the 1714 Treaty of Utrecht. In the other corner is the Bonapartist Jean-Christophe Napoléon, Napoléon Bonaparte’s great-great-great-great-grand-nephew, who is also a Bourbon on his mother’s side and therefore a cousin of Charles and Louis. A banker, formerly of Blackstone, he redoubled his ties to the French throne by marrying a Bourbon-Parma. Finally, the Orleanist and Unionist claimant, descended from the brother of Louis XIV, is Jean d’Orléans, the would-be Jean IV of France and the current Comte (count) de Paris. “But,” Charles said, “if there were a king [of France], it would not be Jean.” However, any enmity with the Orléans, rooted in Louis Philippe d’Orléans’ fatal betrayal of his cousin Louis XVI, was quickly dismissed by Charles: “I’m close to him.” Although there are other direct successors, the organisation Charles set up in 2013, Presénce Bourbon, makes him the most active Bourbon monarchist in France. He played down the claimant aspect when we met, however, describing his organisation as a cultural project, of which all the Bourbon family heads are members, that exists to refurbish and reinstate his family in the region through managing historical sites and restoring important monuments. He shrugged off tensions with the other claimants. (Read more.)