THE PRINCE AND HIS PASSING
Anthony Peregrine pays homage to a Frenchman who weirdly became the monarch of a tribe from Chile and Argentina
FRANCE has largely overlooked the death of its last reigning monarch. Philippe Boiry — very slightly better known as Prince Philippe d’Araucanie et de Patagonie — passed away recently at the age of 86.
He is succeeded by 72-year-old Jean-Michel Parasiliti di Para, Duke of San Pedro de Hueyusco, a Frenchman of noble Sicilian descent. This former military fellow and ex-social worker thus becomes titular head of the Mapuche, indigenous folk of Araucanía and Patagonia in southern Chile and Argentina.
Whether the Mapuche themselves accept this, or are even aware of it, is unclear. But it is a serious business. As one of the few British journalists ever to have talked to Prince Philippe, I can vouch for that. He didn’t say much, but he said it with hauteur.
This is, in short, one of the more surprising stories to spring out as you drive the remote bits of the Dordogne countryside around the Auvézère valley, to the east of Périgueux. It is a land of rickety fences, pastures and old-fashioned farming, of woodland and unsuspected gorges.
No matter. What strikes you as you approach the village of Tourtoirac is the cemetery and, specifically, a sign indicating the “Tombeau du Roi d’Araucanie” (Tomb of the King of Araucanía). In the village itself, the Benedictine abbey has a little museum dealing with the king and subsequent monarchy. This has many artefacts, but doesn’t tell the story with much clarity. One is left nonplussed by the links between a remote Dordogne village and the peoples of southern Latin America.
So here, in brief, is the background. In 1825, Antoine de Tounens was born just outside Tourtoirac, the eighth of 10 children of farmers. By the 1850s, he had a law practice in Périgueux — which, in 1858, he sold to leave for Chile, apparently to make his fortune. Shortly, he fell in with the Mapuche in southern Chile. This took some courage. The Mapuche weren’t particularly keen on outsiders. Having fought off Inca and Spanish domination, they were now resisting the Chilean republic.
It is at this point that the story goes fuzzy and controversial. By 1861, Tounens had apparently been accepted by Mapuche tribal chiefs as their king. Looking like a cross between Frank Zappa and Karl Marx, he was now to be known as Orélie-Antoine I. Views on how this happened diverge. Did he proclaim himself king? “No,” cried the museum’s curator, Carrius Santino. “He was acclaimed by the Mapuche.”
If this is so, it may have been because the Mapuche chiefs were plastered. They were formidable drinkers. A contemporary wrote that their “favourite diversions were tribal warfare, violence, polygamy and drunken orgies”.
It may have been because Mapuche folklore had always predicted the arrival of a white man on a horse to unite and lead them.
Or maybe they were persuaded by Tounens’s promises of large-scale French military help in their conflict with Chile.
In truth, it is unclear quite what sort of monarch the Mapuche — or the Patagonians, who were shortly attached to his kingdom — took Tounens to be. Whatever the reality, he equipped his realm with a constitution, a legal code, a flag in blue, white and green, and a national anthem written by a German.
He certainly got on the nerves of the Chilean authorities. In 1862, he was detained while resting against a pear tree, tried, committed to jail then to a lunatic asylum and later expelled back to France. Once home, he set about trying to make good the promise of military aid.
Sadly, no one in France was listening — or, if they were, they were laughing. His demand for 50-million francs and 20 000 troops was considered hilarious, but he didn’t give up. Over coming years, he made three further trips to Argentina and Chile to try to revive his kingdom. They met with decreasing success.
He died — 53 years old, broke and broken — in Tourtoirac in 1878, but not before he had named a successor. The dynasty persisted. In 1951, Boiry — a prominent PR man — became the sixth sovereign, though now “prince”, rather than “king”.
The Tourtoirac museum contains much of the monarchy’s paraphernalia. You may see the coins and medals struck, the flag, Mapuche handicrafts, an armadilloshell guitar, and the steel monarchical crown with a stone from the River Biobío and another, reportedly from the Garden of Gethsemane, for Prince Philippe was a staunch Catholic.
No one was listening — if they were, they were laughing
Much space is, though, devoted to substantiating the prince’s claim to royal legitimacy.
He is photographed with two fellow monarchs, Baudouin of Belgium and Juan Carlos of Spain, and the scarcely less kingly Valéry Giscard-d’Estaing, the former French president. The prince looks especially distinguished with his second wife, Princess Elisabeth.
Prince Philippe no longer thought himself a real, power-wielding monarch.
“My role is as federator, prince and friend,” he told me when we talked a few years ago. He had, he said, represented the Mapuche people before the UN group on indigenous populations. He had also visited the Mapuche in 1989.
“I was followed by a police car,” he said, suggesting he was still perceived as a threat. Other reports claim that both Mapuche leaders and Chilean authorities ignored him. But one had to step lightly here. The prince was a great one for suing for defamation anyone who publicly doubted his legitimacy. And, apparently, he never lost.
A few months ago, I swung by the farmhouse, near Tourtoirac, where Antoine de Tounens was born. It was now second home to Prince Philippe. The door was opened by Carrius Santino, from Sardinia, who told me that the prince was in residence. “Great,” I said. “May I see him?” Mr Santino checked. “I’m afraid not,” he said. “He has just breakfasted and is now smoking his pipe before the television news. As a prince, he has to keep abreast of world affairs.”
And now he’s gone. But — the prince is dead, long live the prince. Mr Parasiliti di Para takes over as one of the planet’s more diverting monarchs. He may or may not have trouble imposing his authority on his Mapuche people.