Henri, Count of Paris

Pretender to the defunct French crown whose offer to stand for election as King was generally ignored

HENRI, COUNT OF PARIS, who has died aged 85, was head of the Orléans line of the Bourbon dynasty. As a descendant of Louis-philippe (King of France, 1830-48), he was the leading pretender to the defunct French crown.

The French monarchy came to a sticky end at the hands of Robespierre before being dispatched for good (after a 19th-century revival) thanks to Bismarck. But the dispute over the rightful incumbent, in the unlikely event that the French throne is ever reinstated, is fierce.

As the would-be Henri VII of France, Henri d’orléans was not the only claimant to the French throne. One of his rivals was the “legitimist” pretender, his cousin Louis-alphonse, Duke of Anjou, a descendant of Hugh Capet, the first King of France. The other was the “Bonapartist” pretender Jean-christophe, Prince Napoléon, the great-great-great-great-nephew of Emperor Napoleon I.

The Count of Paris was recognised as the legitimate claimant by the Unionist faction of French royalists who regarded him as the rightful heir of Prince Henri de Bourbon, Count of Chambord (1820-83), the last patrilineal descendant of Louis XV, and he fought hard to prove his claim.

In 1987 the Count of Clermont, as he then was, sued Louis-alphonse’s father, Alfonso, Duke of Anjou and Cadiz, over his “illegitimate” use of the royal arms and the Anjou title. But he found little sympathy in the French courts, which ruled the lawsuit inadmissible.

The Count’s immediate family also caused problems. During his time as pretender Henri’s father, also Henri, had dissipated most of his family’s wealth and become involved in conflicts with five of his nine surviving children, depriving three sons of their rights of succession.

These included his eldest, Henri, whom he disinherited in 1984 because he had divorced his first wife, Duchess Marie Therese of Württemberg, and entered a civil marriage with Micaëla Anna María Cousiño y Quiñones de León.

Given the inferior title of Count of Mortain in place of Count of Clermont, the younger Henri refused to accept his father’s disinheritance, and he was aided in his campaign to return to paternal favour by a dispute centred around the wedding in 1989 of his eldest child, Marie, to Prince Gundakar of Liechtenstein.

Having been invited by his daughter to the nuptials, Mortain/clermont informed the press that he looked forward to escorting her to the altar. But he later learnt that he had been stood down from this role.

Meanwhile his ex-wife had sent out invitations in her own name, omitting not only mention of her ex-husband but also of his father who, until then, had largely sided with her in family matters. As a result both men, and all but two of Mortain/clermont’s eight siblings, boycotted the wedding.

In 1991 his father reinstated Henri as heir apparent and Count of Clermont. On succeeding as head of the House of Orléans and Count of Paris on his father’s death in 1999, however, Henri discovered that he and his siblings had been left only handkerchiefs, slippers and other worthless items in his will.

As a result they secured the services of a court-appointed lawyer to search through their father’s effects. Jewels, artwork and a valuable medieval illustrated manuscript were found. These were auctioned off, raising some $14 million.

The Count also annulled his father’s decision to deprive his brothers of their succession rights and awarded himself the ancient title of Duke of France.

But there were more family ructions when he recognised his eldest son, François, who had been born with mental disability, as heir, with the title Count of Clermont, declaring that François would exercise his prerogatives under a “regency” of his middle son, Prince Jean, Duke of Vendôme.

Prince Jean, however, issued a statement presenting himself as the only legitimate successor because his grandfather had ruled before his death that François was unfit to assume the throne. Matters were resolved in 2017 by François’s death, when Prince Jean became the “Dauphin” of France.

Meanwhile the Count of Paris dipped his toes into politics. In 2004, partially conceding his divine right to rule, he ran unsuccessfully for the European Parliament on the Alliance Royale ticket, receiving 0.031 per cent of the vote. His main policy was a referendum to elect a new King – with himself as preferred candidate.

In 2016 he told L’action française, the Right-wing monarchist journal, that France under François Hollande was suffering an “existential crisis”, warning of revolution and a return to the Terror and the guillotine.

“If we do not manage urgently to change society we risk reproducing the same terrifying events as 1793, giving free rein to a debauchery of destructive energy,” he said.

He was ready to serve his people as “head of the royal House of France”, he declared, and as a unifying force. But his offer was generally ignored by the political world.

Henri Philippe Pierre Marie d’orléans was born on June 14 1933, the eldest son of Henri, Count of Paris, and his wife, Princess Isabelle of Orléans-braganza. He was born at Woluwe-saint-pierre in Belgium, owing to a law of 1886 which had exiled the heirs of France’s former monarchs. This law was abrogated in 1950, and the family returned to France, having spent the war years at property they owned in Morocco.

His father had inherited the mantle of pretender in 1940 on the death of his father, Jean d’orléans, Duke of Guise, when the then seven-year-old Henri was recognised as “dauphin in pretence” by the Orléanist faction. In 1957 his father conferred upon him, as heir apparent, the courtesy title Count of Clermont.

After studying at the Institut d’études Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po), Henri joined the French Foreign Legion and, after various appointments, became a military instructor in Corsica. He returned to civilian life in 1967, he and his family briefly occupying the Blanche Neige pavilion on his father’s estate at Louveciennes before moving to a rented flat in Paris.

In the early 1970s he managed public relations for the Geneva office of a Swiss investment firm. He also wrote more than half a dozen books and launched a brand of perfume. As Count of Paris he took part in a few European royal events, attending, for instance, the marriage of Albert II of Monaco in 2011.

He married his first wife, Duchess Marie Therese of Württemberg, like him a descendant of Louis-philippe, in 1957. They had three sons and two daughters, who all survive him apart from François. After his civil marriage in 1984 to his second wife, Micaëla, in 2009 he obtained an annulment of his first marriage from the Holy See and remarried Micaëla in the Roman Catholic Church.

He is succeeded as pretender to the French throne and head of the House of Bourbon by his second son, Prince Jean, Duke of Vendôme.

Henri, Count of Paris, born June 14 1933, died January 21 2019

Henri, Count of Paris, with his father in 1940 and with his second wife, Micaëla, in 2009