Comte de Paris

Henri Philippe Pierre Marie d'Orléans, Comte de Paris, Duke of France (Born: June 14 1933) is the generally accepted pretender or claimant to the throne of France. He succeeded his father as Comte de Paris and head of the head of the Royal House of Bourbon-Orléans in 1999.

In the 1870s, the Legitimist[?] claimant to the throne, the childless Comte de Chambord (a grandson of Charles X of France and known to his supporters as Henry V) accepted that on his death the position of pretender would go to the Comte de Paris, who was himself a grandson of Louis-Philippe, King of the French. Most Legitimists[?] and all Orléanists[?] accepted this, with subsequent holders of the title 'Comte de Paris' being regarded as the heir to the throne.

Some Legitimists balked, however, and still do. Their designated pretender is HRH Don Luis Alfonso Gonzalo Victor Manuel Marco de Borbón y Martínez-Bordiu, Duc d'Anjou[?] and Duque de Cadiz (born 1974), a Spanish nobleman and French citizen who has been proclaimed Louis XX. (Through his mother, Maria del Carmen Martínez-Bordiu y Franco, Duquesa de Cadiz, he is a great-grandson of the late Spanish dictator Francisco Franco.) The present Comte de Paris's father fought a court case in the 1990s in the French courts, challenging Luis Alfonso's right to call himself Duc d'Anjou. He lost.

In 1993, on the two hundredth anniversary of the execution of Louis XVI of France, rival groups of Legitimists backing the Duc d'Anjou and Orléanists backing the Comte de Paris, held religious ceremonies commemorating the King's death.

The current Comte de Paris's heir is François, Comte de Clermont.

External Link

Comte de Paris website (http://royaute.ifrance.com/royaute/)