Henri Philippe Pierre Marie d'Orléans (14 June 1933 – 21 January 2019) was the Orléanist pretender to the defunct French throne as Henry VII. He used the style of Count of Paris.
He was head of the House of Orléans as senior in male-line descent from King Louis Philippe I, who reigned from 1830 to 1848. Henri was a retired military officer as well as an author and painter.
Contents
Early life
He was the first son of Henri, Count of Paris (1908–1999), and his wife Princess Isabelle of Orléans-Braganza, and was born in Woluwe-Saint-Pierre, Belgium, a law in 1886 having permanently exiled from France the heads of its formerly reigning dynasties and their eldest sons.
Despite the ban, while living in Belgium Henri occasionally accompanied his mother on brief visits to France and, later, to his mother's relatives in Brazil. In August 1940 as World War II escalated, the family relocated to property they owned in Larache in the French protectorate of Morocco. While his father sought to play a role in the French resistance, Henri, in 1940 a child of 7, remained at Larache with his mother, siblings, grandmother and father's sisters' families during the Nazi occupation of France, sharing a small desert home that lacked electricity. Advised by Henri Giraud's Moroccan command that the Orléans had become unwelcome in the protectorate following the assassination of Vichy regime collaborater François Darlan by the monarchist Fernand Bonnier de La Chapelle, the family relocated to Pamplona in Spain until 1947, when they took up residence at the Quinta do Anjinho, an estate near Sintra, on the Portuguese Riviera. During that year, President Vincent Auriol allowed Henri and his brother François to visit France, and in 1948 he was allowed to enroll in a lycée in Bordeaux.
The law of exile was abrogated in 1950, allowing Henri to repatriate with his parents. Later that year, his parents purchased an estate near Paris, the Manoir du Cœur-Volant in Louveciennes, which became Henri's first home in France. He was one of the over 100 European royal personages who took part in a cruise organized by King Paul of Greece and Queen Frederica in 1954, which became known as the "Cruise of the Kings".
Henri studied at the Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po), obtaining his bac in 1957, and on 30 June of that year, his father conferred upon him, as the heir apparent of his house, the title of "Count of Clermont", by which he was generally known during his father's lifetime.
Career
From October 1959 to April 1962, Henri worked at the Secretariat-General for National Defence and Security as a member of the French Foreign Legion. Transferred from there to a garrison in Germany, he took up a new assignment as military instructor at Bonifacio in Corsica, where his wife and children joined him early in 1963.
Returning to civilian life in 1967, Henri and his family briefly occupied the Blanche Neige pavilion on the grounds of his father's Cœur-Volant estate before renting an apartment of their own in the 15th arrondissement of Paris. In the early 1970s Clermont managed public relations for the Geneva office of a Swiss investment firm while dwelling in Corly.
Henri wrote several books, including:
À mes fils (1989)
Adresse au futur chef d'État (1994)
Désolé, Altesse, c’est mon jour de sortie (1994)
La France survivra-t-elle à l'an 2000 (1997)
Le passeur de miroir (2000)
La France à bout de bras (2002)
L'histoire en héritage (2003)
La Royauté de l'Homme (2016)
Henri was also a painter and launched his own brand of perfume. His political career included unsuccessfully contesting the 2004 European elections for the Alliance Royale, a monarchist party.
Marriages and children
Henri met Duchess Marie Therese of Württemberg (born 1934), like himself a descendant of King Louis-Philippe, at a ball given by the Thurn and Taxis family in Munich. They were married on 5 July 1957 at the Royal Chapel of Dreux, on which occasion President Charles de Gaulle publicly offered congratulations, calling the wedding a great national event and observing that the dynasty and couple's future were bound to the hopes of France. Five children were born from this union:
Princess Marie d'Orléans (born 3 January 1959 in Boulogne-sur-Seine) married civilly in Dreux, on 22 July 1989, and religiously in Friedrichshafen, on 29 July 1989, to Prince Gundakar of Liechtenstein (born on 1 April 1949 in Vienna), and has issue:
Princess Léopoldine of Liechtenstein (born 27 June 1990, Vienna)
Princess Marie Immaculata of Liechtenstein (born 15 December 1991, Vienna)
Prince Johann Wenzel of Liechtenstein (born 17 March 1993, Vienna)
Princess Margarete of Liechtenstein (born 10 January 1995, Vienna)
Prince Gabriel of Liechtenstein (born 6 May 1998, Vienna)
Prince François, Count of Clermont (7 February 1961 in Boulogne-sur-Seine – 30 December 2017)
Princess Blanche Elisabeth Rose Marie d'Orléans (born 10 September 1963 in Ravensburg).
Prince Jean, Count of Paris (born 19 May 1965, Boulogne-sur-Seine), married civilly in Paris on 19 March 2009 with Maria Philomena Magdalena Juliana Johanna de Tornos y Steinhart, and religiously at the Senlis Cathedral on 2 May 2009. The couple has six children:
Head of house
Until he succeeded his father as royal claimant, Henri and his second wife occupied an apartment in Paris. On 19 June 1999, Henri's father died and he became the new head of the House of Orléans. He took the traditional title, Count of Paris, adding an ancient one, Duke of France, not borne by his Orléans or Bourbon forebears, but used a thousand years ago by his ancestors, before Hugh Capet took the title of king. His wife assumed the title "Duchess of France", deferring to the continued use of "Countess of Paris" by Henri's widowed mother until her death on 5 July 2003, whereupon Micaela assumed that title.
After his father's death, Henri annulled his father's decision to deprive his brothers Michel (Count of Évreux) and Thibaut (the late Count of La Marche) of their succession rights because Michel married a French noblewoman without permission and because Thibaut married a commoner. He also bestowed titles upon the sons of his brother Prince Jacques, Duke of Orléans: Prince Charles-Louis d'Orléans, Duke of Chartres (born 1972), and Prince Foulques d'Orléans, Duke of Aumale and Count of Eu (born 1974).
Henri recognised his disabled eldest son François as his dynastic heir-apparent, with the title Count of Clermont, declaring that François would exercise his prerogatives as head of the dynasty under the "regency" of his younger brother Prince Jean, Duke of Vendôme. However, with François' death on 30 December 2017, Vendôme became the Orléanist heir-apparent.
In 2009, Henri obtained an annulment of his marriage to Marie-Thérèse of Württemberg from the Holy See. He remarried his second wife, Micaëla Ana Cousiño (1938-2022), in the Catholic Church in September of that year.
As Count of Paris, Henri took part in some European royal events attending, for instance, the 2011 marriage of Albert II of Monaco.
Legal cases
Prior to succeeding his father as royal claimant, Henri launched an unsuccessful court case (1987–1989) in which he challenged the right of his rival paternal 10th cousin Louis-Alphonse, Duke of Anjou, to use the undifferenced royal arms of France and the Anjou title. The French courts dismissed the case on the grounds that Henri failed to prove that he had demonstrated a right to the hereditaments in questions, noting also that the court lacked jurisdiction in a dispute over dynastic claims of France's former royal family.
After his father's death, a court-appointed lawyer searched through the late count's effects on behalf of his nine living children, to reclaim what remained of the family's dissipated fortune. Jewels, art-work, and an exceptional medieval illustrated manuscript were found. These were auctioned off, raising approximately US$14 million.
In 2000 bailiffs pursued Henri for US$143,000 back rent after he fled the Villa Boileau, a 17th-century Paris house he had occupied.
Honours
France:
Knight of the National Order of the Legion of Honour (30 April 2008)
Cross for Military Valour (8 May 1959)
Combatant Cross
North Africa Security and Order Operations Commemorative Medal
Protector of the Orléans Obedience of the Military and Hospitaller Order of Saint Lazarus of Jerusalem (12 September 2014, resign at Easter 2012)
Montenegro, House of Montenegro: Grand-Cross with Gold Star of the Order of Prince Danilo I (3 December 2005)
Two Sicilies House of Bourbon-Two Sicilies: Bailiff Knight Grand Cross of Justice of the Calabrian Sacred Military Constantinian Order of Saint George
House of Württemberg: Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Crown