French monarchists sense better times

A century and a half since a King sat on the throne, royalty fights for a place in the national psyche, reports CATHERINE FIELD.


PARIS - Ten years ago, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher gave the French President at the time, Francois Mitterrand, an unusual gift: a copy of A Tale of Two Cities.

Thatcher was certainly no friend of Mitterrand, who found her cold and obsessive.

"She has the lips of Marilyn [Monroe] and the eyes of Caligula," he once said, while she in turn loathed his preachy socialism and inveterate scheming.

If anything, Thatcher's present was a dig at France itself, for Dickens' novel starkly contrasts revolutionary Paris and its mob rule and bloody executions, with stable, enlightened London, ruled by a constitutional monarch.

France has hardly set records for political stability since the revolution of 1789, and its Governments have always had to glance over their shoulder in fear of the mob. Yet even in the most chaotic times, the monarchy has struggled to find a place in the national heart. The last time a King was on the throne was a century and a half ago, during a turbulent period in which republics interchanged with rival descendants of Louis XV and of Napoleon Bonaparte.

Now, however, monarchists sense that better days lie ahead, after the funeral of the pretender to the throne, Henri d'Orleans, catapulted the royals back to the front pages and closed an ancient rift between their rival clans.

More than 600 politicians, relatives and royals from across Europe turned out for the funeral on June 28. With the Saint-Louis royal chapel at Dreux, west of Paris, as an exquisite backdrop, the ceremony included a message from the Pope, a homily by the Bishop of Chartres and an array of names and faces that feature regularly in Paris-Match - Prince Rainier of Monaco and his son Albert, Prince Frederik of Denmark, Crown Prince Felipe of Spain and Prince Laurent of Belgium, as well as the former Empress of Iran.

The French state, which had executed Henri's ancestor in 1793 and removed a ban on his descendants less than four decades ago, also paid tribute, sending representatives from President Jacques Chirac and Interior Minister Jean-Pierre Chevenement, a staunch left-winger.

Henri's coffin, painted in the traditional princely colour of purple and bearing the arms of the French royal family, was draped in lilies, for centuries the flower of French Kings. It was then lowered into the crypt of the chapel and interred alongside Henri's son Francois, who died in 1960 during France's war in Algeria, and near the tomb of another son, Thibaud, who died in central Africa in 1983, aged 35.

The pretender's second son, also called Henri, 66, has assumed his father's titles of Count of Paris and Duke of France. He had fallen out with his father for choosing to marry his second wife, a divorcee, in a civil ceremony rather than a Catholic one, in breach of the dynasty's traditions. His punishment was to be stripped of the right of succession, which the old man restored only after he reconciled with his son in 1991, after a seven-year row. The father inflicted the same penalty on another son, Michel, who was stripped of "dynastic rights" for marrying without the blessing of the church.

In a sign of a changing era, that punishment was lifted by the younger Henri immediately after his father's death. He also took steps to patch things up with the Bourbon branch of the royal family, which has a rival claim on the throne. Prince Louis Alfonso de Bourbon, 21, bowed in front of the old pretender's coffin, had a tearful meeting with the new count and both agreed to bury a bitter family feud ignited by their fathers nearly 20 years ago.

The new Count of Paris was born in exile in Belgium in 1933, and spent his childhood in Morocco, Spain and Portugal, as French law at the time still banned the royals from setting foot on national soil. It was only when the President at the time, Vincent Auriol, gave him special exemption that the young Henri was able to live in France as a student.

Henri spent his professional life in the French Army and in banking, but his first love is art and he has held numerous exhibitions of his work. He has written several books setting out the royalist argument, and even launched two brands of perfume, "Lys Bleu" (Blue Lily) and "Royalissime", to exploit the royal connection.

The pretender is moving cautiously in his strategy of placing the royalist cause back on the political stage. He espouses the republican values of tolerance and liberalism, but also sketches a France of stability and continuity. Instead of pushing nationalism, the Count has spoken out strongly in favour of the European Union.

In his memoirs, written in 1979, he suggests that France is in fact not that far from being a monarchy, given that it already has "a constitution of a monarchical nature." The 1958 constitution, crafted by de Gaulle, gives sweeping powers to the presidency.

Yet to steer the royal family out of its political obscurity will be a huge challenge. In French schools, the history books stress the corruption, absolutism and abuse under the Kings just as they underplay the terror of the revolution. At the moment, most of the French public have scant knowledge of the royals. As Dickens might have put it, it will take once more the worst of times before the wheel of history turns and the pretender's moment comes.