Princes of the Blood

In this week's This Too Shall Passed I take a look at the French tradition of making a huge group of men princes. As always, sorry for my French pronunciation.

Transcript:

Princes of the Blood: Prince du sang (prans du san):

Welcome to another short episode. You may hear me say throughout this series ‘Prince of the Blood’ and have no idea what that means. If you’re a native English speaker and not interested in French history this is probably a phrase you’re rarely exposed to, but it’s one that I think is fascinating. In England for example to only people who can be called prince or princess are those who are the son or daughter of the reigning monarch or previous reigning monarch and the male-line grandchildren. A special letters patent was issued to bestow the title of prince or princess on the great-grandchild of the monarch regardless of gender prior to the birth of prince George. Currently the two children of Charles III, his five grandchildren, his younger brothers, his sister, and his brother’s children would all be eligible to be a prince or princess. Only his sons, grandchildren, siblings, and one of his brother’s children use these titles. This also means these men take precedence over all others, regardless of title. In France though it’s a different story. 

(If you hear this you are listening to an AI stolen copy of this Passed episode. Please visit passedpod.com for links to this show by it’s creator, Veronica Fortune)

Simply put a Prince du sang is any legitimate descendant of a king. During Capetian rule there wasn’t an idea that those who were descended from the king were special, there was no rank attached to them being related to the last monarch. This meant that Dukes could often outrank princes. Once the Valois line began its rule things changed, remember, this line firmly established that those closest to the king were his male-line descendants or brothers and their descendants. With this they had precedence over all other than the king and his family. Now, this was of course a bit of a back-ranking. Suddenly those who hadn’t been princes before, could be princes now. As far as I can tell precedences is based on proximity of blood, so a rather distant male-line descendant of an earlier Capetian king would still out outrank a duke but wouldn’t outrank a Valois male-line descendant. This is also important for our series. Because the Valois firmly ingrained Salic Law, they needed to know who could possibly rule. This meant that in 1328 someone needed to compile a good genealogy. Thankfully this was easier than you’d think. 

Now, while this comes up in our series and it would have been used at the time, it wasn’t like someone was going to tap James I of Bourbon on the shoulder and let him know he was now a prince of the blood (in case you’re curious he was a junior male-line Bourbon at the time of Philip the Fortunate’s ascension, he also happens to be the four times great grandfather of Antoine de Bourbon) . Trust me, he would have known. What would have happened is that he would have been eligible to sit on the royal council and would have sat with the other Princes of the Blood at the Estates General (he would have been the lowest ranked). If you’re up on the English royal family this would mean that the sons of the Dukes of Gloucester, and Kent, who use the courtesy titles Earl of Ulster and St. Andrews respectively would be Prince Alexander and Prince George. They are not because the prince title stops with the male-line grandsons of the sovereign. In France though the male-line descendant of any king is a prince. 

In the time period of our subjects, say during Charles’ lifetime, the Princes of the blood who mattered were Charles VI’s younger sons, Orleans himself, Berry, Anjou, and Burgundy, and then Orleans brothers followed by the sons of Berry Anjou and Burgundy. The next would be Alencon contingent, after that it would be those descended from earlier Capetian kings. While it was important to remember who these people were for the French crown it didn’t become vital for the descendants of earlier Capetian kings to become involved until the reign of Henri II in 1547. Those who have a good memory may know why. At this point the only princes of the blood outside of the direct royal family were…the Bourbons, male-line descendants of Louis IX. Despite being distantly related to the royal family they became active in royal politics because they were next in line. All due to someone turning property law into royal inheritance law.