Principessa
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Isn't this old guy one of the Orleans family? Ah, de image address already points out it is Prince Michel de France (of d'Orleans). And the women standing next to him is apparently his (2nd) wife Barbara.  French wiki about Michel: https://fr.wikipedia.org/...i/Michel_d%27Orl%C3%A9ansLoosely translated as: Michel Joseph Benoît Marie d´Orléans, Count of Evreux, was born on June 25, 1941 at Lyautey Hospital in Rabat, in Morocco then under French protectorate. He is a member of the House of Orleans and a former grandmaster ad interim of one of the branches of the military and hospital order of Saint-Lazare.
Michel d'Orléans is the third son of the Count of Paris, Henri d'Orléans (1908-1999), Orleanist pretender to the throne of France, and of his wife Isabelle of Orléans-Bragance (1911-2003).
Michel has ten siblings, including a younger twin brother, Jacques d'Orléans (1941), Duke of Orleans, whom their father, the late Count of Paris, moved in the order of succession before him. This order of succession was then confirmed in 1999 by their brother, the new head of the house of Orleans, on the death of their father.
On November 18, 1967, Michel d'Orléans married, in Casablanca, Morocco, Béatrice Pasquier de Franclieu (1941), daughter of Count Bruno Pasquier de Franclieu (1914-1944) and his wife Jacqueline Térisse (1918-1999). The Count and Countess of Évreux have been separated since 1994. On November 28, 2012, the Paris Court of Appeal formalized their divorce.
From this union were born four children, first excluded from the Orleanist succession to the crown of France and deprived of the predicate of courtesy of royal highness as well as of the courtesy title of prince (or princess) by their grandfather but reinstated. in their "dynastic rights" by their uncle:
1. Clotilde d'Orléans (born December 28, 1968), Mademoiselle d'Évreux, who married, in 1993, Édouard Crépy (1969), including:
- Louis-Nicolas Crépy (born in 1995)
- Charles-Édouard Crépy (born in 1996)
- Gaspard-Marie Crépy (born in 1999)
- Augustin Crépy (born in 2005)
- Éléonore Crépy (born in 2007)
2. Adélaïde d'Orléans (born September 11, 1971), Mademoiselle Adélaïde d'Évreux, who married, in 2002, to Pierre-Louis Dailly (1968), grandson of Étienne Dailly, including:
- Diego Dailly (born in 2003)
- Almudena Dailly (born in 2004)
Gaetano Dailly (born in 2009)
3. Charles-Philippe d'Orléans (born in Paris on March 3, 1973), Count Charles-Philippe d'Évreux then Duke of Anjou (2004), married in 2008 the Portuguese Capetian Diana Álvares Pereira de Melo (1978), duchess of Cadaval, including:
- Isabelle d'Orléans (born February 22, 2012)
4. François d'Orléans (born February 10, 1982), count François d'Évreux then count de Dreux (2014), married in 2014 the German aristocrat Theresa von Einsiedel (1984), descendant, among others, of Florestan I, Prince of Monaco, and William IV, Grand Duke of Luxembourg, including:
- Philippe d'Orléans (born May 5, 2017)
- Marie-Amélie d'Orléans (born February 8, 2019)
The Count of Évreux married for a second time to Barbara Jeanne Louise Anne Joséphine Elisabeth Françoise Marie de Posch-Pastor (born May 2, 1952 in Madrid). The wedding took place on April 29, 2017 in Paris.
Michel and Jacques d'Orléans were born in Rabat, in French Morocco, while their father was still banned from living in France by the Exile Law of 1886. After five years in the protectorate, they left in July 1946 , in Portugal, where they settle, with the rest of their family, at Quinta do Anjinho, in Sintra. Terrorized by their father, those whom their supporters call the “Children of France” become turbulent and, sometimes even, violent. At the age of eleven, Michel accidentally stabs a knife in his sister Anne's left calf while he is arguing with his twin brother. Dismayed by the attitude of his offspring, the "Comte de Paris" ended up removing several of his children from the family home. From September 1952 to July 1956, Michel and Jacques were thus sent to French boarding schools, from where they always ended up being sent back, before being separated at the start of the 1954 school year and then entrusted together to a private tutor in 1956. However, the children end up returning to Portugal when the French Lycée Charles-Lepierre in Lisbon opened at the start of the 1956 school year. It was therefore in this country that Michel d'Orléans obtained his baccalaureate in 1960, unlike his brother Jacques , failed.
Michel d'Orléans then returned to Paris for his university studies. He enrolled at the Faculty of Sciences of Paris-Orsay and came out, three years later, with a degree in Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry. In 1964, he met Béatrice Pasquier de Franclieu, then a journalist for the Women's Wear Daily, at a reception organized near Olivet. Quickly, the two young people become friends and then begin to see each other. Coming from the old Catholic nobility, the young girl seems to have all the assets to seduce the head of the house of Orleans and be accepted as her daughter-in-law. But her father, of whom she was an orphan when she was barely 3 years old, had been a Vichy and close to Marshal Pétain. The count of Paris, anxious for himself not to associate his family with the memory of the Collaboration, forbids his son to see Beatrice. He also recalls in an act of February 14, 1967, the conditions to be met for their marriages to be recognized and their offspring to be dynastic. In love, the young man does not give in and finally decides to marry the chosen one of his heart in Morocco, in 1967.
The consequences of this marriage were not long in coming. Michel d'Orléans is excluded, with all his future descendants, from the succession to the throne of France by his father. Moreover, none of the members of his family attended his wedding, except a cousin of the Count of Paris, Charles-Philippe d´Orléans, Duke of Nemours. Two years later, in 1969, his father conferred the courtesy title of Duke of Orleans on Jacques, who was nevertheless Michel's youngest, in order to reaffirm the latter's exclusion from the royal family.
The rupture between the head of the house of Orleans and his son is then long to heal. In fact, it was not until 1978 that Michel d'Orléans and his wife Béatrice were finally "forgiven" by the count of Paris and received by way of reconciliation the courtesy titles of count and countess of Evreux. But even after that, Michel d'Orléans was only partially reinstated in the house of Orleans and remained excluded, along with his descendants, from the Orleanist succession.
The exclusion of Michel d'Orléans from the royal family did not prevent him from keeping his place in French monarchist circles. Between 1969 and 1970, he was thus appointed coadjutor of the Duke of Nemours, who was the 46th Grand Master of one of the branches of the military and hospital order of Saint-Lazare. After the death of his cousin, Michel d'Orléans also took over the interim at the head of the "order", and that until 1973, when he resigned due to the election of the Duke of Seville as new grandmaster
After their marriage, Michel and Béatrice lived in Morocco, where he was an executive assistant in a public works company, then in Great Britain, from 1970 to 1973, and finally in Madrid, from 1973. In 1986, he left the company that employed him and is hired by the Accor group, of which he heads the Madrid delegation. For her part, the Countess of Evreux joined Christian Dior in 1985 and was not long in being appointed director for Spain and Portugal. This prestigious position allows his wife to be regularly placed in the spotlight and thus become one of the essential figures of the Spanish elite.
But while his wife seemed to be enjoying more and more success in her professional life, the Comte d'Évreux lost his job and dissension arose within the couple. The two spouses therefore decided to separate in February 1994 before divorcing in 2012 (decision of the Paris Court of Appeal). Michel d'Orléans returned to France in 1994, he found a job at the Hauts-de-Seine general council, while his wife remained to live in Madrid, where she published several books. Michel d'Orléans worked at the Hauts-de-Seine institute from 1999 to 2006 then he was a member of the bureau as deputy secretary general.
Shortly after the death of his father, the count of Paris, on June 19, 1999, the count of Évreux and his children were reinstated in the house of Orleans by the new head of the family, Henri d'Orléans (1933 -2019), Count of Paris and Duke of France. However, Michel d'Orléans did not regain his rank as an older twin brother and Prince Jacques, Duke of Orléans, continued to precede him in the order of succession to the throne. |
