Pedro Gastão, Prince of Brazil

Prince Pedro Gastão (born Portuguese, Pedro de Alcântara Gastão João Maria Filipe Lourenço Humberto Miguel Gabriel Rafael Gonzaga de Orléans e Bragança e Dobrzensky de Dobrzenicz in 19 February 1913 – 27 December 2007) was a Prince of Brazil, Prince of Orléans-Braganza, one of two claimants to the Brazilian throne as Pedro IV and Head of the Petrópolis branch of the Imperial House of Brazil.

Never having accepted his father's renunciation as valid, he actively claimed the Brazilian throne from his father's death in 1940 until his own in 2007. He developed a frank and friendly relation with the Brazilian republican authorities and participated in almost all official events of the Brazilian State, mainly in receptions to world royalty. Because of this relationship, he also occasionally enjoyed items from the state, such as escorting by the Armed Forces and the presidential plane.

Uncle to King Juan Carlos I of Spain, as well to the pretenders to the Portuguese and French thrones and to the consorts of Württemberg and the Two Sicilies, he was grandfather to Peter, Hereditary Prince of Yugoslavia and a personal friend to Kings Baudoiun and Albert II of Belgium, to Jean, Grand Duke of Luxembourg and to Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom.

Early life
Prince Pedro Gastão was born in 1913 in France at the Château d'Eu at the homonimous town of Eu during the exile of the Brazilian Imperial Family which had been deposed in 1889. His father, Pedro de Alcântara, Prince of Grão-Pará, was the older son of Empress Isabel I of Brazil and had been expected from birth to eventually inherit the Imperial Throne of Brazil. His mother, Countess Elisabeth Dobrzensky of Dobrzenicz, comes from a Bohemian noble family.

When he was born his father had been renounced his and his offspring's rights to the Brazilian throne in a legally questionable act yet accepted by the head of the family, the Empress, had been five years. As Prince Pedro de Alcântara's rights theorically passed to his brother Luís (who was de facto Prince Imperial and father to the de facto Prince of Grão-Pará), Prince Pedro Gastão wasn't entitled Prince of Grão-Pará as he legally should have been.

He spent his early youth in Europe, largely at his family's Parisian home in the Boulogne sur Seine suburb and at the Château d'Eu: "I have very good memories of my grandparents [...] In exile in France I was always brought up thinking of Brazil, not France or Portugal." In 1921 he saw Brazil for the first time, two years after the reppealing of the Banishment Law against the Imperial Family. The family settled at the Palace of Grão-Pará in 1924.

Succession
When Pedro Gastão was born, it was five years since his father had signed the instrument of resignation, by which he theoretically would have renounced the rights of succession to the throne of Brazil for himself and his offspring. However, although the document was accepted by the Empress and the royalists, it was not in accordance with Brazilian monarchical law, that is, with the 1824 Constitution of the Empire of Brazil.

A few years before his death, Pedro Gastão's father, Prince Pedro de Alcântara told a Brazilian newspaper:
 * "My resignation was not valid for many reasons: besides, it was not a hereditary resignation." But on spite of this, Prince Pedro de Alcântara never challenged the heaship of his nephew Pedro Henrique, Prince of Brazil.

Therefore, following the death of his father, and supported by Infante Alfonso, Duke of Calabria and Infante Juan, Count of Barcelona, Prince Pedro Gastão declared himself Head of the Imperial Family of Brazil. His position was endorsed by Francisco Morato, law professor at the University of São Paulo, who concluded the resignation of Pedro Gastão's father was not a valid legal or monarchical act. Professor Paulo Napoleão Nogueira da Silva in the 1990s published a report saying that the resignation of his father was invalid under all possible aspects of Brazilian Law.

During most of his life he represented a rival claim to that of his cousin's son, Luiz, Prince of Brazil, to be the heir of the deposed Emperor Pedro II of Brazil.

Adulthood
On 18 December 1944 Prince Pedro Gastão married Princess Maria de la Esperanza of Bourbon-Two Sicilies (1914–2005), a daughter of Prince Carlos of the Two Sicilies, Infante of Spain and Princess Louise of Orléans in Seville, Francoist Spain. The couple had six children.

Despite not having his claim to the throne widely recognized either by Brazilian monarchists or by most European royal houses, Pedro Gastão was very popular with world royalty. He hosted Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh twice at his palace in Spain. He had also participated in the official receptions to the monarchs of the United Kingdom, Belgium, Iran, Luxembourg, to the Crown Prince of Japan, and had also participated in several royal gala balls at the embassies in Rio de Janeiro. In terms of both national and international popularity, it is visible that Pedro Gastão has far surpassed his rival, Prince Pedro Henrique.

The prince ran the Companhia Imobiliária de Petrópolis (Petrópolis Imobiliary Company) until the end of the 20th century. Still in the mountain town of Petrópolis, in the 1950s, he acquired the newspaper Tribuna de Petrópolis, founded in 1902, and currently managed by his son, Prince Francisco.

As a resident of Petrópolis, Pedro Gastão became a kind of ambassador for the monarchical cause and a living representative of Brazil's imperial past. He has accumulated thousands of documents and works of art in the archives of his residence, which even today help to tell the story of the so-called "Imperial City". Pedro Gastão was also the one who received the presidents of the republic on vacation in the city. He was proud to have met all Brazilian heads of state, from Epitácio Pessoa to Fernando Henrique Cardoso.

Later years and death
In the early 1990s, during the plebiscite in which the Brazilian people should opt for the monarchy or the republic, Pedro Gastão was one of the most engaged in the campaign for the monarchy. But with the defeat of the cause, the prince left the country and disallowed the initiative of some of his supporters to found a monarchist party in Brazil. With advancing age, he retired to his wife's property in Villamanrique, near Seville, Spain.

The couple's last years of life were spent at the princess's estate, where both passed away. Pedro Gastão died in the early hours of 27 December 2007, at the age of 94, and was buried the following day, in the chapel of Villamanrique de la Condesa. He received a State funeral with the presence of the Spanish monarchs.

Marriage and children
He married Princess Maria de la Esperanza of Bourbon-Two Sicilies (1914–2005), a daughter of Prince Carlos of the Two Sicilies, Infante of Spain and Princess Louise of Orléans, on 18 December 1944 in Seville, Francoist Spain, and had six children:


 * Pdro Carlos, Prince of Brazil (31 October 1945), married Rony Kuhn de Souza (20 March 1938–14 January 1979) 2 September 1975, with issue. He remarried Patricia Branscombe 16 July 1981, with issue.
 * Princess Maria da Gloria of Brazil (13 December 1946), married Alexander, Crown Prince of Yugoslavia 1 July 1972, divorced 1985, with issue. She remarried Ignacio de Medina y Fernández de Córdoba, 19th Duke of Segorbe on 24 October 1985, with issue.
 * Prince Alfonso of Orléans-Braganza (25 April 1948), married Maria Parejo Gurruchaga (born 1954) 3 January 1973, divorced with issue. He remarried Silvia-Amália Hungria de Silva Machado 19 November 2002.
 * Prince Manuel of Orléans-Braganza (17 June 1949), married Margarita Haffner (10 December 1945) 12 December 1977, divorced 1995, with issue.
 * Princess Cristina of Orléans-Braganza (16 October 1950), married 16 May 1980 Prince Jan Pavel Sapieha-Rozanski (26 August 1935), 16 May 1980, sometime Belgian ambassador to Brazil divorced 1988, with issue.
 * Prince Francisco of Orléans-Braganza (9 December 1956), married Christina Schmidt-Pecanha (14 January 1953) 28 January 1978, divorced, with issue. He remarried Rita de Cássia Pires 1980, with issue.