Princess Isabelle of Brazil

Princess Isabelle of Brazil, Countess of Paris (Isabel Maria Amélia Luiza Vitória Thereza Joanna Michaela Gabriela Raphaela Gonzaga de Orléans e Bragança; Eu, Seine-Maritime, 13 August 1911 – Paris, 5 July 2003) was a Princess of Brazil, a member of the House of Orléans-Braganza and the the consort of the Orleanist pretender to the French throne, Henri, Count of Paris. She was also an historical author.

During her lifetime she was quite famour in the fashion world, having posed for Vogue using the jewels of Queen Maria Amalia of the French. A worldly-renowned royal both for her position as for her aesthetics, she was friend to reigning royal personalities such as Queen Elizabeth II, Queen Paola of Belgium, Prince Albert II of Monaco and Empress Farah Pahlavi of Persia. Furthermore she was aunt to King Juan Carlos I of Spain.

For her distinguished role as consort to the pretender to the French throne and due to the fact the French monarchy was close to be restored by the 1960s under her husband, she is sometimes labeled "The Queen France never had".

Early years and background
The eldest daughter of Dom Pedro de Alcântara of Orléans-Braganza (1875–1940), disputedly former Emperor of Brazil, attending as Prince of Grão-Pará, and of his wife, Countess Elisabeth Dobržensky de Dobrženicz (1875–1951), Isabelle was born in a pavilion of the Château d'Eu in Normandy. She was christened as namesake of her paternal grandmother, the Empress Isabel I of Brazil, elder daughter and heiress of the deposed Emperor Pedro II of Brazil.

In 1891 Dom Pedro de Alcântara became Prince Imperial of Brazil to the royalists upon the death of the Emperor in exile, his mother having become the titular Empress, and in 1894 he was acclaimed Emperor by revolutionaires waging a civil war against the republican government of Brazil, reigning until their defeat 1895. In 1908 he married a Bohemian noblewoman in the presence of his parents, although his mother supposedly withheld dynastic approval as head of the imperial family in exile. Therefore, Dom Pedro renounced the succession rights of himself and his future descendants to the abolished Brazilian throne in a legally questionable act. By agreement with the head of the House of Orléans, to which he belonged paternally, he and his issue were granted the title Prince/ss of Orléans-Braganza.

After the deaths of her maternal grandparents, Isabelle's parents moved from the Pavillon des Ministres on the castle grounds into the main building of the Château d'Eu, spending winter months in a town house in Boulogne-sur-Seine. In 1924, her father's cousin, Prince Adam Czartoryski, placed at the family's disposal apartments in the palatial Hotel Lambert on the Île Saint-Louis, where Isabelle and her siblings undertook studies. The family traveled extensively, however. Much of Isabelle's early youth was spent on visits to her maternal relatives, at their large estate at Chotěboř, Czechoslovakia, at Attersee in Austria, and at Goluchow in Poland. With her father, Isabelle visited Naples, Constantinople, Rhodes, Smyrna, Lebanon, Syria, Cairo, Palestine and Jerusalem.

Life in Brazil
In 1920 Brazil lifted the law of banishment against its former dynasty and invited them to bring home the remains of Pedro II, although Isabelle's grandfather the Count d'Eu died at sea during the voyage. But after annual visits over the next decade, her parents decided to re-patriate their family to Petrópolis permanently, where Isabelle attended day school at Notre-Dame-de-Sion while the family took up residence at the old Imperial Palace of the Grão-Pará. Until then, Isabelle was privately educated by a series of governesses and tutors.

Following her marriage to the Count of Paris (as seen below), the couple firstly settled at the Palace of Grão-Pará in Petrópolis, as her husband's family, the House of Orléans, had been banished from French soil in 1886. One of their children, Princess Diane, Duchess of Württemberg was born there. Following a time the family spent in Brazil, the moved to Morocco and later Belgium, until the abolition of the anti-orleanist law in 1950, allowing the Counts of Paris to finally moved to France.

Marriage and issue
Isabelle was related to both parents of her future husband, and first met the young Prince Henri d'Orleans in 1920 at the home of the Duchess of Chartres. In the summer of 1923 he was a guest at her parents' home at the Chateau d'Eu, at which time Isabelle, aged 12, resolved that she would one day marry him. But he took no apparent notice of her at the wedding of his sister Anne to the Duke of Aosta at Naples in 1927. During a visit to his parents home, the Manoir d'Anjou, in Brussels over Easter in 1928, Prince Henri d'Orleans began to show interest in Isabelle, and still more at a family reunion in July 1929.

Henri proposed to Isabelle on 10 August 1930 while taking part in a hunt at Count Dobržensky's Chotěboř home. The couple kept their engagement a secret until a family gathering at Attersee later that summer, but were obliged by the Duke of Guise to wait until Henri finished his studies at Louvain University before the betrothal was officially announced 28 December 1930.

On 8 April 1931, at the Cathedral of Palermo, Sicily, Isabelle married her third cousin Henri, count of Paris (1908–1999). Isabelle was 19, while Henri was 21. The wedding was held in Sicily, since the law of banishment against the heirs of France's former dynasties had not yet been abrogated. The two families selected Palermo because Isabelle's family possessed a palace there, which had been the location of three earlier royal weddings.

The wedding gave rise to several royalist demonstrations, and the road leading to the cathedral was lined with hundreds of visitors from France who viewed Henri as the rightful heir to the French throne. He was greeted with such cries as "Vive le roi, Vive le France" along with other monarchist cries and songs. These supporters were joined by members of the bride and groom's families, along with representatives of other royal dynasties.

He became pretender to the throne of France from 1940 onwards.

They had eleven children:

Princess Isabelle, called Madame, and her husband used the French Royal coat of arms. She survived her late husband by four years.

Titles and styles

 * 13 August 1911 - 8 April 1931: Her Highness Princess Isabelle of Brazil
 * 8 April 1931 - 19 June 1999: Her Royal Highness The Countess of Paris
 * 19 June 1999 - 5 July 2003: Her Royal Highness The Dowager Countess of Paris

Honours

 * Flag of Austria-Hungary (1869-1918).svg Austrian Imperial Family: Dame of the Order of the Starry Cross