Previous Message

For the historical record: HAS any descendant of King Felipe V of Spain, through a cognatic line, married into the French royal family -- whether the house of Bourbon (i.e. Legitimist), Orléans, or Bonaparte?

The reason for my asking is that Empress Elisabeth of Austria, as Duchess in Bavaria, was made to renounce her succession rights to the German kingdom. But the biography (by Brigitte Hamann) didn't make clear whether the renunciation affected her descendants as well. Whenever a dynast renounces succession rights on behalf of future descendants who have not yet even been born, one is up against a potentially messy and complicated situation.

For the fact of the matter is that some of the descendants of the Austrian imperial couple have intermarried with the Bavarian royal family. This is no surprise: the Habsburgs and the Wittelsbachs have been intermarrying practically forever -- even before the latter reigned over a kingdom. As it was, the empress had been born into the junior (i.e. ducal branch) of the house. But three of Franz Joseph and Elisabeth's female descendants have married into the royal branch of the said house, meaning princes of Bavaria in male-line descent from King Ludwig I.

Now, if the empress' renunciation of rights affected ALL her descendants, then obviously her and the emperor's own grandchildren -- i.e. the children of Archduchess Gisela, who married Prince Leopold -- would have been excluded from the succession. But that obviously was not the case, as at least their sons were in line to the throne.

Fast forward to 1955, when Archduchess Theresa of Austria-Tuscany (a great-granddaughter through their younger daughter, Archduchess Marie Valerie) married Prince Rasso of Bavaria, a grandson of King Ludwig III. All three of their sons and grandsons through them are likewise in the current Bavarian royal succession.

Even the marriage in 1919 of their great-granddaughter, Countess Auguste von Seefried auf Buttenheim, to Prince Adalbert of Bavaria, although initially morganatic, was eventually de-morganatized (Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria recognized and declared the union dynastic in 1949: I believe he made it retroactive).

Anyhow, back to my original question about the French succession: is anybody familiar with the marital history of the various dynasties in that country, to identify any female descendant of the Spanish king (famous for the Anjou renunciation) who may have married into any of them?