Duke Of Orlans Philippe

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Prince of France, and the Orléanist claimant to the throne of France from 1894 to 1926. Philippe was the son of Philippe, Count of Paris, by his wife (and first cousin), Princess Isabelle of Orléans. His family lived in England from the abdication and banishment of his great-grandfather Louis Philippe, King of the French, in 1848; returned to France in 1871 following the fall of the Second French Empire; and again found themselves exiled by the French Republic following the 1886 wedding in Paris of Philippe's sister Amélie of Orléans to Crown Prince Carlos of Portugal, taking refuge in England once again. In 1871, Philippe returned with his parents to France. In 1880 he received the title Duc d'Orléans from his father. Growing up to be tall, blond and bearded, he was a better athlete than scholar, who learned to love mountain-climbing from Captain Morhain, a former soldier from Saint-Cyr who had become his father's accountant. In June 1886 he was on the point of becoming an officer in the French army when his family was once again exiled by France's republican government. In England he entered the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, on the nomination of Queen Victoria in February 1887, completing his training there having developed an abiding interest in geography, topography, and the natural sciences. He was attached for service to the King's Royal Rifle Corps which was then serving in India. He took rank as a sub-lieutenant and served in India from January 1888 to March 1889. In October 1889, Philippe went to Switzerland to complete a course in military theory. There he fathered a son, Philippe Debien, by Nina, an actress working in the casino at Lausanne. On his 21st birthday in February 1890 he left Switzerland by train with his friend the Duc de Luynes and entered Paris in violation of the law of exile of 1886. He was arrested and confined in the Conciergerie. He was sentenced to two years in prison at Clairvaux, but was released after a few months and expelled back to Switzerland. He asked Britain's military chief, Prince George, Duke of Cambridge, to send him to a military post in the Himalayas. While in the East, he undertook a hunting and exploratory expedition in Nepal with his cousin, Prince Henri of Orléans, went mountain-climbing in Tibet, and visited Afghanistan, Ceylon, and the Persian Gulf before being posted back to England. Philippe's involvement with the Australian opera singer Nellie Melba was complicated by her simulataneous marriage to Charles Nesbitt Armstrong. Armstrong filed for divorce from Melba on the grounds of adultery, naming Philippe as co-respondent; the case was eventually dropped. Upon the death of his father on 8 September 1894, Philippe became the Orléanist claimant to the French throne. He was known to monarchists as Philippe VIII. He was an active claimant, regularly issuing manifestos and awarding orders of chivalry. On 5 November 1896, in Vienna, Austria, Philippe married Archduchess Maria Dorothea of Austria (1867–1932). There were no children from this marriage. The couple were poorly matched; after several years they lived apart. In 1914, Philippe and his wife were legally separated. On 28 March 1926, Philippe died of pneumonia at the Palais d'Orléans in Palermo, Sicily. Having no legitimate issue, he was succeeded as pretender to the throne of France by his cousin and brother-in-law Jean, Duke of Guise. Link to Wikipedia biography