Prince étranger

Prince étranger (English: "foreign prince") was a high, though somewhat ambiguous, rank at the French royal court of the Ancien Régime.

Although during the king's formal receptions (the Honneurs de la Cour) their sovereign origins were acknowledged in deferential prose, foreign princes were not members by hereditary right of the nation's main judicial and deliberative body, the Parlement of Paris, unless they also held a peerage; in which case, their legal precedence derived from its date of registration in that body. Their notorious disputes with ducal peers of the realm, remembered thanks to the memoirs of the duc de Saint Simon, were due to the princes' lack of rank per se in the Parlement, where peers (the highest tier of French nobility, mostly dukes) held precedence immediately after the princes du sang (or, from 4 May 1610, after the legitimised princes). After the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre the Guises, triumphant in a kingdom purged of Protestant rivals, proved overbearing toward the king, driving Henry III to have the duke assassinated in his presence.

Most foreign princes did not initially use "prince" as a personal title. Since the families which held that rank were famous and few in the ancien régime of France, a title carried less distinction than the family surname. Thus noble titles, even chevalier, were commonly and indifferently borne by foreign princes in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries without any implication that their precedence was limited to the rank normally associated with that title. For instance, the title vicomte de Turenne, made famous by the renowned marshal, Henri de la Tour d'Auvergne, was a subsidiary title traditionally borne by a junior member of the family. But he ranked as a prince étranger rather than as a viscount, being a cadet of the dynasty which reigned over the mini duchy of Bouillon until the French Revolution. In France, some important seigneuries (lordships) were styled principalities since the late Middle Ages. Their lords had no specific rank, and were always officially subordinate to dukes and to foreign princes. Beginning in the late sixteenth century, some of France's leading families, denied the rank of prince at court, assumed the title of prince. Often it was claimed on behalf of their eldest sons, subtly reminding the court that the princely title was subordinate — at least in the law — to that of duke peer, while minimising the risk that the princely style, used as a mere courtesy title, would be challenged or forbidden. Typical were the ducs de La Rochefoucauld: Their claim to descend from the independent duke Guillaume IV of Guyenne, and their inter marriages with the sovereign dukes of Mirandola, failed to secure for them royal recognition as foreign princes. Yet the ducal heir is still known as the "prince de Marcillac", although no such principality ever existed, within or without France. In the eighteenth century, as dukes and lesser noblemen arrogated to themselves the title "prince de X", more of the foreign princes began to do the same. Like the princes du sang (e. g. Condé, La Roche sur Yon), it became one of their de facto prerogatives to unilaterally attach a princely titre de courtoisie to a seigneurie which not only lacked any independence as a principality but might not even belong to the titleholder, having merely been owned at some point by his family (e. g., prince d'Harcourt and prince de Lambesc in the House of Lorraine Guise; prince d'Auvergne and prince de Turenne in the House of La Tour d'Auvergne; prince de Montauban and prince de Rochefort in the House of Rohan; prince de Talmond in the House of La Trémoïlle). Nonetheless, these titles were then passed down within families as if they were hereditary peerages. Likewise denied princely precedence was Frédéric Maurice, comte d'Auvergne (1642–1707), the nephew and protégé of Marshal Turenne, who founded a Netherlands branch of the La Tour family through his 1662 marriage to Henrietta of Hohenzollern Hechingen (1642–1698), Margravine of Bergen op Zoom. Although his elder brother ruled Bouillon, his younger brother became Grand Almoner and a cardinal, and Auvergne himself held as sinecures the governorship of Limousin and colonel generalship of the French Light Cavalry, when neither his birth rank nor his wife's Brabantine domain persuaded Louis XIV to allow him precedence before knights of the Order of the Saint Esprit, let alone to share in Bouillon's rank above ducal peers, Auvergne refused to attend the Order's presentations at court.

NameTitle of chiefDate of recognitionExtinctionArmsNotesHouse of LorraineDuke of Mercœur15691602House of LorraineDuke of Guise15281675 (main line of Guise)1825 (junior line of Elbeuf)Cadet branches: Dukes of Mayenne (1544), Dukes of Aumale (1547), Dukes of Elbeuf (1581)House of SavoyDuke of Nemours15281659House of SavoyPrince of Carignan1642extantHouse of ClevesDuke of Nevers15381565House of GonzagaDuke of Nevers15661627The Duke of Nevers inherited the Duchy of Mantua and left the French Court in 1627House of GrimaldiPrince of Monaco16411731The Princes of Monaco were also Dukes of Valentinois in the French PeerageHouse of La Tour d'AuvergneDuke of Bouillon16511802The Dukes of Bouillon were also Dukes of Albret and Château Thierry in the French PeerageHouse of RohanDuke of Montbazon1651extantThe House of Rohan Chabot, female line heirs of the body of the elder branch of the House of Rohan, is extant, bearing the title Duke of Rohan, but was never acknowledged to be of princely rank. House of La TrémoilleDuke of Thouars16511933Female line heirs in exile of the Kings of Naples of the House of Trastámara.

The Aga Khan family, though of Persian and Indian origins, are now British citizens. Their princely titles have been recognized by the British Crown since the 1930s. Their leader, The Aga Khan IV, has also been granted the personal style of Highness by Queen Elizabeth II.