Henri, Count of Paris (1933–2019)

He was head of the House of Orléans as senior in male-line descent from King Louis-Philippe, who reigned from 1830 to 1848.

Henri was a retired military officer as well as an author and painter.

He was the first son of Henri, Count of Paris (1908–1999), and his wife Princess Isabelle of Orléans-Braganza, and was born in Woluwe-Saint-Pierre, Belgium, a law in 1886 having permanently exiled from France the heads of its formerly reigning dynasties and their eldest sons.

Despite the ban, while living in Belgium Henri occasionally accompanied his mother on brief visits to France and, later, to his mother's relatives in Brazil.

Henri Philippe Pierre Marie d'Orléans (14 June 1933 – 21 January 2019) was the Orléanist pretender to the defunct French throne as Henry VII.

He used the title count of Paris.

Henri met Duchess Marie Therese of Württemberg (born 1934), like himself a descendant of King Louis-Philippe, at a ball given by the Thurn and Taxis family in Munich.

In August 1940 as World War II escalated, the family relocated to property they owned in Larache in the French protectorate of Morocco.

While his father sought to play a role in the French resistance, Henri, in 1940 a child of 7, remained at Larache with his mother, siblings, grandmother and father's sisters' families during the Nazi occupation of France, sharing a small desert home that lacked electricity.

Advised by Henri Giraud's Moroccan command that the Orléans had become unwelcome in the protectorate following the assassination of Vichy regime collaborater François Darlan by the monarchist Fernand Bonnier de La Chapelle, the family relocated to Pamplona in Spain until 1947, when they took up residence at the Quinta do Anjinho, an estate near Sintra, on the Portuguese Riviera.

During that year, President Vincent Auriol allowed Henri and his brother François to visit France, and in 1948 he was allowed to enroll in a lycée in Bordeaux.

The law of exile was abrogated in 1950, allowing Henri to repatriate with his parents.

Later that year, his parents purchased an estate near Paris, the Manoir du Cœur-Volant in Louveciennes, which became Henri's first home in France.

Henri studied at the Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po), obtaining his bac in 1957, and on 30 June of that year, his father conferred upon him, as the heir apparent of his house, the title of "Count of Clermont", by which he was generally known during his father's lifetime.

They were married on 5 July 1957 at the Royal Chapel of Dreux, on which occasion President Charles de Gaulle publicly offered congratulations, calling the wedding a great national event and observing that the dynasty and couple's future were bound to the hopes of France.

Five children were born from this union:

From October 1959 to April 1962, Henri worked at the Secretariat-General for National Defence and Security as a member of the French Foreign Legion.

Transferred from there to a garrison in Germany, he took up a new assignment as military instructor at Bonifacio in Corsica, where his wife and children joined him early in 1963.

Returning to civilian life in 1967, Henri and his family briefly occupied the Blanche Neige pavilion on the grounds of his father's Cœur-Volant estate before renting an apartment of their own in the 15th arrondissement of Paris.

In the early 1970s Clermont managed public relations for the Geneva office of a Swiss investment firm while dwelling in Corly.

Henri wrote several books, including:

Henri was also a painter and launched his own brand of perfume.

In 1980, Henri joined the Grand Orient de France where he became Grand Master of the regular Masonic Lodge "Lys de France" No 1297.

In 1984, Henri and Marie-Thérèse were divorced.

On 31 October 1984 Henri entered a civil marriage with Micaëla Anna María Cousiño y Quiñones de León (1938–2022), daughter of Luis Cousiño y Sebire and his wife Antonia Maria Quiñones de Léon y Bañuelos, 4th Marquesa de San Carlos, and who had previously been divorced from Jean-Robert Bœuf.

For remarrying without consent, Henri's father initially declared him disinherited, substituting the non-dynastic title Comte de Mortain for his son's Clermont countship (the latter once held in appanage by a son of Louis IX of France, who became ancestor of the Bourbon-Orléans line).

Henri, though, refused all mail addressed to him as "Mortain".

On 27 February 1984 Marie-Thérèse, the former Countess of Clermont, was granted the title Duchess of Montpensier by her father-in-law.

On 11 February 1989 Henri was informed, by a hand-delivered letter written by his former wife, of the engagement of their eldest child Marie, to Prince Gundakar of Liechtenstein, a cousin of the ruler of that principality, the wedding date being set for 29 July 1989.

Although Henri acknowledged, in a 12 May 1989 Point de Vue interview, that it had been three years since he had seen Marie, he and his second wife, Micaëla Cousiño, had been welcomed for the first time to the home of his mother, the Countess of Paris, that day: Henri further acknowledged to the press that, Marie having written to invite him to her wedding, he looked forward to conducting her to the altar, rumours to the contrary notwithstanding.

At the engagement party held the next day at the Palais Pallavicini, the Vienna home of the fiancé's parents, photographs were taken, and would later be published, showing Henri speaking cordially with his daughter, sons, former wife and future son-in-law.

However, it was on this occasion that Henri learned that he would not be escorting Marie to her bridegroom during the wedding.

Meanwhile, Marie-Thérèse had sent out invitations to the wedding in her name alone, omitting not only mention of Marie's father, but also of her grandfather, Monseigneur the Count of Paris who, until then, had largely sided with the Duchess of Montpensier in family matters and had consented to his granddaughter's choice of a spouse.

This prompted father and son to join in calling for a familial boycott of the nuptials.

Henri and his father refused to attend the wedding but Marie proceeded to marry civilly at Dreux's city hall on 22 July 1989, and religiously at the castle of her mother's brother in Germany, on 29 July 1989.

All but two of Henri's eight siblings also boycotted the ceremonies, but his sister Diane (wife of Montpensier's brother) hosted, and Henri's mother, Madame the Countess of Paris, was a guest at the religious wedding.

Tensions lessened after several years, and on 7 March 1991 Henri's father reinstated him as heir apparent and Count of Clermont, simultaneously giving Micaëla the title "Princesse de Joinville".

In the first half of the 2000s, he covered also the charge of Great Official of the Grande Loge de Marque de France.

In 2001, he left Freemasonry to become the head of the House d'Orléans.

His political career included unsuccessfully contesting the 2004 European elections for the Alliance Royale, a monarchist party.