Foreign Prince - Titles

Titles

Most foreign princes did not initially use "prince" as a title. Since the families who held that rank were famous and few in the ancien régime, 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 French marshal, merely reflected family tradition, but he ranked as a prince étranger, being a cadet of the House of La Tour d'Auvergne, which reigned over the mini-duchy of Bouillon until the French Revolution.

Some of France's leading ducal families, denied the rank of prince, simply usurped the title. 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 peer, while minimising the risk that the princely title would be challenged or forbidden. Typical were the ducs de La Rochefoucauld. Their claim to descend from the sovereign duke Guillaume IV of Guyenne and their inter-marriages with the sovereign dukes of Mirandola failed to procure for them royal recognition as foreign princes. Yet the ducal heir was and is 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 likewise. Like the princes du sang (e.g. Condé, La Roche-sur-Yon) it was always one of their prerogatives to unilaterally assume a princely titre de courtoisie attached to the name of a seigneurie, e.g., prince de Joinville (Guise), 'prince de Soubise (Rohan), prince de Talmond (La Trémoïlle), even when the eponymous property was no longer held by the family. These empty titles were passed down within families as if they were hereditary peerages.

Moreover, some noble titles of prince conferred on Frenchmen by the Holy Roman Empire, the Papacy or Spain were eventually accepted at the French court (e.g., Prince de Broglie, Princesse des Ursins, Prince de Rache, Prince de Bauffremont) became more common in the eighteenth century. But they carried no official rank, and their social status was not equal to that of either peers or foreign princes.

Unsurprisingly, foreign princes began adopting a custom increasingly common outside of France; prefixing their Christian names with "le prince". The genealogist par excellence of the French nobility, Père Anselme, initially deprecated such neologistic practice with insertion of a "dit" ("styled" or "so-called") in his biographical entries, but after the reign of Louis XIV he records the usage among foreign princes without qualification.