Family Background
The Labordes were a well-to-do family of the middle-class originating from the region of Béarn in southwestern France which took the name Laborde de Monpezat, following the marriage of Jean Laborde to Catherine d'Arricau, dame de Monpezat on 16 August 1648. Letters patent of ennoblement were issued by Louis XIV of France in 1655. But the elevation in status depended legally upon the family's recognition as noble by the province of Béarn, where their lands were located, in the form of registration of the king's decree by the Béarnaise Estates which, in 1703 and again in 1707, rejected the Laborde de Monpezat petition for validation.
Nonetheless, the family survived the French Revolution under the name of Monpezat. By Napoleonic decrees, the family's requests to legally change their surname to de Laborde-Monpezat (on 14 July 1860) and then to de Laborde de Monpezat (on 19 May 1861) were granted. Under the present form of the name, the family supplied a mayor to the town of Pau in 1875; Aristide de Laborde de Monpezat (1830–1888), great grandfather of Prince Henrik.
Sometime late in the nineteenth century, the Laborde de Monpezats assumed the comital style, using it as if it were a titre de courtoisie (that is, as an unofficial prefix rather than as a substantive title, e.g. "comte André de Laborde de Monpezat" rather than "André de Laborde, comte de Monpezat"). Traditionally the royal court and French society accepted such usage by genuinely noble families. However neither the nobility nor hereditary title of the Laborde de Monpezats is acknowledged as historically valid by the Encyclopédie de la fausse noblesse et de la noblesse d'apparence (English: Encyclopedia of False and Seeming Nobility), nor did Régis Valette include the family in his Catalogue de la noblesse française (2002). On the other hand, since the title was assumed by Prince Henrik's ancestor prior to the twentieth century, it is possible he was unaware of the misuse until his family's history was scrutinized by genealogists after his engagement. Henrik's 1996 autobiography acknowledges the unsuccessful ennoblement.
Read more about this topic: House Of Monpezat
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