Foreign Prince - Noted Foreign Princes

Noted Foreign Princes

During the reign of Louis XIV, the families which held the status of prince étranger were:

• Savoy Carignan, cadets of the sovereign Dukes of Savoy
• Guise, cadets of the reigning Dukes of Lorraine
• Rohan, descendants of the Dukes of Britanny
• La Tour d'Auvergne, reigning Dukes of Bouillon
• Grimaldi, reigning Princes of Monaco
• La Trémoïlle, heirs of the body of the Kings of Naples of the deposed House of Trastamara (and nominal pretenders to the kingdoms of Jerusalem, Cyprus, and Armenia.

Most renowned among the foreign princes was the devoutly Roman Catholic House of Guise which, as the Valois kings approached extinction and the Huguenots aggrandized in defense of Protestantism, cast ambitious eyes upon the throne itself, hoping to occupy it but determined to dominate it. So great was their pride that François, Duke of Guise, although merely a subject, dared to openly court Margaret of Valois, the daughter of Henri II. He was obliged to hastily wed a princesse étrangère, Catherine of Cleves, to avoid bodily harm from Margaret's offended brothers (each of whom eventually succeeded to the crown as, respectively, Francis II, Charles IX, Henry III). After the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre the Guises, triumphant in the kingdom, proved overbearing toward the king, driving Henry III to have the duke assassinated in his presence.

The status of foreign prince was not automatic: it required the king's acknowledgement and authorization of each of the privileges associated with the status. Some individuals and families claimed entitlement to the rank but never received it. Most infamous among these was Prince Eugene of Savoy, whose cold reception at the court of his mother's family drove him into the arms of the Holy Roman Emperor, where he became the martial scourge of France for a generation.