A prince of the blood was a person who was legitimately descended in the male line from the monarch of a country. In France, the rank of prince du sang was the highest held at court after the immediate family of the king during the ancien régime and the Bourbon Restoration. A prince du sang or a princesse du sang had to be a legitimate member of the reigning dynasty (after 1589, the House of Bourbon). In some European monarchies, but especially in the kingdom of France, this appellation was a specific rank in its own right, of a more restricted use than other titles.
Read more about Prince Du Sang: French Usage, Styles, Monsieur Le Prince, Madame La Princesse, Monsieur Le Duc, Madame La Duchesse, Monsieur Le Comte, Madame La Comtesse, Madame La Princesse Douairière, Legitimised Royal Offspring, Orléans-Longueville, See Also, References
Famous quotes containing the words prince and/or sang:
“When the Prince of Piedmont [later Charles Emmanuel IV, King of Sardinia] was seven years old, his preceptor instructing him in mythology told him all the vices were enclosed in Pandora’s box. “What! all!” said the Prince. “Yes, all.” “No,” said the Prince; “curiosity must have been without.””
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)
“I sang as one
Who on a tilting deck sings
To keep men’s courage up, though the wake hangs
That shall cut off their sun.”
—Cecil Day Lewis (1904–1972)