Prince François d’Orléans

Prince François of Orléans, Count of Clermont (François Henri Louis Marie; 7 February 1961 – 30 December 2017) was the eldest son and heir apparent of the Orléanist pretender to the French throne, Prince Henri, Count of Paris, Duke of France and Duchess Marie-Thérèse of Württemberg. François was thus the Dauphin of France in Orléanist reckoning. However, his mother had been infected with toxoplasmosis during her second and third pregnancies, and the pre-natal exposure left both Prince François and his younger sister, Princess Blanche, developmentally disabled. Although the Count subsequently relented and declared Clermont restored in his rights as the firstborn son, when Clermont succeeded as Count of Paris in 1999, he reinstated François as the next heir on the grounds that his father's act had been ultra vires. He established a council of regency to exercise the dynastic prerogative on François's behalf, to become effective upon the succession of François as claimant. In 2016, Jean declared that his father's appointment of a regency council was invalid and, having become his elder brother's legal guardian, promised to continue to care for him while also called for François "to be left in peace and not used".

Death On 31 December 2017, Prince Jean reported that after suffering a bad fall the previous day, François had died. Henri subsequently recognized Jean as "the Dauphin", father and son publicly embracing at the interment of François at the Chapelle royale de Dreux on 6 January 2018 following a funeral service attended by his parents, siblings and other members of family, as well as members of reigning and deposed dynasties.

Ancestry