The Comte de Paris: Doctrines and Politics to 1939

Abstract

“I have no illusions as to the magnitude of the task. That is but another reason why I should devote myself to it. And I am deeply convinced that I shall succeed.”¹ With these words, the Comte de Paris launched what must rank as the most sustained effort by a pretender to regain his throne in modern times. He was young, ambitious, and believed that his “sole raison d’être was the welfare of the nation.” He felt further that, in a year of crisis (1934), “while some envisage the extreme solutions of dictatorship or anarchy, many good Frenchmen, hitherto indifferent, are asking themselves whether a return to the monarchical principle ... might not be the only way to assure the fatherland the stability and the political continuity for which it is longing.”² The times seemed ripe for a redefinition of the French monarchy.