Philippe d'Orleans, Frere Unique du Roi: Founder of the Family Fortune

Abstract

Philippe d'Orleans was the son of Louis XIII, the only brother of Louis XIV, the father of the Regent, Philippe II, and the first of the fourth House of Orleans, which endures to the present day. Because the senior, or Bourbon, line died out in the nineteenth century, the present head of the House of Orleans, the comte de Paris, would be king, if France had adhered to the system of hereditary monarchy. Philippe was thus the biological founder of the collateral line that long remained close to the throne and often in opposition to it. In subsequent generations the House of Orleans attracted to it men and ideas that transcended the narrow question of the succession and flowed over into areas of political ideology, economics, and social progress. The role of Orleanism was to propose to, or on occasion to impose on, the French people a more liberal, a more modern alternative. Despite the historical importance of the House, Philippe, or Monsieur, as he was known in court, has been viewed as an insignificant prince. Contemporary memoirs and letters have described him as a fop and homosexual whose ornaments and affectations made him the laughingstock of the court. Always he walked in the shadow of his great brother, and rarely did he seem to engage in any more important activity than the decoration of his palaces or the patronage of his favorites. He was a pot-bellied little man propped up on heels like stilts; gotten up like a woman with rings, bracelets, and jewels everywhere; a long wig, black and powdered, spread out in front; ribbons wherever he could put them; and exuding perfumes of all kinds, . wrote Saint-Simon, the most famous of the memoirists of the time of Philippe. With more vivacity than intelli-