Question: Can an abdicated monarch designate a Regent?

So while re-reading Susan Nagel's bio Marie-Thérése I came across an interesting passage: basically the Duchesse de Berry badgered her father-in-law to be proclaimed Regent, which he said she would 'when they returned to France' (the Bourbons were in exile after the July Revolution). Then after the Duchesse landed in France to try and raise an uprising, issuing manifestos calling herself Regent of France, Charles angerly responded that she was not the Regent.

So my question is this: legally do abdicated monarchs have any right to actually designate a Regent for an underage monarch and even if they do can they actually strip someone of the Regency? The one way I can think of that Charles would have the power to do so is as Head of the Royal House, but not much else. So would this violate any fundamental law or was regencies to murky?
 
Well, Charles X was of the old-school a la D. Carlos, Miguel I or Nikolai I and would've probably held to the belief that a king CANNOT abdicate. So IDK how binding he would've held that promise if the uprising had been successful.

That said, AFAIK, Jac.II designated Mary Beatrice as regent for Jac.III until his 21st birthday, and Jac.III named Chas.III as temporary regent during the '45.

I hope this helps.
 
Well, Charles X was of the old-school a la D. Carlos, Miguel I or Nikolai I and would've probably held to the belief that a king CANNOT abdicate. So IDK how binding he would've held that promise if the uprising had been successful.

That said, AFAIK, Jac.II designated Mary Beatrice as regent for Jac.III until his 21st birthday, and Jac.III named Chas.III as temporary regent during the '45.

I hope this helps.

Yeah I didn't really get that either. Charles acted like he was still King yet on the flip side he insisted that the family only wanted to see the Comte de Chambord restored to the throne. Since I can't find any example of an abdicated sovereign designating a regent then trying to depose him/her I guess Charles really didn't have the authority to do so. So if the Duchesse had called his bluff he wouldn't have had a leg to stand on, at least form a legal point of view. Thanks.
 
Then after the Duchesse landed in France to try and raise an uprising, issuing manifestos calling herself Regent of France, Charles angerly responded that she was not the Regent.


Charles X has requested permission of the Government to return to his old asylum at Holyrood, and, this being immediately granted, on October 15, 1830, he sailed for Scotland, accompanied by the Dauphin and Dauphine and the Duc de Bordeaux, but Mademoiselle, under the charge of Madame de Gontaut, made the journey by land, as did the Duchesse de Berry, who spent some time in London before proceeding to the North.

In November, Madame rejoined her relatives at Holyrood. The sombre and melancholy hospitality of the old palace of the Scottish Kings, and the dull and monotonous existence which Charles X lived there, were, as we may suppose, not at all to the taste of a young woman so full of life and energy as the Duchesse de Berry, and she was profoundly bored. The northern winter, too, naturally proved extremely trying to one born under the blue sky of Naples, and she suffered much from rheumatism; she writes, under date January 9, 1831, to her old friend the Comtesse de Meffray: «The climate here is not cold, but windy. For a week I have not been able to go out; it is very tedious».
For the astute Talleyrand was not deceived in his belief that the princess was meditating some bold project against the new dynasty.
The Revolution of July had made of this young woman,hitherto so indifferent to politics, an intriguer, a conspirator, of the most ardent kind, and had aroused in her all the passion, the courage, and the determination which she had inherited from her grandmother, Maria Carolina.

If Charles X and the Dauphin regarded the catastrophe which had overtaken them as a decree of Providence, and were indisposed to take any active steps to recover the Crown which they had permitted to slip so easily from them, she absolutely refused to allow the rights of her son to be sacrificed. How could any woman who possessed a spark of maternal pride calmly resign herself to the idea that in three days the brilliant future of her child had been permanently changed; that, in place of sitting upon the throne of his ancestors and making for himself an honourable place in history, he must spend the rest of his life as a "pretender" - one of those unfortunate princes whose claims to kingly rank are a source of embarrassment and irritation to the sovereigns who extend to them a grudging hospitality, and of contemptuous amusement to the people over whom they aspire to rule?

«For her and for many of her partisans,» writes Thureau Dangin, «it was less a question of executing a political design carefully matured than of transporting into the midst of the bourgeois France of 1830 a chivalrous adventure, something resembling the action of one of Walter Scott's tales, which at this time exercised a supreme influence over all romantic minds».

Charles X, who believed that where an old man of his experience had failed, a young woman with no knowledge of politics or the difficulties of government could not possibly succeed, was very far from approving of the bellicose projects of his daughter-in-law, and endeavoured to persuade her to renounce them, pointing out that her chance of success was extremely remote, and that she would be incurring the gravest risks to very little purpose. But to Madame the prospect of danger in France was infinitely preferable to that of ennui at Holyrood, and the more he sought to discourage her, the more resolute did she become.

Finally, the old King ended by giving a kind of half-consent. He could, indeed, do nothing else, for, since he and the Dauphin had renounced their rights in favour of the Duc de Bordeaux, it was to the mother of the little prince that the majority of Royalists looked for direction; and to refuse altogether to countenance the Duchesse de Berry's plans would have exposed him to the most bitter recriminations from the more ardent section of the party, already irritated by what it considered his pusillanimous withdrawal from France, when he might have fallen back on la Vendee, rallied his adherents around him, and prolonged the struggle indefinitely.
Even in his little court at Holyrood, the party which favoured energetic action — that is to say the party of Madame — was much more numerous than his own, and, if his pessimistic views were shared by the Dauphin and Dauphine and his now favourite counsellor, the Duc de Blacas, the princess numbered among her supporters the Marshal de Bourmont - the conqueror of Algiers -, three other ex-Ministers in the Baron d'Haussez, the Comte de Montbel, and the Baron Capelle; the Duc Armand de Polignac, Damas, Mesnard, and Brissac.

And so he made a virtue of necessity, and on January 27, 1831 [Charles X] conferred conditionally on the princess the title of Regent, in the event of her re-entering France, and signed an order to the following effect :
«M. . . . chief of civil authority in the province of . . . will arrange with the principal leaders to draw up and publish a proclamation in favour of Henri V., in which it will be announced that Madame, Duchesse de Berry, will be Regent of the Kingdom during the minority of the King, her son, and that she will assume the title on her entry into France, for such is our will».


Charles X, however, distrusting the adventurous character of the princess, firmly refused to allow either the Duc de Bordeaux or Madamoiselle to accompany their mother, and joined to her as counsellor the Duc de Blacas, with authority to oppose any enterprise which might seem to him too hazardous.

(Hugh Noel Williams, A princess of adventure, Marie Caroline, duchess de Berry)
(Louis Blanc, The history of ten years, 1830-1840; or, France under Louis Philippe)



The arrest and imprisonment of the Duchess of Berry, are for the King and the new government, an awkward problem. Louis-Philippe would like to expel the Duchess of the France, citing the recent law of 10 April 1832 condemning to perpetual banishment of all members of the family of Charles X. But the Duchess is implicated conspiracy and armed rebellion, and it seems difficult to to escape justice. At the same time, in case of trial, all possible outcomes also appear bad, «l’acquittement ferait du roi un usurpateur, la condamnation, un bourreau, et la grâce, un lâche!» («the acquittal would make the king a usurper, condemnation, an executioner, and grace, a coward!», Guy Antonetti, Louis-Philippe).
It spreads, in January 1833, the rumor that the Duchesse de Berry is pregnant. February 29, Le Moniteur publishes a statement of the princess, dated 22, in which the Duchess claims to have secretly married during his stay in Italy. Legitimists, also supported by some Republicans, have castigate the government inelegance of the process, but the damage is done: the princess now appears as an «aventurière de bonne maison» (Rodolphe Apponyi) [in 1815, the Duke of Wellington had ruled out the possibility of accession to the Duke of Orleans to the throne saying that if he had wanted to do this, he would have been «un usurpateur de bonne maison»] and the episode does not fail to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the "miracle child" itself, the Duc de Bordeaux.

Why hide the marriage?
What the Regent of France could have done in the interest of her child, the Countess Lucchesi-Palli had not right to try.
When King Henri V would have reached the age of majority (the Kings of France reached the age of majority to 13 years, and the Duc de Bordeaux had already 10), the Duchess of Berry would have revealed the secret marriage and would withdraw from public life (see Maria Cristina, Queen of Spain and regent for Isabel II).

The problem of the regency for the Duchess of Berry is in this thing, as outlined by Appony: «Comment Madame, mariée en Italie, pourrait-elle être régente de France, alors que, par son mariage, elle-même n’est plus française?», how the Duchesse de Berry, secretly married in Italy, could be «Regent of France», since, because of his marriage, in itself is not more French?
In fact, by law, no foreigner could be regent of the kingdom.
 
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Cosme-Thomas-Bonaventure de Satgé (1769-1849), 12th baron de Thoren, ruined by the Revolution, he came to Paris and joined, he claimed, at the royalists who endeavored to liberate Louis XVI; ignored under the Empire, he moved to Toulouse in 1814 and surprised in this city in February, 1815, some evidence of Napoleon's Project to escape from the Elba. He ran in all haste to Paris February 26, 1815 to reveal the plot, was received by the Duke of Luxembourg, captain of the king's guard, but could not convince him of the impending danger. March 1, the event is realized, the Emperor landed at Frejus and the government of the Restoration collapsed. Meanwhile, Cosme de Satgé went to Bordeaux beside the Duchess of Angoulême, where he had seize to the post office the secret correspondences for Napoleon. Imprisoned as a suspect, he was released on April 2 and returned to Toulouse, where he began as head of the anti-government protests of the Hundred Days. Victim of his royalist zeal, Cosme de Satgé hoped, with the return of the Bourbons, of enjoy rewards, but he did not receive at will. He then threw itself in political intrigue and lived for several years in the intimacy of the most prominent men of the Ultra Party. On the accession of Louis-Philippe, Cosme de Satgé resumed his claims and not getting satisfaction, he wrote to King threatening letters. Prosecuted in the Assize Court of the Seine, he was sentenced in September 1832 to five years' hard labor, but was pardoned soon after. He retired in Prades, where he died October 6, 1849.
His son, Ernest Valentine de Satgé (1802-1899), had been 'created' vicomte by the Duchesse de Berry in 1830 on her appointment as regent for 'Henri V', but was exiled for involvement in a royalist revolt.
 
While very interesting, the book I've read implies that Charles started to deny her status as Regent shortly after the Duchesse landed in France and issued decrees/manifestos in her status as Regent. Now I can understand removing her as Regent after her remarriage (same thing happened with her half-sister the Queen of Spain) but before that? Not legally anyway. Charles X abdicated, thus he lost any and all rights to decide the government of the realm. While there is no law automatically giving the mother of an underage monarch regency, tradition is on Madame de Berry's side. Plus Charles had screwed up enough that he managed to trigger yet another revolution against the family, so just that alone would have basically removed his rights.

Also the foreigner part is basically pointless: most, if not all mothers of the Kings were foreign Princesses yet there was no issues with them claiming the regencies.
 
Also the foreigner part is basically pointless: most, if not all mothers of the Kings were foreign Princesses yet there was no issues with them claiming the regencies.

with her marriage to the Duc de Berry, for the law, Carolina had become French; but with a second marriage, she had assumed the "nationality" of her husband Lucchesi-Palli, then, in theory, was not French but had become "foreign" and therefore excluded from the right to be Regent.

What the Regent of France could have done in the interest of her child, the Countess Lucchesi-Palli had not right to try.
 
with her marriage to the Duc de Berry, for the law, Carolina had become French; but with a second marriage, she had assumed the "nationality" of her husband Lucchesi-Palli, then, in theory, was not French but had become "foreign" and therefore excluded from the right to be Regent.

What the Regent of France could have done in the interest of her child, the Countess Lucchesi-Palli had not right to try.

Ah makes sense to me. Although I think there was more to it myself. The Duchesse de Berry and her supporters were actively trying to bring about a restoration, while Charles, the Dauphin and their supporters saw the July Revolution as divine intervention and were content to wait for God to restore them. Charles seemed to believe that his daughter-in-laws actions would ruin the chances of a restoration, not to mention that it was an uprising in the name of Henri V, not Charles X. Looking at the lack of celebrations at Henri's coming of age in 1833 I think the old King was mighty jealous of his grandson and tried hard not to show it.
 
Out of curiosity, can either of you recommend a few good books on the Légitimists from 1830-1852? By that I mean who were Légitimist supporters, were there any plots against the governments at that era, what their political platforms were, and other info like that in general. I'm really wanting to write a TL for this era but am having trouble finding good sources, both online and in books. So any help would be much appreciated.
 

Kingpoleon

Banned
In theory, it depends on the absolutism of the monarch. However this would not be practical. If a monarch was absolute or able to dictate succession rights, he or she would do that before he or she abdicates. Afterwards, it would be up to whoever assumed the succession rights power upon his or her abdication.
 
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