Alix, Princess Napoléon


Alix, Dowager Princess Napoléon is the widow of Louis, Prince Napoléon, the disputed head of the House of Bonaparte and pretender to the Imperial throne of France from 1926 until his death in 1997. Bonapartists regarded her as "Empress of the French" for almost fifty years of the 20th century.

Early life and ancestry

Born into a family of French nobility, she was an elder daughter of Comte Marie Joseph Albéric de Foresta and his wife, Geneviève Yvonne Berthe Hélène Fredet. Alix has one younger sister, Hedwige de Foresta, married to Hély, Marquis de La Roche-Aymon, whose mother, Princesse Madeleine de Broglie, was member of the ancient House of Broglie. Although Alix was the only consort of the surviving Imperial line not born a princess, her family had been nobles in Lombardy since the 13th century, becoming counts palatine in 1330, constables of Venice in 1425, then retainers of an old House of Doria, at that time one of the most powerful families in the Republic of Genoa. They settled in Provence, France early in the 16th century, where they acquired twenty-two manors and the title of Marquis by 1651. The Forestas distinguished themselves during the French Restoration as courtiers loyal to the House of Bourbon, and to Henri, comte de Chambord, in particular Marie-Joseph de Foresta-Collongue, who was awarded with additional hereditary title of Marquis de la Roquette on 28 May 1821, with letters patent confirmed on 25 October 1821. Long established as squires of large estates and rice paddies in the Camargue, the Forestas often welcomed her son Charles and his siblings there while they were growing up.

Biography

In 1961, about "200 girls from the United States and other countries" paraded "through the halls of the Palace of Versailles...to curtsey before Princess Alix Napoleon, wife of the great-grandnephew of Napoleon Bonaparte."
In 1976, she went to the Iranian Embassy for the Shah's birthday, being described at that time in the press as "one of the two most royal ladies of France -- Princess Napoleon Bonaparte, the elegant, lovely-looking Alix..."
She was an honorary member of The Napoleonic Society of America, which later merged with The Napoleonic Alliance to form The Napoleonic Historical Society in 2006. More recently, she also gave Havana's Napoleonic Museum "part of a porcelain dinner service presented by Napoleon Bonaparte to his brother Jerome on his wedding day."

Marriage and issue

married Alix de Foresta on 16 August 1949 at Linières-Bouton, France. They had four children: