Princess Elvira of Bourbon
Princess Elvira of Bourbon was the third child and second daughter of Prince Carlos, Duke of Madrid, by his first wife, Princess Margherita of Bourbon-Parma. While she never married, she had three illegitimate sons with a Florentine artist.
Early life
Princess Elvira was born in the Villa Bocage, Geneva, Switzerland as the middle of five children. Her siblings were [Princess Princess Blanca of Bourbon|Blanca of Bourbon|Blanca], Jaime, Beatriz and Alice. Her father, the Duke of Madrid, was the Carlist claimant to the throne of Spain. He organized and led the Third Carlist War between 1872 and 1876. During this time, Margherita and their children stayed in Pau, near the border. After the war, they lived in Paris for five years, until the French government banished them because of Carlos's political activities.Her parents separated in 1881. Don Carlos went to live in Venice, while Margherita and the children went into exile in Tuscany, where they settled in the Tenuta Reale, the ancient villa of the Dukes of Parma in Viareggio. Elvira and her sisters attended the Sacre Coeur convent school in Florence. The children were very close to their mother, who had decided to place generosity and kindness at the heart of her children's education.
Romance with Leopold Ferdinand
When she was fifteen, Elvira fell in love with her cousin, Archduke Leopold Ferdinand of Austria, who was the eldest son of her aunt Alice. They were secretly engaged between 1885 and 1889. In 1889, Elvira's older sister Blanca married Leopold's cousin and namesake, Archduke Leopold Salvator. Leopold later described Elvira as"A wild, elfin gipsy. She had a way of standing erect and unconscious of herself; her young body, taut and lithesome, and one day when I said to her: "Elvira, you make me think of the twig of a fresh young tree, which I just long to bend," she was rather offended. The most precious of her charms was her manifest purity. That always disarmed me."The engagement was supported by Elvira's mother and Leopold's father, but the Emperor Franz Joseph forbade their union. Leopold blamed Archduke Albrecht, Duke of Teschen, for influencing Franz Joseph. Albrecht's niece was the Dowager Queen Christina of Spain, and he had funded her efforts to repress the Carlist risings in Spain. Elvira and Leopold never met again after the Emperor's refusal, but near the end of his life, in his memoirs, he described her as "the love of his life". Nevertheless, he married three times and fathered a child with a prostitute.
Scandal
In 1896, Princess Elvira ran away from Viareggio with the Italian painter Filippo Folchi. He was nine years her senior, a commoner, and already married to a woman, whom he already had two sons with. Her family was outraged. Elvira’s father made an official announcement, which read:“To the Carlists. You are my family, my beloved children, and I consider it my duty to announce to you that one of my daughters, the former Infanta Doña Elvira, has died for all of us.”The couple lived in Florence, and had three sons together, including twins:
- Giorgio di Borbone, killed by Greek soldiers in Albania during the Second World War.
- Léon Fulco di Borbone, who moved to the United States. His wife Anita Vazquez y Carrizosa was the sister of his brother's wife Lucia.
- Filiberto di Borbone, who moved to the United States. His wife Lucia Vazquez y Carrizosa was the sister of his brother's wife Anita.