Prince du sang

A prince du sang (French pronunciation: [pʁɛ̃s dy sɑ̃]) or prince of the blood is a person legitimately descended in male line from a sovereign. The female equivalent is princesse du sang (princess of the blood), being applied to the daughter of a prince of the blood. The most prominent examples include members of the French royal line, but the term prince of the blood has been used in other families more generally, for example among the British royal family and when referring to the Shinnōke in Japan.

In some European kingdoms, especially France, this appellation was a specific rank in its own right, with a more restricted use than other titles. In France, such rank recognised succession to the throne, should the main male royal line fail, as with the House of Valois succeeded by the House of Bourbon.

Under the House of Capet of France, the monarchy was feudal, and the younger sons and grandsons of kings did not have rights or precedence based on their royal descent. Feudal titles determined rank. Under Philip Augustus, the Duke of Burgundy, a peer of France, could be reckoned to be mightier than the Count of Dreux, a "baron of the second rank", even though the latter was a paternal cousin of the king, while the former was only a distant agnate. In the feudal era, the agnates of the king held no special status, because agnatic primogeniture had not yet received its sanction as the law governing the succession to the French throne.

Following the Valois succession, the agnates of the king, being "capable of the crown", rose in prominence. New peerages were created for the king's agnates, and for a long time this continued to be so, before the peerage was extended to non-royalty. Over time, the dignity of a peer, which was feudal in nature, and the dignity of a prince of the blood, which was dynastic in nature, clashed. Non-royal peers and princes of the blood who were peers constantly competed for precedence. As the royal line contracted, each prince of the blood gained greater prominence. Finally, in 1576, King Henry III of France issued an edict, to counter the growing power of the House of Guise, which made the princes of the blood supreme over the peerage, and amongst themselves, the closer in the line of succession would outrank the more distant, without regard to the actual title that they held.

In France, the rank of prince du sang was the highest held at court after the immediate family of the king during the ancien régime and the Bourbon Restoration. The rank of prince du sang or princesse du sang was restricted to legitimate agnates of the Capetian dynasty who were not members of the immediate family of the king. Originating in the 14th century, male princes du sang came to be recognized as entitled to seats on the Conseil du Roi and the Parlement de Paris, to precedence above all peers and to precedence among each other according to their respective places in the order of succession.

During the last century of the reign of the House of Valois, when religious strife brought forth rivals for the throne, prince du sang became restricted in use to refer to dynasts who were distant members of the royal family (i.e., those who were not children or grandchildren in the male line of a French king and, as such, entitled to specific, higher rank of their own as enfants and petits-enfants de France).

In theory, the princes of the blood included all members of the Capetian dynasty. In practice, only the agnatic descendants of Saint Louis IX, such as the Valois and the Bourbons, were acknowledged as princes du sang. France's kings, for instance, refused to recognize the Courtenay Capetians as princes of the blood. The Courtenays descended in legitimate male-line from King Louis VI, but had become impoverished, minor nobles over the centuries. Their repeated petitions for recognition to the Bourbon rulers were in vain. When the Treaty of Montmartre was concluded in 1662, declaring the House of Lorraine to be heirs to the French throne in the event of extinction of the Bourbons, the Courtenays protested, requesting substitution of the phrase "the royal house issued in legitimate male line from the kings of France" to no avail. In 1715 Louis-Charles de Courtenay, his son Charles-Roger and his brother Roger were once again rebuffed in their attempt to seek recognition of their status. Roger, abbé de Courtenay, was the last male of the family, dying on 5 May 1733, and his sister Hélène de Courtenay, marquise de Bauffremont (1689–20 June 1768), obtained no redress when she appealed to the king in 1737 after the Parlement of Paris ordered the term "princesse du sang royal de France" deleted from court documents.

Even a cadet branch of the Bourbon line, the Bourbon-Carencys, who were most distantly related to the Dukes of Bourbon, were denied princely rank and excluded from the Conseil du Roi until their extinction in 1530. They descended from Jean, seigneur de Carency (1378–1457), the youngest son of Jean I de Bourbon, Count of La Marche.