Editing Morganatic marriage (section)

=== France ===
Morganatic marriage was not recognized as a concept in French law.<ref name="montjouvent">de Montjouvent, Philippe. Le comte de Paris et sa descendance. ''Introduction sur la Maison royale de France''. Du Chaney Eds, Paris, 1998, p. 11. French. {{ISBN|2-913211-00-3}}.</ref> Since the law did not distinguish, for marital purposes, between ruler and subjects, marriages between royalty and the noble heiresses to great [[fief]]s became the norm through the 16th century, helping to aggrandize the [[House of Capet]] while gradually diminishing the number of large domains held in theoretical vassalage by nobles who were, in practice, virtually independent of the French crown: by the marriage of [[Catherine de' Medici]] to the future [[Henry II of France|King Henry II]] in 1533, the last of these provinces, the [[List of rulers of Auvergne#List of Carolingian and French Counts|county of Auvergne]], came to the crown of France.<ref name="anselme">{{cite book | title=Histoire de la Maison Royale de France | publisher=Editions du Palais Royal | author=Père Anselme | year=1967 | location=Paris | pages=531| author-link=Père Anselme }}</ref>

Antiquity of nobility in the legitimate male line, not noble [[quartering (heraldry)|quartering]]s, was the main criterion of rank in the ''[[ancien régime]]''.<ref name="roque">de la Roque, Gilles-Andre. Traite de la Noblesse. ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=VC-OqGr2os0C&q=nom+%26+d%27armes Du Gentilhomme de nom et d'armes]''. Etienne Michalet, Paris, 1678, pp. 5, 8-10.</ref> Unlike the status of a British peer's wife and descendants (yet typical of the nobility of every [[continental Europe]]an country), the legitimate children and male-line descendants of any French nobleman (whether titled or not, whether possessing a [[Peerage of France|French peerage]] or not) were also legally noble ''ad infinitum''.<ref name="roque"/> Rank was not based on hereditary titles, which were often assumed or [[Nobility#Ennoblement|acquired by purchase of a noble estate]] rather than granted by the Crown. Rather, the main determinant of relative rank among the French nobility was how far back the nobility of a family's male line could be verifiably traced.<ref name="roque"/> Other factors influencing rank included the family's history of military command, high-ranking offices held at court and marriages into other high-ranking families. A specific exception was made for bearers of the title of duke who, regardless of their origin, outranked all other nobles. But the ducal title in post-medieval France (even when embellished with the still higher status of "peer") ranked its holder and his family among France's nobility and not, as in Germany and Scandinavia (and, occasionally, Italy, [[viz.]] [[House of Savoy|Savoy]], [[House of Medici|Medici]], [[House of Este|Este]], [[House of della Rovere|della Rovere]], [[House of Farnese|Farnese]] and [[Cybo|Cybo-Malaspina]]) among Europe's [[reign]]ing dynasties which habitually [[royal intermarriage|intermarried]] with one another.

Once the [[House of Bourbon|Bourbons]] inherited the throne of France from the [[House of Valois]] in 1589, their [[Dynasty#Dynasts|dynasts]] married daughters of even the oldest ducal families of France — let alone noblewomen of lower rank — quite rarely (viz., [[Anne de Montafié, Countess of Clermont-en-Beauvaisis|Anne de Montafié]] in 1601, [[Charlotte Marguerite de Montmorency]] in 1609 and, in exile from revolutionary France, [[Maria Caterina Brignole]] in 1798). Exceptions were made for equal [[royal intermarriage]] with the ''[[Foreign Prince|princes étrangers]]'' and, by royal command, with the so-called ''[[Prince du sang#Legitimised royal offspring|princes légitimés]]'' (i.e., out-of-wedlock but [[bastardy|legitimised]] descendants of [[Henry IV of France|Henry IV]] and [[Louis XIV]]), as well as with the nieces of Cardinal-prime ministers (i.e., [[Cardinal Richelieu|Richelieu]], [[Cardinal Mazarin|Mazarin]]). Just as the French king could authorize a royal marriage that would otherwise have been deemed unsuitable, by 1635 it had been established by [[Louis XIII]] that the king could also legally void the canonically valid, [[Royal intermarriage|equal marriage]] of a French dynast to which he had not given consent (e.g., [[Marguerite of Lorraine#Marriage|Marguerite of Lorraine, Duchess of Orléans]]).<ref name="Blet">Blet, Pierre. Le Clergé de France et la Monarchie, Etude sur les Assemblées Générales du Clergé de 1615 à 1666. Université Grégorienne, Rome, 1959, pp. 399-439.</ref><ref name="degert">Degert, (Abbé). "Le mariage de Gaston d'Orléans et de Marguerite de Lorraine," ''Revue Historique'' 143:161-80, 144:1-57. French.</ref>

Moreover, there was a French practice, legally distinct from morganatic marriage but used in similar situations of inequality in status between a member of the royal family and a spouse of lower rank: an "openly secret" marriage. French kings authorized such marriages only when the bride was past child-bearing or the marrying prince already had dynastic heirs by a previous spouse of royal descent. The marriage ceremony took place without [[banns]], in private (with only a priest, the bride and groom, and a few legal witnesses present), and the marriage was never officially acknowledged (although sometimes widely known). Thus, the wife never publicly shared in her husband's titles, rank, or coat of arms.<ref name="pothier">Pothier, Robert. Traité des successions, Chapitre I, section I, article 3, § 4. French.</ref> The lower-ranked spouse, male or female, could only receive from the royal spouse what property the king allowed.

In secret marriage, Louis XIV wed his second wife, [[Madame de Maintenon]], in 1683 (she was nearly 50, so no children were likely); [[Louis, Grand Dauphin|Louis the Grand Dauphin]] wed [[Marie Émilie de Joly de Choin]] in 1695; Anne Marie d'Orléans (''[[Anne Marie Louise d'Orléans, Duchess of Montpensier|La Grande Mademoiselle]]'') wed [[Antoine Nompar de Caumont|Antoine, Duke de Lauzun]] in 1682; and [[Louis Philippe I, Duke of Orléans]] wed the [[Madame de Montesson|Marquise de Montesson]] in 1773. The mechanism of the "secret marriage" rendered it unnecessary for France to legislate the morganatic marriage ''per se''.<ref name="webster"/> Within post-monarchical dynasties, until the end of the 20th century the heads of the Spanish and Italian Bourbon branches, the Orléans of both France and Brazil, and the Imperial Bonapartes have, in exile, exercised claimed authority to exclude from their dynasty descendants born of unapproved marriages — albeit without calling these marriages "morganatic".