Marriage morganatic

A marriage Morganatique is the union between a sovereign, or a prince, with a person of lower row, according to the optics of Germanic monarchies . The wife is then described of morganatic wife and never of queen or morganatic queen for example. The children of a marriage morganatic are not dynastes.

The term comes from Morgengabe which in the old Germanic habits indicated the gift ( Gabe ) that one gave the next morning ( Morgen ) to the clan of a raptée or married woman. The term of morganatic is in fact used only in the courses German.

A marriage morganatic is an unequal marriage but with a precise definition: to comply with the rule of equality of birth and to avoid contracting such a marriage morganatic , the two joint ones were to belong to a family reigning, Médiatisé E or having reigned .

It is sometimes the woman who holds the dynastic rights: if France, Austria and Russia followed the Salic law or its equivalent, Austria and Russia specified in their laws sucessorales that a woman could inherit the throne in the absence of all agnat dynaste.

These conditions of equality were easy to fill in Germany considering the big number of principalities that one found there.

François-Ferdinand of Austria, celebrates it Archiduc assassinated in 1914 had contracted such a marriage morganatic .

A difficulty in their study lies in the fact that the morganatic branches take a new name not pointing out of anything the house from which they result. For example the Hohenberg result from the Habsbourg-Lorraine, the Battenberg of the Hesse and the Urach of the Wurtemberg.

In general the destiny was lenient for these German morganatic branches and they remained in good term with the chief of their house of origin.

Sometimes their members ended up contracting unions with dynasties not knowing the morganatic concept of marriage, which could bring back their “equality for them”. Or to conquer a new throne. Thus the Battenberg (renamed Mountbatten) thrived in Great Britain and provided a sovereign to the Bulgaria, and Urach approached the throne of Monaco.

Russia knows the concept (since Romanov were replaced by the Holstein-Gottorp) but without using the term. Many large-dukes were in this case with the nineteenth century. At the end of a long exile, only “the Romanov” (of the Maison of Oldenbourg) remaining dynaste, if one always utilizes the rule of equality of birth, is Maria Vladimirovna (1953-), girl of Vladimir Kirillovitch (1917-1992).

Morganatic concept of marriage existed forever in French successional right: a catholic marriage is enough (in the absence of marriage the children are bastard for the canonical Droit). More recently, the wire of Henri of Orleans (1908-1999) contracted quite different but catholic marriages, from which are resulting from the dynastes.

Madam de Maintenon was the secret wife but not Morganatique of Louis XIV.

The French right indeed does not have as a source the Germanic habits but the Roman law where the father was regarded as the principal author of a child: the statute of the mother thus has a less importance in France.

More generally one can notice than the morganatism is a primarily Germanic concept, which existed in the Latin kingdoms (France, Navarre, Spain Portugal, Italian peninsula, etc) neither in England nor in Scotland. From where, for example, the nullity of the renunciation of the prince Pierre of Orleans-Bragance, (father of Isabelle of Orleans and Bragance) with its rights to the Brazilian imperial throne.

The rule of equality of birth does not merge with the obligation to obtain an authorization with the marriage (given by the Parliament or the household head):

the need for an authorization can be added to the rule of equality in certain course.
No authorization or exemption can compensate for an absence of equality.

The rule of equality of birth does not merge either with an abdication or a renunciation, even if there were many renouncements for reason of heart like that of the king Edouard VIII of the United Kingdom.

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