Infante Jaime, Duke of Segovia


Infante Jaime of Spain, Duke of Segovia, Duke of Anjou, , was the second son of King Alfonso XIII of Spain and his wife Princess Victoria Eugenie of Battenberg. He was born in the Royal Palace of La Granja de San Ildefonso in Segovia Province, and was consequently granted the non-substantive title of "Duke of Segovia", courtesy he held along with "Duke of Anjou" as the Legitimist pretender to the French throne. Jaime was a great-grandchild of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom.

Succession

Because he was deaf, as the result of a childhood operation, he renounced his rights to the Spanish throne for himself and his descendants on 21 June/23 June 1933. He was then granted the title "Duke of Segovia" by King Alfonso XIII. After his father's death in 1941, he proclaimed himself the senior legitimate male heir of the House of Capet, heir to the French throne, and head of the House of Bourbon. He then took the title of "Duke of Anjou" and became, in the opinion of French legitimists, the de jure king of France as "Henri VI", though to a minority as "Jacques II".
In 1921, he became the 1,153rd Knight of the Order of the Golden Fleece and Knight with Collar of the Order of Charles III and Grand Cross of the Order of Isabella the Catholic both in 1925. Later in 1941, following the death of his father and his ascendance to the title of King of France, Jaime adopted the Order of the Holy Spirit as his own by his right to the French Throne.
, 1927

Marriage and issue

On 4 March 1935, in Rome, Jaime married Victoire Jeanne Emmanuelle Joséphine Pierre Marie de Dampierre, daughter of Roger de Dampierre, 2nd Duque de San Lorenzo Nuovo, Vicomte de Dampierre and of Donna Vittoria Ruspoli, daughter of Emanuele Ruspoli, 1st Principe di Poggio Suasa, and his third wife, English American Josephine Mary Curtis. Don Jaime and Donna Emanuela had two sons, named after Jaime's hemophiliac brothers, Alfonso and Gonzalo:
Don Jaime and Emmanuelle de Dampierre divorced on 6 May 1947 in Bucharest and, on 3 August 1949 in Innsbruck, Don Jaime remarried civilly to divorced singer Charlotte Luise Auguste Tiedemann, daughter of Otto Eugen Tiedemann and wife Luise Amalia Klein. In the eyes of the Roman Catholic Church and of the French legitimists, Emmanuelle de Dampierre remained always his wife. The second marriage produced no children. His first wife remarried in Vienna, on 21 November 1949, to Antonio Sozzani, son of Cesare Sozzani and wife Cristina Alemani, without issue.

Renunciation

On 6 December 1949, Don Jaime retracted his renunciation of the throne of Spain. On 3 May 1964, he took the title "Duke of Madrid" as head of a Carlist branch of the Spanish succession. On 19 July 1969, Don Jaime definitively renounced the Spanish succession in favour of his nephew, the future King Juan Carlos I of Spain, at the request of his elder son, Alfonso de Borbón.
Don Jaime died in St. Gall Cantonal Hospital in Switzerland on 20 March 1975. He is buried at the Royal Monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial.

Ancestry

Heraldry