Jeanne-Françoise Valliccioni was born in Ortiporio, Corsica, on 26 March 1958. She is the eldest daughter of Paul Valliccioni and his wife, Padoue née Piacentini. On 28 September 1996, she was married in a civil ceremony to Prince Charles. She had previously married Erik Langrais on 15 July 1978 at Casaglione, Corsica, from whom she was divorced on 24 July 1990. Her marriage to the heir to the Napoleonic legacy was contracted without the prior consent or subsequent acceptance of the bridegroom's father, Louis, Prince Napoléon, then head of the former imperial dynasty. After his death, his will cited the unapproved marriage as one of the grounds for the decision to bypass Charles in the line of succession to the former French Imperial throne in favour of Prince Jean-Christophe Napoléon, who was born of Charles Napoléon's dissolved first marriage to Princess Béatrice of Bourbon-Two Sicilies. Article 6 of the French Empire's constitution, as modified by the Senatus Consultus of 7 November 1852, stipulated that "...The members of the family of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte eligible for the succession, and their descendants of both sexes, are members of the Imperial family...They may not marry without the Emperor's authorization. Their marriage without such authorization entails loss of all rights of succession, both for him who contracts the marriage and his descendants." Pursuant to this constitutional provision, which was in force until the abolition of the French imperial monarchy in 1870, the marriage to Valliccioni automatically excluded from the imperial house not only Valliccioni's husband, but all of their children, born and to be born, male and female. Charles Napoléon has publicly rejected the applicability of that law and of the effects of dynastic disinheritance by his father, maintaining that he inherited by right and retains representation of Napoleon's imperial legacy. When Charles and Jeanne-Françoise married, they already had a daughter, Sophie Cathérine Napoléon. In 1998, the couple adopted a daughter of Vietnamese extraction, Anh Napoléon.
