Charles XII of France

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Revision as of 18:30, 3 May 2008

His Most Christian Majesty King Charles XII
King of France and Navarre
[[1]]
King of France and Navarre
Full title	His Most Christian Majesty Charles XII, By the Grace of God, King of France and Navarre, Eldest Son of the Church, Defender of the Faith
Reign November 20, 2006 - present
Preceded by	Charles XI
Succeeded by	Incumbent
Born	9 June 1979 Versailles, France
Consort	Caterina of Modena
Heir presumptive	Louis, Comte de Provence
Profession	Monarch
Religion	Roman Catholic
Royal House	House of Bourbon
Father	Charles XI of France
Mother	Charlotte of Bavaria
Languages	French, English, Dutch, German, Russian, Arabic, Italian

Charles XII (baptised Charles Xavier Philippe Joseph Marie Maximilien, born 9 June 1979, Versailles) is the reigning King of France and Navarre. Having assumed the throne upon his father's assassination in the fall of 2006, Charles has been widely viewed as one of the most politically active monarchs since the end of the Second World War, having vetoed several pieces of government legislation, most notably the Life Peerage Bill in the spring of 2007. He has also presided over the foreign policy of the Bourbon monarchy in recent political turbulence on the European continent.

Early Life and Education

Charles was born on 9 June 1979 at the Palace of Versailles. His father was the Dauphin Charles (later King Charles XI), and his mother was the Dauphine Charlotte of Bavaria. At birth, his grandfather Henri VII created him a Royal Highness and also as the Duke of Burgundy, a title which he would hold until the accession of his father in 1990, when the young prince then became the Dauphin of France.

For most of his early life, up until he was 11, he was educated in the palace by various tutors, including the Austrian political philosopher Dr. Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, who was a great friend of the Bourbon family and also the prince's godfather. He proved to be a rather precocious, intellectually gifted, and excited child that took to all opportunities to learn new things, in particular history, languages, and Catholic theology. He began attending the Lycee Henri IV in Paris when he was 14 as opposed to the normal starting age of 16 due to his intellectual talents, and graduated in 1996, having taken his exam in the humanities stream. Admitted to the Sorbonne, he pursued studies in 18th century European history and postwar philosophy and graduated with a bachelor's degree in the latter in 2000. While Charles had initially planned to go on to graduate school to eventually earn his doctorate in history, his career choice was dramatically altered due to an unexpected vacancy in the Chamber of Peers in 2000.

Early political career

In 2000, the elderly Duc de Saint-Simon, who had sat in the Chamber of Peers since 1953, died of pancreatic cancer and thus opened up an at-large seat in the assembly, which, under the Constitution of 1815, is the King's perogative to fill. Political commentators had suggested that the Dauphin could be appointed, even though no Dauphin had served in the Chamber since the early days of the Restoration. However, the Dauphin, who had already made a name for himself by publishing scathing attacks on government policy in the newspapers, was viewed as an independent who could help balance the politics of the upper chamber. King Charles XI also explained that he wanted to give his son experience in playing the rather difficult game of dealing with politicians, and that there could be no better training befitting a future monarch.

While in the assembly, Charles remained officially unaffiliated with any party, so as to preserve the political neutrality of the Crown. However, he often voted with the small "Progressive" grouping in the Chamber, which consisted of some peers largely from northern and eastern France, and would often vote against any measure he believed increased state authority. The Dauphin also launched a massive tirade against proposed Conservative legislation in 2004 that would have formally amended the French Constitution to ban homosexual marriage, stating that "while there is no greater opponent of that most unholy and unwarranted change to the institution of marriage than myself, it should not be the purview of the state to regulate these marriages. Marriage is an institution that consists of two individuals and whatever faith they do or do not believe in, not them and the state." He was also both widely praised and widely criticised for his Februrary 2005 filibuster of a government proposal to increase the VAT by two percent, which ran for eight hours straight and largely consisted of his reading aloud of various essays published by Frederic Bastiat.

By the middle of 2006, Charles was well established as a player in the small but growing "Austrian" orientation in the assembly, so named because of its economic thought similar to that of the Austrian School of von Mises and political thought similar to that of Dr. Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, the aforementioned deceased tutor of the Dauphin. Eventually, this new grouping, which picked off members from the Conservatives and Centre Party, helped to increase the size of the Liberal Alternative and thus allowed it to win a plurality of the vote in the National Assembly elections of 2006. The Dauphin immediately became the leader of the party in the Chamber of Peers, and helped to negotiate the passage of several key pieces of legislation of the new government, most importantly an act that enshrined in French law the gold standard, and declared that it could only be abolished with the consent of three-fourths of both Houses of the Parliament. Political observers widely expected that Charles would remain the leader of the government in the Chamber for some time, however, no one at that time could forwsee the coming tragedy that would affect the whole nation.

Titles and styles

• 9 June 1979 - 14 April 1990: His Royal Highness Prince Charles, Duke of Burgundy
• 14 April 1990 - 20 November 2006: His Royal Highness The Dauphin of France
• 20 November 2006 - Present: His Most Christian Majesty The King of France and Navarre

Ancestry