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Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Bourbon count charges wife with adultery



May 27, 1910

Luigi,  Count of Roccaguglielma has started proceedings in Lucca, Italy, for a judicial separation against his wife, naming "the painter Campriani as co-respondent," according to the Marquise de Fontenoy.  He married  Enrica Weiss di Valbranca in  Nice on January 23, 1898.

The Count is the son of the late  Prince Louis of Bourbon-Two Sicilies, Count of Roccaguglielma, who in 1869 in New York married the Havana-born Miss Amelia Bellow-Hamel. Amelia was "for all intents and purposes an American girl" as she lived in the United States until her marriage.

The Roccaguglielma marriage was as unhappy as Prince Luigi's marriage. After the birth of a son and a daughter, the Count and his American wife separated. He was "condemned to pay her $2000 a year in alimony.

The late Prince Louis neglected to "comply with the order." His mother Princess Januaria, a sister of the late Brazilian emperor, "furnished the funds instead. The payments ceased when Januaria died in 1901. Amelia filed a new lawsuit against her husband, but the claim was "unavailing" as Prince Luigi owned no property. 

Januaria bequeathed her son's share of her fortune to his two children, Maria Gennara, who is married to William Freeman, and Luigi, 

The late Count of Roccaguglielma died in 1909. Although his marriage to Amelia Bellow-Hamel was morganatic, and his children do not bear the title Prince or Princess of Bourbon-Two Sicilies, his son succeeded to the countly title.

The present count,  born in 1872, served in the Italian army as Prince Louis of Borbone and recently held the commission as captain in the Italian cavalry. He was a favorite of the late King Umberto and his wife, Queen Margherita, and "it was largely owing to this that he succeeded in winning the hand, and incidentally the fortune," of Enrica Weiss, the daughter of an "immensely rich German merchant" who settled in Rome.

Luigi is familiar with the legal process in Italy and France, as he had to file seventeen suits to "secure possession" of his grandmother's fortune. Most of the suits against him were raised by his uncle, Prince Filippo di Borbone, his father's younger brother.

Luigi and his estranged wife have three children, Luigi, Gennara, and Carlo.

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