Princess Elvira of Bourbon

Princess Elvira of Bourbon (28 July 1871 – 9 December 1929) was the third child and second daughter of Prince Carlos, Duke of Madrid, by his first wife, Princess Margherita of Bourbon-Parma. While she never married, she had three illegitimate sons with a Florentine artist.^[1]

Princess Elvira was born in the Villa Bocage, Geneva, Switzerland as the middle of five children. Her siblings were Blanca (1868–1949), Jaime (1870–1931), Beatriz (1874–1961) and Alice (1876–1975). Her father, the Duke of Madrid, was the Carlist claimant to the throne of Spain. He organized and led the Third Carlist War between 1872 and 1876. During this time, Margherita and their children stayed in Pau, near the border. After the war, they lived in Paris for five years, until the French government banished them because of Carlos's political activities.

Her parents separated in 1881. Don Carlos went to live in Venice, while Margherita and the children went into exile in Tuscany, where they settled in the Tenuta Reale, the ancient villa of the Dukes of Parma in Viareggio. Elvira and her sisters attended the Sacre Coeur convent school in Florence. The children were very close to their mother, who had decided to place generosity and kindness at the heart of her children's education.^[2]

When she was fifteen, Elvira fell in love with her cousin, Archduke Leopold Ferdinand of Austria, who was the eldest son of her aunt Alice. They were secretly engaged between 1885 and 1889. In 1889, Elvira's older sister Blanca married Leopold's cousin and namesake, Archduke Leopold Salvator. Leopold later described Elvira as

"A wild, elfin gipsy. She had a way of standing erect and unconscious of herself; her young body, taut and lithesome, and one day when I said to her: "Elvira, you make me think of the twig of a fresh young tree, which I just long to bend," she was rather offended. The most precious of her charms was her manifest purity. That always disarmed me."^[3]

The engagement was supported by Elvira's mother and Leopold's father, but the Emperor Franz Joseph forbade their union. Leopold blamed Archduke Albrecht, Duke of Teschen, for influencing Franz Joseph. Albrecht's niece was the Dowager Queen Christina of Spain, and he had funded her efforts to repress the Carlist risings in Spain. Elvira and Leopold never met again after the Emperor's refusal, but near the end of his life, in his memoirs, he described her as "the love of his life". Nevertheless, he married three times and fathered a child with a prostitute.

In 1896, Princess Elvira ran away from Viareggio with the Italian painter Filippo Folchi. He was nine years her senior, a commoner, and already married to a woman, whom he already had two sons with (both fathered before their marriage). Her family was outraged. Elvira’s father made an official announcement, which read:

“To the Carlists. You are my family, my beloved children, and I consider it my duty to announce to you that one of my daughters, the former Infanta Doña Elvira, has died for all of us.”^[4]

The couple lived in Florence, and had three sons together, including twins:

1. Giorgio di Borbone (20 May 1900 – 19 March 1941), killed by Greek soldiers in Albania during the Second World War.
2. Léon Fulco di Borbone (22 June 1904 – 11 October 1962), who moved to the United States. His wife Anita Vazquez y Carrizosa was the sister of his brother's wife Lucia.
3. Filiberto di Borbone (22 June 1904 – 1 March 1968), who moved to the United States. His wife Lucia Vazquez y Carrizosa was the sister of his brother's wife Anita.^[5]

As their father never officially recognized the children, they all bore Elvira's last name. Within a decade, Filippo Folchi married another woman, Romilda dei Conti Noghera, who was twenty years younger than Elvira. With her, he would father three more sons.

In 1909, Elvira reconciled with her father on his deathbed.^[4] After the First World War, in which her eldest son had fought as a lieutenant, Elvira moved to Paris, France. She died there of cancer in 1929, aged 58. She was buried in Viareggio.