Biography of the Emperor of Iberia, Jaime I

[miketr]

Biography of the Emperor of Iberia, Jaime I.

Jaime was the only son of Carlos, then Duke of Madrid, and of his wife Princess Margarita of Bourbon-Parma. He was born at Vevey in Switzerland, June 27th, 1870.

Jaime was educated by the Jesuits first at the Collège de Vaugirard in Paris and then at Beaumont College in Old Windsor. He then attended the Theresian Military Academy at Wiener Neustadt in Austria.
In 1896 Jaime received a commission in the Russian Army. He rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel in the Guards Regiment of the Grodno Hussars. 

During 1898 while on leave in Munich Jaime met Princess Mathilde von Bayern of the Wittelsbach Family.  The two became close and it is rumored that Jaime proposed but pressure from the Spanish Government and Mathilde own family caused the engagement to be broken off.

In 1902 Spain was plunged into the red terror and a number of areas rose in revolt.  With Austrian support Carlos raised the standard of Carlism once more in Spain.  Jaime along with his uncle Alfonso joined Carlos in the campaign to restore legitimate Bourbon line to the throne of Spain.  The fighting dragged on till 1903 when it was ended by treaty and Spain was split along the old fifteenth century lines and the Kingdom of Aragon is restored with Carlos as its king and Jaime as heir apparent.  The campaign saw Jaime taking personal part in the fighting.

With the Carlist fortune undergoing a massive reversal Jaime once more proposed to Mathilde and this time the marriage went forward.  In late 1903 the couple was married in a lavish ceremony in Barcelona's Cathedral of Santa Eulàlia.  October 10th 1904 infante Fernando de Bourbon y Wittelsbach was born and baptized in the same cathedral as his parents wedding

1905 saw both Spain and Portugal plunged into chaos once more.  At which point Carlos was able to bring order to the situation and the union of nations known as Iberia.  Jaime over time had taken a more active role in support of his father's government.  When the new constitution was issued for Iberia, Jaime played a key role to bring it about.  Carlos had ruled Aragon as an absolute Monarchy by divine right.  Jaime was able to make the case that the ideas of the seventeenth century might no longer work in the twentieth; in particular over a newly unified nation that had been subjected to war in all of its parts within the last 10 years. 

The year 1906 would see the prince dealt a personal blow.  His wife the Princess Mathilde has been fighting lung problems for many years was stricken with a severe case of pneumonia.  She died that fall while trying to recover at an imperial residence on the Mediterranean coast.  Her body was interred in the Bourbon family crypt in Madrid.  The princess was just short of her 29th birthday when she died.

By 1907 Jaime had become a key fixture of the Iberian government and would see this role increased when that fall the Emperor became ill and in turn died.

Emperor Jaime besides his Iberian titles is also pretender to a number of other ones.  These include but are not limited to the following.

Jaime has a claim to the title eastern title, Emperor of the Romans as he is descended from and is the successor of Ferdinand II of Aragon. Ferdinand received these rights as de jure Roman Emperor by the last will and testament of the ultimate Palaiologos claimant of the Byzantine Empire, Andreas Palaiologus, a nephew of the Emperor Constantine XI, who was the last to actually reign in Constantinople and was killed in 1453.  A number of others also claim this title.

Claim to the title of King of Jerusalem.  This crusader title passed down from Brienne Family line as kings of Cyprus and to its many successors.  The Spanish Bourbon claim to the throne is through King Louis XIV who laid his own claim to the title that has been kept up by the Spanish Bourbon line.  A number of other royal families and even the Pope also lays claim to the title.

Legitimist claimant to the vacant French throne through his ancestor Philip V of Spain the first Spanish Bourbon king and his grandfather Louis XIV King of France.  As such Jaime has among his styles Jacques de Bourbon, Duc d'Anjou.  The claim came into effect with the 1883 death of Henri, comte de Chambord and the extinction of the senior French Bourbon line.  Then Carlist claimant to the Spanish throne Juan, Count of Montizón the Grandfather of Jaime accepted the claim to the French throne without pursing the title in anyway.  The claim passed down his line to Jaime today.  This claim is of course disputed by other Legitimist's and Orléanist claimant because of the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht that settled the War of Spanish succession where Philip renounced his rights and those of his descendants to the throne of France.

Claim to the throne of King of the Two Sicilies.  This claim stems from the second of the Carlists, Infante Carlos, Count of Montemolin (1818 – 1861) Jaime's Great Grandfather.  Carlos succeeded to his fathers claim to the throne of Spain following his father's abdication in 1845.  After the unification of Italy in 1847 and the abdication of the Bourbon-Two Sicilies line of their royal dignities to King of Sardinia Vittorio Emmanuele II; Infante Carlos said the Scilian title instead defaulted back to the Spanish Bourbon line of which he was legal heir.  The Infante Carlos like his father was a strong believer in the divine right of kings and felt that that the democratic nature of the Italian unification disqualified the Bourbon-Two Sicilies line.  Also Spain of course had its own long history of involvement with the Italy.  OOC: of these claims this one is totally made up by me but with the changes of the N3 world I think it tracks.

OOC2: The Aragon and the following Iberian government have never used these titles in official or diplomatic dispatches.  There use is limited to the Spanish House of Bourbon.