Count of Chambord had once been the child who saved the House of Bourbon. In the nineteenth century, both the Bourbons and the Habsburgs faced the same problem: the question of succession.
Before Count of Chambord was born, the House of Bourbon had nearly died out—Louis Philippe actually belonged to the House of Orleans. Around the same time, the main Habsburg line in Austria was in much the same predicament. Fortunately, Sophie was able to have children.
Count of Chambord's uncle, Louis XIX, called him the "Child of Miracles." The Legitimist Royalists liked to call him by his final name, "Leinhard," which meant "miracle."
People had high hopes for him, wishing he could restore the Bourbons to glory. History would call him "the Washington of France," "the savior of French democracy," and "the founder of the one-vote republic." Count of Chambord, the king who surpassed kings.
The moment in Count of Chambord's life when he came closest to the throne wasn't when his uncle abdicated. It was after the Franco-Prussian War, when the Bonapartists had been utterly disgraced. The throne of France had practically been delivered to him.
And this Child of Miracles lived up to everyone's expectations by performing a miracle: the reason he failed to become king of France was a flag.
Count of Chambord firmly rejected the Tricolour Flag, insisting that the Bourbon "Plain White Flag" be restored. Even Pius IX had grumbled, "All that over a rag!"
This "king," born in 1820, had lost his father to an assassination before he was born. As a posthumous child, he was educated by his mother and uncle from a young age.
Count of Chambord received a standard education for an eldest son. Starting at the age of ten, he attended inspections, banquets, and all sorts of royal and