Thursday, June 4, 2009

A translated article on the death of Prince Pedro Luis

The following article was published in Estado, a Brazilian newspaper on June 1. I used Babelfish to translate the article. It won't be perfect, but appreciate that I have tried to get the gist of the text for my readers.

" One of the descendants of the Brazilian imperial family and in the line of succession, Pedro Luis was in search of a princess. Pedro Luiz, 26, wanted to marry equally in order to maintain the Orleans-Braganca tradition alive, and restore the monarchy in the tropics. He lived in Luxembourg, a small county nestled between France, Belgium and Germany, which was near to the castles where he attended he marriages and anniversaries, the parties, and where he could meet other nobility, especially a lady of equal rank. He was a monarchist, and his name was worthy of the nobility: Pedro Luiz Maria Jose Miguel Gabriel Rafael Gonzaga de Orleans and Bragança. He was born in 1983, in the Rio, son of the prince dom Antonio and the Belgian princess Cristina de Ligne, who live in Petrópolis. He had one brother and two sisters dom Rafael, Doña Amelia and Doña Maria Gabriela, who lived in Rio. (Marlene's note: the family live in Petropolis.)
The prince,who disappeared in waters of the Atlantic Ocean, had been on Brazil on vacation to visit his family, a representative of the family told the press.
Dom Pedro Luis studied business administration and economics. After graduation from university, Dom Pedro Luiz served as apprentice in a financial institution of Luxembourg. As the first-born, he followed his father in the fight for keeping alive the monarchistic inheritance among the Brazilians. It was thus in 1993, when the family, without success, campaigned for the monarchy's restoration. Brazil had become a Republic in 1889.
When he was a child, Dom Pedro Luis accompanied his father to pro-monarchist rallies.
Pedro Luiz was great-great-great-grandson of King Pedro II and the great-great-grandson Of Princess Isabel, who signed the abolition of the slavery in Brazil. He was was third in the line of the succession because the descendants of the eldest son of Princess Isabel are not eligible due to Pedro de Alcantara's marriage to a Czech Countess in 1906 was considered unequal for succession purposes. All the descendants of Dom Pedro de Alcântara do not have succession rights. [Isabel's second son, Luis, married Princess Maria Pia of Bourbon-Two Sicilies. Their eldest son, Pedro Henrique, who was married to Princess Maria of Bavaria, died in 1981. He was succeeded as head of the family by his eldest son, Dom Luis.] Whenever a member of the family marries a commoner, the right is lost to officially represent the name of the dynasty as of the Orleans and Bragança. [Dom Antonio is the seventh son. Four of his older brothers renounced their rights because of unequal marriages.)
Spain and Portugal had abolished the requirement of equal marriages, but not but the Brazilian imperial family, explained , Alan Morgan of the Brailian Imperial Movement.
Moreover, the young man, who was one of the victims of the air accident, was third in line because his uncles, dom Luiz and dom Bertrand, first and second in the succession line, are single and and do not have children. They are members of a conservative, religious organization, Tradition, Family and Property (TFP), they believed that if the 1993 referendum had been victorious, Dom Pedro Luiz would be optimum candidate to assume the command of the monarchy. His father, dom Antonio, second in the line of succession, was for a time a structural engineer, and he now works in the arts. Since 1999, Dom Pedro Luiz was the president of a Brazilian monarchist youth organization, and he possessed the Order of the Supreme-Cross of Dom Peter and of the Rose.... There is a sad irony to this death.In 1918, in the final days of the first world war, Pedro Luis's great-great uncle, Dom Antonio, was also the victim of an air accident. A pilot in the British Army, Dom Antonio was killed in an airplane accident. His plane fell into a a field in England. Antonio was still alive when he crashed, and he prayed with fervor to be rescued, but he died before medical help could arrive."

This is a rough translation. I have left some things out. Prince Pedro Luis did have good family connections. His mother was a princess of Ligne, whose mother, Princess Alix of Luxembourg, is the youngest sister of Grand Duke Jean. His mother's first cousin is Grand Duke Henri of Luxembourg. Thus, he was related to many of Europe's royal and noble families.

According to the family's official website, Dom Pedro Luis "He was an active participant in pro-monarchy events because he believed the restoration of Brazil's monarchy was close at hand."

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