The motivation for my question comes from a highly controversial celebrity. In an interview with Piers Morgan, Jordan Peterson stated that Olivia Wilde had married 'a millionaire prince'. I do not intend for this question to become a forum for heaping either praise or scorn on any individual; at this point, I just want to clear up a question of historical fact. But Peterson's claim, that Tao Ruspoli is a prince, serves as a useful example of the more general question I am trying to ask.
Pre-unification Italy was a patchwork of states, many of which were quite liberal in doling out quite exalted-sounding noble titles. I do not want to get into that; that would be a PhD thesis, and not a History SE question. Likewise, in modern, republican Italy, while there does seem to be some kind of shadow of recognition for titles of nobility - in continental Europe, the laws regarding personal names are generally quite restrictive compared to the US or the UK - that recognition is infinitesimally thin. Therefore, I have chosen the laws and customs of the Kingdom of Italy as my yardstick for deciding who is and is not a prince.
There is something I should clear up right away. There were two classes of people in the Kingdom of Italy who were very clearly entitled to style themselves princes, namely:
- Male-line descendants of the Kings of Italy; and,
- People granted the title of Principe di X by a legitimate authority, and their heirs successively.
I will not be giving any upvotes solely for pointing out either of those groups. Instead I am concerned with another group: younger sons of titled noblemen, and their male-line descendants, i.e the group to which Tao Ruspoli belongs. Were there any circumstances in which members of that group could style themselves princes in the Kingdom of Italy without inviting either derision or legal action?
Most of northern Italy was part of the Holy Roman Empire, and in the latter there was indeed a custom of granting the style of prince (German: Prinz) to the younger sons of those holding the higher titles of nobility, such as duke and, confusingly for either an English- or an Italian-speaker, prince (German: Fürst). The most famous example of this is perhaps Prince Eugene of Savoy (German: Prinz Eugen von Savoyen, Italian: Principe Eugenio di Savoia). Granted, Prince Eugene did his best work for the Austrians, and he died almost 125 years before the Kingdom of Italy was founded; but he did consider himself at least a bit Italian - he tended to sign himself with the Italian form of his name, Eugenio - and of course it was under the House of Savoy that Italy was finally unified.
Another near-example would be Monaco. The principality is a mere 10 miles from the Italian border, and has absorbed a great deal of Italian language and culture over the centuries. There, the siblings and children of the sovereign prince are also styled as princes and princesses.
But can anyone point me to an actual example from the Kingdom of Italy?
