‘A child who implores your clemency from his mother's womb’: emotion, inclusion and the unborn Condé child (1656)

In the Fronde's aftermath, the treason and flight of the ‘Grand’ Prince of Condé Louis II de Bourbon raised pointed questions about belonging and community in Louis XIV's France, and news of his wife's 1656 pregnancy while in exile in Flanders further complicated those issues. The ambiguities surrounding the child's subjecthood, nobility and royalty were instantly apparent. Was it possible to preserve the status of a child of cadet royalty, conceived outside France by a father found guilty of lèse‐majesté and banished from the kingdom, presently leading Spanish armies? If it were a son, could the putative prince of royal blood claim a place in the line of succession? In the months of uncertainty before the child's birth, the Condé faction schemed to address vexing questions of inheritance, succession and fundamental terms of belonging. The issues they raised and the pathos‐laden tactics they pursued reveal key features of France's cultural, legal and affective landscape in the tumultuous years between the Fronde and the Sun King's ‘personal reign’, when modern notions of citizenship and nationality had just begun to take shape.