1Writing of the problems facing Philippe d'Orléans in 1715 at the beginning of his regency for Louis XV, the duc de Saint-Simon grew heated in his discussion of one of the aspects of early-modern court society which he most detested:

"Dans quelque servitude que tout fut réduit en France, il restoit des points sur lesquels la terreur pouvoit retenir les discours, mais n'avoit pas atteint à corrompre les esprits. Un de ces points étoit celui des bâtards, de leurs établissements, surtout de leur apothéose. Tout frémissoit en secret, jusqu'au milieu de la cour, de leur existence, de leur grandeur, de leur habilété de succéder à la couronne. Elle étoit regardée comme le renversement de toutes les lois divines et humaines, comme le sceau de tout joug, comme un attentat contre Dieu même et le tout ensemble comme le danger le plus imminent de l'Etat et de tous les particuliers"1.

2Saint-Simon's fulminations, along with the equally volcanic epistolary explosions of Louis XIV's sister-in-law, Elisabeth-Charlotte of the Palatinate, duchesse d'Orléans, have fixed an image of princely bastards as disruptive irregularities threatening the orderly functioning of the body politic. As Saint-Simon has dominated, disproportionately, the study of Versailles as much as the Versailles System itself has determined, again misguidedly, the course of many studies devoted to European courts in general, his view of a prince's illegitimate offspring as the hidden enemy of his own divinely-selected sovereignty has established itself as a point of reference in discussions of the overlap of the private and public spheres of a prince's life, the intimate sexual urge and the paternal desire to integrate its fruit openly into the family and court mechanisms of clientage and power. An investigation into the careers of the illegitimate children, both male and female, of the House of Savoy presents a different model to Saint-Simon's "black legend" of self-interested disloyalty and argues for an interpretation in which service to the legitimate head of the House was the price for recognition of membership in the House itself The House of Savoy consistently used its illegitimate offspring as clients, to facilitate and implement policy and, at times of crisis, to help shape policy. The legitimized Savoy bastards thus constituted an additional pool of talent and human resources, for appointments and for marriages, upon which the dukes of Savoy or their regents could draw in return for official acknowledgement of their association with and proximity to the blood of the sovereign dynasty.

3Emanuele Filiberto realized the potential utility of the illegitimate lines of his family shortly after his restoration to his patrimonial lands following the Treaty of Câteau-Cambrésis of 1559. During his years of exile when he was in the service of first his uncle, Emperor Charles V, and then his cousin, Felipe II, the young duke had been the focus of much matrimonial speculation, with a suggested match to the future Elizabeth I as a plausible means for maintaining a Catholic presence at the English court. Emanuele Filiberto, however, had to keep himself in conjugal reserve, with all the risks such a policy entailed for assuring his own descent, as the selection of a consort was inextricably bound up with the question of the Savoyard restoration. French insistence upon the duke's marriage to Henri II's sister, Marguerite de Valois, duchesse de Berri, brought added problems, for the new Duchess of Savoy was thirty-six years of age in 1559, and the strong possibility of a barren marriage kept hope alive in Paris for eventually reopening the question of the Savoy succession. There was, moreover, only one other prince of the House of Savoy, Emanuele Filiberto's sole heir at this juncture, his first cousin, Jacques, duc de Nemours, and his juridical capacity to marry was complicated by a loose verbal promise to wed Françoise de Rohan, upon whom he had fathered a son whom he refused to recognize, and by his emotional entanglement with no less a married woman than Anna d'Este, duchesse de Guise. Even though, early in 1562, Marguerite produced a healthy male heir, the prince of Piedmont, the future Carlo Emanuele I, the Savoy succession was perilously fragile, at least until Nemours and Anna d'Este were both free to marry each other and add to the supply of Savoy princes2.

4Emanuele Filiberto's reaction to this very serious problem was to turn to the legitimized Unes of his extended family, in the first instance to Claude and Honorato de Savoie-Tende, the sons of René, styled Grand Bâtard de Savoie, himself the illegitimate offspring of Emanuele Filiberto's grandfather3. The Tende branch had been anything other than faithful supporters of the legitimate, senior line of the House during its decades of exile, and it had supported the French invasion of the patrimonial lands, but a reconciliation between Emanuele Filiberto and his cousins had been achieved immediately after Câteau-Cambrésis. More extraordinarily, on 22 January 1562, literally ten days after the birth of his heir, the duke declared the Tende line capable of succession to the duchy of Savoy in sequence after his own issue and the duc de Nemours. Although both brothers held fiefs in the states of their cousin-Claude was invested with Sommariva in 1561 and in 1563 Emanuele Filiberto raised the county of Villars to a marquisate in Honorato's favour - their careers were passed exclusively in French service. Closely attached to the Montmorency family4, it is possible that they helped to advance Savoyard policy in those provinces of south-eastern France in which the dukes of Savoy habitually took a covetous interest5. They played only a negligible role, however, at the court of Turin, and, in this context, it is striking that neither brother was awarded the supreme House Order of the Annunziata. The role of the Tende is best understood as, almost exclusively, a dynastic safety-net for the 1560s.

5A much more active role at the court of Turin itself was envisaged by Emanuele Filiberto for even more distant, legitimized relations: the duke, seeking reliable clients, "ebbe quel vero culto della famiglia... non la famiglia ristretta, ma allergata agli illegittimi e ai rami collaterali di Savoia"6. Here Emanuele Filiberto had to reach back to members of the family descending from the bastard son, born at some point in the 1390s, to the last Savoyard prince of Achaia and the Morea, the Savoia-Racconigi, but there the pattern differs radically from their francophile Savoie-Tende cousins. Nearly all of the lands held by this branch of the dynasty were in the principality of Piedmont rather than in the duché de Savoie, and the transfer in 1562 of the seat of the court from Chambéry to Turin brought the Savoia-Racconigi much doser geographically to the centre of power than they had been heretofore. Moreover, a sequence of marnages into the Valperga, the Provana, the Montbel and the Seyssel clans gave the Savoia-Racconigi a key role in the network of some of the most prominent court families, while contacts outside the ducal entourage were assured by matrimonial ties to the Adorno of Genoa, the Gondi of Florence and the Borromeo of Milan. The Savoia-Racconigi moved rapidly into court service following the restoration of the dynasty. Claudio became Emanuele Filiberto’s somiglier del corpo in 1562; his wife was dama d'onore to the Duchess Marguerite and, eventually, co-gouvernante of the young Carlo Emanuele; his brother, Filippo, was named a gentleman of the chamber and entered the duke's council. Emanuele Filiberto signalled clearly the importance he attached to his kindred's roles when, in 1568, he made his first promotion to the Annunziata, the first to take place in over forty years, by naming Filippo and Claudio immediately after the prince of Piedmont as knights of the Order7.

6The ascension of the Savoia-Racconigi in the ducal service hierarchy gathered momentum after the death, in 1580, of Emanuele Filiberto, who named the pro-French Filippo as one of his heir's two principal advisers. The next generation prospered as well, Filippo's son, Giambattista, rewarded with the abbey of San Benigno di Fruttuaria, became a close counsellor, was entrusted with a confidential mission to Pope Gregorio XIII Buoncompagni in 1581 and 1583 became, in his turn, somiglier del corpo to the young duke. Pierpaolo Merlin has emphasized the importance of appointments "nella camera [ducale], cioè in quello spazio che meglio garantiva la vicinanza e la confidenza con il principe"8. Giambattista's brothers continued the advance, with Bernardino emerging as the most powerful member of the line, serving as captain of the company of archers of the duke's bodyguard and, in 1583, as lieutenant-general of the duché de Savoie. Bernardino and Giambattista were both admitted to the Annunziata, but the clearest sign of the dominance of the Savoia-Racconigi during the early years of Carlo Emanuele Fs reign came in 1581 with the recognition of their right to succeed to the crown, failing any legitimate male issue from the still unmarried duke himself or the Nemours branch, the last male representative of the Savoie-Tende having died in 1580. Thus, by time of the marriage of Carlo Emanuele in 1585 to the younger daughter of Felipe II, the Infanta Catalina Micaela, a union which offered hopes of direct descent for the duke, thus obviating the need for elaborate succession precautions, and which prefigured the eclipse of the francophile Savoia-Racconigi, both Emanuele Filiberto and his son had established the importance and had signalled the utility of the roles to be played by the illegitimate issue of the House of Savoy. Faced with the task of reconstructing the Savoyard State after nearly thirty years of French and imperial occupation, both dukes turned to the bastard branches to guarantee the succession and to staff their households and councils.

7The disappearance of the Savoie-Tende in 1580, despite the residual ties of fidelity of those French nobles descended from its female members9, and the extinction of the line of the Savoia-Racconigi with the death of the childless Bernardino in 1605, eliminated the bastard branches from the political equations at the court of Turin. Bastards, however, continued to play a central role, for the place of the Tende and the Racconigi was filled by the swarm of illegitimate children fathered by both Emanuele Filiberto and Carlo Emanuele I. Emanuele Filiberto is recorded as the father of eight illegitimate children, Carlo Emanuele I eleven10. Looked at aggregately, the lives of these nineteen bastards present some clear and distinct patterns. Although for obvious reasons of bienséance the birth dates of illegitimate children were not always recorded with the archivai precision which historians would prefer, it appears that of Emanuele Filiberto's eight bastards, one, Rosa Maria di Savoia, was born in 155611, before her father's wedding, one in the year of the death of the Duchess Marguerite, 1574, another six afterwards and only one, Amedeo di Savoia, who seems to have made an appearance in 1561 or 1562, can be verified as having been born during the period when the duke was married to the duchess. All of Carlo Emanuele I's eleven bastards were born after the death of his consort in 1597. This is not to argue that, apart from the odd lapse, both dukes were models of conjugal fidelity, but such a sequence of births does mean that, with one exception, their bastards were obviously not the living proof of a husband's adultery. Legitimation was, correspondingly, less embarrassing, and entry into a System of clientele, the head of which, sooner or later, would be one of their legitimate half-brothers, was facilitated. As all but two of these nineteen Savoy bastards were the isssue of the last halves of their father's lives, this pattern meant that their half-siblings enjoyed the advantage not only of legitimacy but also of age. Nearly all the bastards were significantly younger than their half-brothers and half-sisters, and, not surprisingly, therefore, they outlived most of them, Gabriele di Savoia, the last surviving bastard of Carlo Emanuele I, dying as late as 1695, well into the reign of his half-brother's grandson.

8Of Emanuele Filiberto's eight illegitimate children, only the one born in 1574, Piero Luigi, was not recognized and he was raised as a member of the Roero family, into which his mother was married, most likely as a matter of convenience, in the same year. Of Carlo Emanuele's eleven, four, including the colourfullynamed Vitichindo, an obvious allusion to the Savoyard pretence of descent from the Saxon and Imperial Houses, were not, for reasons which remain unclear, legitimized, although of these, Silvio, the future Grand Prior of Savoy, was "riconosciuto dalla famiglia ma non dichiarato"12. Although the identities of a few of the mothers remain shadowy, it is clear that the mothers of the legitimized offspring were scarcely girls of the Street. Some came from extremely distinguished families and formed durable relationships with their ducal lovers. Beatrice di Langosco was the daughter of Emanuele Filiberto's gran canceliere, the conte di Stoppiana, and she bore the duke three children, Ottone (another Saxon evocation), Beatrice and Matilda di Savoia. As Beatrice was a young widow at the commencement of her liaison with Emanuele Filiberto, it was clear that the duke was free from the stigma of having deflowered a well-born virgin13. Carlo Emanuele I fathered four children upon Marguerite de Rossillon, with whom he was rumoured to have entered a formal but secret marriage arrangement, and one each on members of the Provana and Duyn-Mareschal families, powerful clans in Piedmont and Savoie respectively. Such stable relationships could, therefore, produce clusters of full-siblings within the larger pool of illegitimate offspring, and some of these children were attached, through their mothers, to prominent families within the Savoyard power and service structures.

9Of these nineteen bastards, only five were daughters, and of these, only one, the obscure Anna Caterina, who, it seems, was not legally recognized as his daughter by Carlo Emanuele I, was not marked out for a very public career of service to the dynasty at court and through what, for illegitimate children, must be seen as hierarchically impressive marriage proposals. Emanuele Filiberto's eldest child, Rosa Maria di Savoia, was married in 1570 to Filippo d'Este, marchese di San Martino, the direct descendant of the legitimate younger brother of Ercole I d'Este, duke of Ferrara. The bridegroom had, therefore, strong daims to the sovereign Este duchies of Ferrara, Modena and Reggio, but, as with many heads of cadet branches of Houses with a restricted patrimony, Filippo mixed his duties to his own dynasty with service to other sovereigns. His arrivai in Turin was part of Emanuele Filiberto’s conscious policy to attract "alla sua Corte Prencipi per Vassalli"14. Filippo was made a knight of the Annunziata in 1569, and his wedding to the duke of Savoy's illegitimate daughter in the following year established his position as a prominent figure at court and, thanks to his wife's dowry, the signoria of Crevacuore, later exchanged for that of Lanze, a Savoyard fief-holder. One of the leaders of the filospagnuoli at the court of Turin, he became general of the cavalry and was sent as Emanuele Filiberto's envoy to Rome in 1572 to negotiate the union of the Orders of San Maurizio and San Lazzaro. Filippo continued to serve Carlo Emanuele I and acted as lieutenant-general of the States of Savoy during the duke's wedding journey to Spain in 158515. Although the marchese di Lanze also fulfilled family obligations in Ferrara, including acting as an Este ambassador, especially during periods of political opposition to the duke's shifting foreign policy, the marriage of Filippo and Rosa Maria established a base at the court of Turin for their family which subsequent generations would exploit. Their son, Sigismondo, received the Annunziata in 1609 and served as general of the cavalry and lieutenant-general of the duché de Savoie and of the marquisate of Saluzzo, while the attachment of this line of the Este to the House of Savoy was Consolidated by a second marriage to another ducal bastard, that of Sigismondo's son, Filippo Francesco, to Margherita di Savoia, Carlo Emanuele I's daughter by Marguerite de Rossillon. That this marriage took place in 1645, fifteen years after the death of the bride's father, indicates clearly that it was not paternal concern to provide a suitable establishment for illegitimate offspring which motivated the match, but rather practical dynastic policy to guarantee the services of the cadet branch of another sovereign family.

10Similar considerations drove forward the match of the daughter presented to Emanuele Filiberto by Beatrice di Langosco, Matilda di Savoia, who appears to have been marked out early for a marriage which was both prestigious and useful. Among Carlo Emanuele I's unrealized plans for this half-sister were matrimonial proposals to Francesco Spinola, scion of one of the leading patrician families in the neighbouring Republic of Genoa, and to Hercule de Montmorency, a match which would have strengthened the existing ties to this critically important element in the French political equation16. Instead, Matilda was married, in 1605, to Charles de Simiane, whose simple title of seigneur d'Albigny misrepiesents the power and pretentions of his family. Characterised as Princes of Apt, over which they claimed regalian authority, in the eleventh century, the Simiane belonged to a group of francophone families, who sought recognition of their princely status by the acquisition of small but sovereign territories and by association, usually through marriage, with sovereign dynasties. The Simiane buttressed their hierarchical claims with such practical expressions of their power as possession of strategically important and fortified meridional strongholds, notably Gordes17 Charles de Simiane had entered Savoyard service in 1597, and his subsequent marriage to the half-sister of his master, as distinct from his sovereign, so Consolidated the position of his family that even his disgrace and execution in 1608 left the Simiane powerbase at the court of Turin relatively intact. His son, significantly baptised Carlo Emanuele Filiberto, thus iconographically stamping him with the names of his Savoy kindred, became, as marchese di Pianezza, grand Chamberlain of the duke of Savoy and, eventually, first minister of State. Matilda, herself, played a larger role than that of the physical bond of the Simiane to the Savoyard clientèle System, and was surintendante of the household of Marie-Christine of France, who married the future Vittorio Amedeo I in 1619. Her importance and her status at the court of her half-brother is clearly signalled by her selection as "marraine de tous les princes ses enfants, hors du premier", at whose baptism she, nevertheless, acted as the proxy for the Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia18 Matilda also played the role of intermediary, so characteristic of well-placed House clients, by intervening in 1636 on behalf of her legitimate half-nephew, Cardinal Maurizio, with the Duchess Marie-Christine19.

11The matrimonial projects surrounding Matilda's full sister, named Beatrice after their mother, define even further the pattern for the use of the House of Savoy's bastard daughters as clients, for she was promised in marriage to Francesco Filiberto di Ferrero-Fieschi, eventually prince of Masserano. Sandwiched between the States of the duke of Savoy and the duchy of Milan, Masserano was juridically a papal fief, but came increasingly during the sixteenth century to acquire the character of a sovereignty20. A Fieschi-Savoy link had previously been established by Francesco Filiberto's mother, Claudina di Savoia-Racconigi, the sister of Bernardino and Giambattista21, and even though Beatrice died before the marriage could be performed, the project itself indicated Savoyard interest in attaching the princes of Masserano to their service System and even included an elaborate proposai for the transfer of their territory to Amedeo di Savoia, Emanuele Filiberto's bastard son, should the Fieschi family die out22. Francesco Filiberto di Ferrero-Fieschi, despite his fiancée's death, became one of Carlo Emanuele's generals and received the Annunziata in 1608, his daughter, Claudia, married Carlo Umberto di Savoia, one of Carlo Emanuele I's bastards, in 1645, and the blood ties were strengthened even further in 1686 with the marriage of one of Carlo Emanuele II's bastards, Cristina Ippolita, to Carlo Bessi di Ferrero-Fieschi, prince of Masserano. Stretching over five generations these unions with the Fieschi family provided the House of Savoy with a sequence of close collaborators at the court of Turin, w'hile also assuring that a small principality on the north-eastern border of Piedmont remained in the hands of men who had much to gain from the favour of their ducal kinsmen.

12The motivations behind such marriages were rarely committed to paper or had they been, the survival rate is strikingly low. One valuable exception is the documentation surrounding an unrealized marriage project, supported by Cardinal Maurizio, for his illegitimate half-sister, Margherita di Savoia, to the duca di Cesarini, a leading Roman patrician, a match "ch’io approvo per i servigj che S.A.R. [Vittorio Amedeo I] ne può aspettare". Having introduced the concept of "services", if not service itself, Maurizio listed the potential benefits. "La qualità della famiglia è fra le migliori di Roma, apparentata con Colonna, Orsini, Conti, Savelli, Gaetani", the leading princely clans into which the famiglie nere consistently attempted to marry. The young Cesarini had an uncle who was a cardinal, and Maurizio emphasized "Li servigi che si considerano per S.A.R. sono l'havere quà un Cardinale aderente, ben accreditato appresso tutta la Corte e che stà ottimmamente a Palazzo [del Vaticano]". "In evento di qualche improvisto bisogno di denaro" the financial credit of the wealthy Cesarini would be of use in raising loans, especially as the prospective bridegroom's grandmother was an illegitimate daughter of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese from whom she had inherited a handsome fortune. Finally, "Potrebbe col tempo fatto poco più maturo di età questo P.e [the duca di Cesarini] far l'ambasciata appresso N.ro Sig.e con gran splendore e gloria di S.A.R."23. In discussing this proposai, Maurizio confined himself to the benefits which the House of Savoy could derive from recruiting the Cesarini family into their clientèle System, and it was left to Père Monod to underscore the complementary advantages for the Cesarini, already linked to the Farnese dukes of Parma through marriage to an illegitimate offspring, in accepting a Savoy bastard, for they "considèrent pas en cette alliance la seule personne du P. cardinal [Maurizio], mais l'honneur d'estre apparentés à Sa Royale Maison et à la puissance d'icelle"24. This is the clear language of a service hierarchy in which illegitimate daughters link superior and inferior units to the mutual profit of both parties.

13The policy adopted by successive dukes of Savoy in making use of the House's illegitimate daughters was coherent, and it was applied consistently. In the profoundly hierarchical court society of early modem Europe much importance was attached to the rank of a prince's "servants", those in his service, and the dukes of Savoy aimed to recruit such families as the Este di San Martino, the Simiane and the Fieschi which, although much less elevated and powerful than the House of Savoy, were, in differing ways, associated with the critical concept of sovereignty. Such clans thus brought prestige to the court of Turin, along with the more practical advantages of their own clientèle Systems and their own familial contacts outside the duchy of Savoy, both of which could be put at the duke's disposal. Maurizio of Savoy perceived such potential in the proposed Cesarini marriage, and, in 1674, the marchese di Pianezza's value to his ducal kinsman was presented in terms of military recruitment because of his "terre considérable en Provence... Il aurait beaucoup de facilité de faire cette levée, ayant d'ailleurs en ce pays-là et en Dauphiné quantité de parents de son nom, qui est Simiane"25. Although marriage of a legitimate daughter, a princess of the House of Savoy, into one of these families would have been an unacceptable mésalliance, an illegitimate daughter could be used to bridge the hierarchical gap, but only if she were recognized and, preferably, legitimized. Perception of her membership in the House of Savoy and public acknowledgement of the proximity of her relationship to the reigning duke, brought the benefits of access to favour and advancement within one of the leading European courts of the second level and were, for the bridegroom and his family, as important parts of her dowry as the lands and titles she brought26. This public recognition could have practical benefits as well, and, in 1674, when Carlo Emanuele II seemed likely to disgrace Pianezza's son, the marchese di Livorno, the French ambassador to Turin expressed his hope that the punishment would be mitigated by "son rang comme petit-fils d'une fille naturelle d'Emanuele Philibert"27. Bastard daughters could act as clients in this way only if their position in the ruling family was proclaimed and asserted28

14.The clans who became attached to the service of the House of Savoy by accepting an illegitimate daughter did not become subjects of the duke, apart from in matters deriving from those fiefs, among their many others, held directly from him. The Este di San Martino were subjects of the head of their House, the dukes of Ferrara and, after 1597, Modena, and this meant, in turn, that they were ultimately under the authority of the Holy Roman Emperor29. The princes of Masserano were papal fiefholders, but also considered themselves as sovereigns in the service, or to some extent under the protection, of another, a brother sovereign, while the Simiane considered themselves to be sufficiently sovereign to move from one service System to another as their needs dictated, a pattern of behaviour followed as well by the Este di San Martino and the Fieschi.

15Such flexibility, however, meant that the House of Savoy could not count upon the permanent attachment of these familes, and the need to renew ties of clientèle most probably accounts for the multiple marriages over generations by their bastard daughters into the Este di San Martino and the Fieschi. Moreover, the pool of men created by this System of using bastard daughters for marriage, rather than immuring them in convents, was extended and its consistency strengthened by the separate matrimonial strategies of the families involved, intermarriage between themselves and recruitment of additional dynasties from roughly the same rank, such as the Grimaldi princes of Monaco. A striking, albeit complex, example of a dense criss-crossing of marriage and service alliances occurred in the second half of the seventeenth century when, of Matilda di Savoia's Simiane grandchildren, one, Cristina, was the consort of the prince of Masserano, while her brother, the marchese di Pianezza, had married Ippolita Grimaldi, the sister of the prince of Monaco and of Maria Teresa Grimaldi, who, in her turn, was the wife of the Este marchese di San Martino, the son of Carlo Emanuele I's bastard, Margherita di Savoia, and, through his father, the great-grandson of Rosa Maria di Savoia, Emanuele Filiberto's illegitimate child. Such dynastic configurations were not accidental, and they emphasize the critical role in staffing the Savoyard clientèle System, all three divisions of the court, the casa, the camera and the scudiere and the major posts in the military, governmental and provincial administrations30. Rocca grasped the complexities of the ties of clientage binding such families to the House of Savoy by opening his memorandum with the observation that these men were the duke's "più conspicui vassalli non men di nascità che di zelo sperimentato nel suo Reggio servitio"31

16.The public role played by the female bastards of the House of Savoy was replicated by that assigned to their illegitimate brothers and half-brothers, with one major and highly significant difference. While marriage played the central role in the use of their sisters as clients of the House of Savoy, of the thirteen bastard sons of Emanuele Filiberto and Carlo Emanuele I, only two, Amedeo and Carlo Umberto, the latter wed to the Masserano princess, married. As neither of these unions produced sons who survived their fathers, no new legitimised fines to replace the extinct Tende and Racconigi were generated32, and it is plausible that as the seventeenth century unfolded successive dukes viewed the male bastards of the dynasty as wedded solely to their service, their roles as clients uncomplicated by questions of founding and sustaining financially a new branch of the family33. The integration of the illegitimate sons into the Savoy service System, again, depended upon recognition of their status as members of the ruling family, and, unlike their sisters, whose hierarchical position derived, at least technically, from that of their husbands34, defining the role of a legitimised male bastard inevitably posed problems. In 1632 Du Plessis-Praslin complained that "Nous sommes icy dans le pais des prétentions injustes et tous les jours il s'en découvre de nouvelles; les bastards de feu Mons. de Savoye [Carlo Emanuele I] veulent que nous leur donnions la main chez nous"35, and such difficulties persisted throughout the seventeenth century.

17The dukes of Savoy consistently and systematically used the dynasty's male bastards in positions of major responsibility within their States. Of Emanuele Filiberto's illegitimate sons, Amedeo was sent as ambassador to Rome in 1585 to congratulate Pope Sisto V Peretti, played a leading role in military preparations against Geneva and was governor of the duché de Savoie, while Filippo was general of the galleys of Savoy. Of Carlo Emanuele I's more numerous brood of male bastards, Antonio, who held the abbeys of San Benigno di Fruttuaria and Hautecombe, the dynastic necropolis, was also governor of the county of Nice and the port of Villafranca36; Maurizio became governor of Ivrea; Emanuele of both Asti and Biella; Carlo Umberto of Mondovi and, again Biella; Felice of both Nice and the Savoie. Described as "fedelissimo", Felice di Savoia was entrusted by his sister-in-law, the Duchess-Regent Marie-Christine, with the care of the young Duke Carlo Emanuele II during the tumult of the civil war between her and her two, legitimate brothers-in-law, the Cardinal Maurizio and Tommaso, principe di Carignano37. In addition to their governorships, ail these men held major military commands.

18The career of Gabriele di Savoia, one of the sons fathered by Carlo Emanuele I upon Marguerite de Rossillon, provides a striking example of the role played by an illegitimate son in the service clientèle of his House. Following a battle in 1657, Cardinal Mazarin was informed of "la part dudit Dom Gabriel de Savoie qui a fait connoitre en cette rencontre ce qu'on doibt se promettre en tant autres d'une personne qui a joint toutes les qualités d'un grand capitaine à sa haute naissance"38. As with his half-brother, Felice di Savoia, Gabriele was particularly trusted during moments of dynastic crisis, and he was one of three men named to a secret council in the testament of Carlo Emanuele II, who died in 1675 leaving an under-aged heir39. By 1679, he was described as having "beaucoup d'autorité" at the court40, and one year later, the abbé d'Estrades placed him in "le premier rang dans cette cour", along with the Simiane marchese di Pianezza and the Este marchese di Dronero41, both of whose mothers were Savoy bastards, thus underscoring the central role played, in general, by the dynasty's illegitimate offspring. In the 1680s, when the French ambassador described the adolescent Vittorio Amedeo II as having "beaucoup de créance en luy"42, Gabriele was in charge of the campaigns against the Protestant Valdesi and the rebels at Mondovi43. His leading role not only in Piedmontese affairs but in Italian matters at large is emphasized by d'Estrades's assurances, at a time when Louis XIV was worried about an anti-French league on the peninsula, "que Mrs les ducs de Florence, de Modène, de Parme [et] Dom Gabriel de Savoie connoissent bien l'interest qu'ils ont de se conserver les bonnes grâces de V.M."44, a role comparable, albeit, because of his birth, at an inferior hierarchical level, to that of sovereign princes.

19Gabriele also seems to have taken frequently a conciliatory part at the intensely factionalised court of Turin, the divisions of which were inevitably exaggerated during regencies. In 1678, he intervened in a dispute between his visiting kinsman, the chevalier de Savoie, and the Saint-Maurice family45, and in 1679 he was sent to Nice "principallement pour terminer les diferens qu'il y a entre M. Dom Antonio, son frère [his full brother and governor of the county of Nice] et le gouverneur du chasteau de cette place"46. When the county of Nice balked at contributing to the costs of Vittorio Amedeo's proposed wedding journey and wished to send to Turin a deputation to explain their reluctance, it was "surtout Don Gabriel de Savoye [qui est]... d'avis qu'on leur donnast au moins la satisfaction de leur entendre"47, while during the crisis at Mondovi, where he was described as being "fort aymé", he "a contribué de prendre toutes les voyes de douceur"48. More than any other of the bastards, Gabriele di Savoia was a central pillar of the State and the dynasty, but however outstanding the success of his career may have been, it was not substantially different in form and pattern of service from those of his other illegitimate brothers nor from those of many of the men whose attachment to the House of Savoy was owed to marriage with one of its illegitimate daughters. Such systematic consistency is thrown into sharper relief by comparison with the careers of the legitimate cadets of the House of Savoy, for, apart from Cardinal Maurizio, who resigned the cardinalate to marry his niece, Ludovica Cristina, in 1642, and his nephew, the deaf-mute Emanuele Filiberto, principe di Carignano, the eventual head of the Habsburg faction at court, both of whom maintained a significant presence in Turin, all the other princes of the House sought service elsewhere. The most celebrated example of this pattern is, doubtless, the prince of the Savoy-Soissons line who became best-known as Prinz Eugen, but his elder brother, the comte de Soissons, died in French service, as had their father, while the ducs de Nemours, the last male representative of which died in 1659, divided their activities between their semi-independent apanage based on their lands around Annecy and the French court. Carlo Emanuele I's third legitimate son, Filiberto Emanuele, had received letters of Spanish naturalisation from his maternal grandfather, Felipe II, and died as Spanish Viceroy of Sicily in 1624, and one of Eugen's brothers and three of his nephews also entered Habsburg service, encouraged by his success at the Imperial court. This division of service between the French court and those of the Habsburgs may point to a family wisely "spreading its bets", although such strategies were rarely enunciated with clarity, and it certainly must reflect as well the exiguity of the financial base within the Savoyard patrimony to support so many princes. Nevertheless, in the same manner that the legitimate cadets of the Este di San Martino entered the service of the House of Savoy, a dynasty wealthier and more powerful than their own, the legitimate cadets of the House of Savoy looked for employment, by and large, at those courts at the level above that of Turin, to Paris, to Madrid and to Vienna. Il was the illegitimate sons and those men attached to the House of Savoy through the female bastards who helped to staff the uppermost reaches of its service clientèle.

20In the second half of the seventeenth century, as the unmarried male bastards gradually died, this System of a dynastic, service bastardy began to loosen and to modify itself. The absence of legitimized lines of descent was complemented by the failure of those dukes who succeeded Carlo Emanuele I, who died in 1630, to emulate him and his father in generating sufficient numbers of illegitimate children. Carlo Emanuele II was recorded by Pompeo Litta as fathering five bastards, but, as a fine example of the difficulties of studying princely illegitimacy, archival traces of a sixth have survived, for immediately after the duke's death in 1675, Pomponne was informed "que feu M. le duc de Savoye avoit dans le régiment Royal de Piemont un fils naturel qu'on appelle Comte Galeas qu'il aymoit beaucoup quoy qu'il ne l'eust pas encore déclaré"49. Galeazzo was never juridically legitimized, nor were his five illegitimate half-siblings, although the eldest of them, Cristina Ippolita, did receive official recognition. When he was about twenty-five and well before his first marriage, Carlo Emanuele II had impregnated a daughter of the comte de Trecesson, and in 1659, in the fifth month of her pregnancy, she was hastily married to a presumably compliant courtier, the marchese Benso di Cavorre. Cristina Ippolita was born shortly afterwards, but rather than breaking off his liaison with the new marchesa, the duke continued the affair and she had two more children, another daughter and a son, by him.

21Carlo Emanuele II, meanwhile, had married, in 1663, Françoise-Madeleine d'Orléans, and then, following her early death, secondly, in 1665, his formidable kinswoman, Maria Giovanna Battista of Savoy-Nemours. These three children, widely know to be the duke's, were in an obviously awkward hierarchical position, and here a blanket application of the conventual option was chosen. The son was endowed with abbeys and the daughters destined for the Visitation. The younger girl, Luigia Adelaida, ultimately became the superior of the Visitation at Aosta, but a life of devotion was resolutely resisted by Cristina Ippolita, who, "n'a jamais voulu se faire religieuse quoy qu'on l'en ayt plusieurs fois sollicitée...elle a 40 milles escus d'or de dote... [et] elle tiendrait le premier rang après les princesses du sang de Savoye et...elle le donnerait à son mary”50. With such prospects Cristina Ippolita was, to say the least, a bon parti, and it is not surprising that an early candidate for her hand was the nephew of the marchese di Pianezza, the head of the Simiane clan. Eventually an arrangement was reached with another of the cluster of families attached to the House of Savoy through marriage to its bastards, and, in 1686, Cristina Ippolita became the wife of the prince of Masserano. In order to recognise officially her membership in the House of Savoy but to avoid the embarrassment for all concerned parties of a juridical legitimisation, the FerreroFieschi, in consideration of accepting Cristina Ippolita, were granted the honours of princes of the blood of Savoy and hierarchical precedence over the knights of the Annunziata, a privilege guaranteed to four generations of descent from the union. As with the preceding cases, Cristina Ippolita was of use to the House of Savoy as an additional bond to the princes of Masserano only if her new husband's family could secure official recognition of her membership in the ducal dynasty51.

22A similar pattern of a hastily arranged marriage to a courtier disguised Carlo Emanuele II's paternity of the son accepted as his own by Carlo Amedeo delle Lanze, conte di Salis, who, not perhaps coincidentally, received the Annunziata in 1670, and this boy, Carlo Francesco Agostino, as with the bastards of the preceding generations, was absorbed into the Savoyard service System, receiving the governorship of the duché de Savoie in 172152. Thus, although the bastard children of Carlo Emanuele II were not legitimized, they were widely recognized by the dynasty and the court as being ducal issue, and the use of Cristina Ippolita as yet another matrimonial bond to the princes of Masserano and of Carlo Francesco Agostino delle Lanze in both military and administrative functions underscores the continuity of Savoyard House policy in profiting from the services of its illegitimate offspring.

23The discretion surrounding the juridical status of Carlo Emanuele II's bastards was not emulated by his son, Vittorio Amedeo II, who, in 1701, publicly legitimised his two children by the contessa di Verrua, who had become virtually his maîtresse en titre in 1686. The celebrated Mme de Verrue, as she is best known, was the wife of the nominal head of one of the leading court families in Turin, the Scaglia di Verrua, but by her own birth she was a woman of rather more considerable parts. The daughter of the duc de Luynes and a princess of the House of Rohan, she was closely related not only to many of the most senior princely and ducal dynasties at the French court, but also to such leading ministerial clans as the Colbert. The openness with which Vittorio Amedeo and she conducted their relationship and her own European standing made it impossible to ignore their offspring, and their legitimation, especially given the problems posed by double adultery, emphasizes the critical weight given to a prominent hierarchical ranking of a mother in guaranteeing the security of the illegitimate children fathered upon her by her sovereign53. The timing of the recognition was, moreover, highly significant, for in the previous year, 1700, Mme de Verrue had fled in disguise from Turin and crossed into France, from where she refused to return. Vittorio Amedeo retained epistolary contact with her and sent on to Paris some of her possessions, but he kept their children, recognized them in 1701, without specifying their mother's name, and raised them along with his own legitimate sons, who were roughly the same age.

24However extraordinary were the events surrounding the appearance of two more bastards in the House of Savoy, their father's plans for them adhered somewhat more closely to the patterns established by his ancestors. Vittorio Francesco entered military service and in 1730, the year of Vittorio Amedeo II's abdication, received the governorship of Aosta. His half-brother, Carlo Emanuele III, conferred the Annunziata upon him in 1733, the first time a Savoy bastard was admitted to the Order since 1576. Yet, in a striking similarity to his illegitimate predecessors, he remained a bachelor, and did not marry until he was sixty-five, dying one year later, in 1762, without issue. Vittoria Francesca, on the other hand, married and did so spectacularly, in 1714, to her cousin, the first prince of the blood of the House of Savoy, Vittorio Amedeo, principe di Carignano. Once the marriage had been agreed54, Vittorio Amedeo II, from 1713 king of Sicily, went to considerable lengths to create an adequate establishment for Vittoria Francesca, demanding a memorandum from Rocca on the dowries given to previous female bastards of the House of Savoy on their weddings and obtaining a copy of the marriage contract of the duc of Chartres, the half-brother of his own consort, with Mlle de Blois, the issue of Louis XIV's liaison with Mme de Montespan, a union of an royal illegitimate daughter, also the product of double adultery, with the future first prince of the blood of France, an obvious model for the financial arrangements of the Carignano marriage of 171455 For the twelve years following Vittoria Francesca's wedding, during which her half-brother, Vittorio Amedeo II's sole surviving legitimate son, remained without male issue, the Carignano couple were very close indeed to the thrones of the House of Savoy. Like Louis XIV, therefore, Vittorio Amedeo II moved his illegitimate daughter into the heart of the dynasty and its succession, but, unlike Louis XIV, he did not aim at establishing a new branch of the family from his male bastard descent.

25Mme de Verrue's two children were the last illegitimate children to be recognized by the House of Savoy, but they were not the final examples of its characteristic use of bastards on behalf of the dynasty, for Carlo Emanuele II's illegitimate son, Carlo Francesco Agostino delle Lanze, had married and had, in 1712, produced a son, Vittorio Amedeo, named after his god-father, the duke of Savoy, and this boy was marked down early to play a major role in the Savoyard service System. The dukes of Savoy had consistently lacked a figure typical of the dynastic clientèle System of Catholic Europe, a House cardinal. All of the other Italian dynasties regularly and systematically guaranteed their influence in the Sacred College, where their interests would be guarded, especially during papal conclaves, by a prince of the House who entered the Church. Apart from the period of 1607 to 1642, when Prince Maurizio was a cardinal, the House of Savoy had, largely because of a chronic lack of younger sons in the senior legitimate line, no such representative in Rome. Maurizio himself clearly hoped that his sister-in-law's fecundity would provide for a permanent House cardinal established at the Holy See, and, accordingly, he elaborated plans for the creation of an extended Savoyard community in Rome56. The projects of Tommaso of Savoy, principe di Carignano, and his wife, to acquire the biretta for their second son57 and Samuel Guichenon's éloge, dating from 1660, of one Carlo Emanuele I's bastards, Antonio di Savoia, "dont les éminentes vertus luy doivent faire attendre la Pourpre"58, probably reflect the realisation that the main line had simply exhausted its supply of sons and was compelled to turn to cadet branches or illegitimate offspring in order to place a Savoyard prince in the Sacred College where he would guard the House's interests against the activities of the Medici, Este, Farnese, Gonzaga and Cybò cardinals. Neither of these projects was realised, but with the acquisition of the kingdom of Sicily in 1713, exchanged for that of Sardinia during the arrangements of 1718-1720, Vittorio Amedeo II emerged as a figure of weight in European diplomacy at a time when nearly all of the indigenous Italian dynasties were perceived as marked out for demographic extinction. For very practical political reasons the presence of a trusted member of the House at the centre of curial power, which had always been a desirable if unobtainable goal, had transformed itself into a pressing necessity. These diplomatic exigencies were complemented by the sustained drive on the part of Vittorio Amedeo II and his successor, Carlo Emanuele III, to establish the hierarchical parity of the court of Turin with those of Versailles, Vienna and Madrid, and this entailed the extraction from the papacy of the privileges which those powers enjoyed in Rome, from the rights to exercise a veto over papal elections, to nominate "crown cardinals" and to obtain automatically the elevation to the purple of a retiring nuncio down to the seemingly trivial ritual presentation of papal swaddling clothes on the birth of a prince in the direct line of descent. Carlo Emanuele III's heir was born only in 1726 and his only other surviving son in 1741, too young to fulfil the role of House cardinal, too necessary to the security of the dynasty to consign to a life of celibacy, but a suitable candidate was available in Vittorio Amedeo delle Lanze.

26It was clear that from about the age of fifteen Vittorio Amedeo delle Lanze was destined for an ecclesiastical career, a decision which meant, as an only son, the eventual disappearance of his father’s line, and from an early stage, with the support of the court, he began accumulating the benefices necessary to assure an adequate income. After the acquisition in 1743 of the wealthy abbey of San Giusto di Susa, it became clear that Carlo Emanuele III was determined to propel forward his kinsman's career, and in 1745 he elaborated on his behalf the court post of Grand'Elimosiniere, obtaining papal permission to increase its authority by assigning to it spiritual responsibility for the entire court and investing it with episcopal rank. Such a nomination, which effectively put in the hands of the king and delle Lanze power to resolve all religious matters touching the court without reference to the archbishop of Turin, distinguished the new Grand'Elimosiniere as something more than a fortunate collector of bénéfices and signalled his role as the principal client of the House of Savoy in its dealings with the Church. A cardinal's hat was next on the agenda, and this was obtained in 1747. This meteoric rise was owed entirely to the public support of the king of Sardinia and the perception of the clientèle and the family relationships tying Carlo Emanuele III and delle Lanze to one another. It seems that, as well, Carlo Emanuele attempted to use iconographic means to indicate delle Lanze's membership in the House of Savoy, without declaring it openly. In 1749 delle Lanze's benefices were increased to include the abbey of San Benigno di Fruttuaria, closely associated with the House of Savoy, three of whose members, Giambattista di Savoia-Racconigi, Cardinal Maurizio and Antonio di Savoia, one of Carlo Emanuele I's bastards, had possessed it59. Two years earlier, Carlo Emanuele III had pressed Benedetto XIV Lambertini to name the new cardinal to an archbishopric in partibus infedilium, and the king's views as to which titular archbishoprics might be suitable for his cousin also implied delle Lanze's attachment to the House of Savoy. "S.M. avrebbe a caro di vedere quanto primo il nostro cardinale rivestito del caratere episcopale e quando Ella [Sua Maestà] possa senza affetazione fa in modo che gli sia dato il titolo arcivescovo di Nicosia o di Famagusta"60, the two archbishoprics of the kingdom of Cyprus, to the royal rights of which Vittorio Amedeo I had reasserted his family's daims in 163261. Carlo Emanuele's aim was "l'unione perpetua dell'arcivescovato di Nicosia col vescovato della Corte"62, the position of juridical independence fiom the authority of the archbishop of Turin validated by reference to the royal Cypriot title. This preference for phantom Cypriot archbishoprics is closely related to the selection of specific benefices, San Benigno for instance, of Christian names, of godparents and of burial places, all of which were associated closely with the House of Savoy, and which, thus, indicated emblematically to a society attuned to such external representational signais a blood link to the dynasty. Delle Lanze's position in the late 1740s represents the ecclesiastical variant of a consistent House policy of establishing those with an illegitimate attachment to it and providing them with some form of recognition so that they would have both the financial resources and the authority of association with sovereignty to act effectively in the service of the House.

27Once so established, delle Lanze was able to operate as Carlo Emanuele III's chosen instrument for all of his dealings with the papacy, and his "portfolio" covered the questions posed by new bishoprics, that, for instance of Susa, previously only an abbey with épiscopal jurisdiction, the detachment of Biella from Vercelli and its erection as a separate diocese and the elevation of the see of Pignerolo. Delle Lanze also managed such delicate House matters as the papal dispensation necessary for the marriage in 1775 of Vittorio Amedeo III's daughter, Marianna, to the new king's own half-brother, Benedetto Maurizio of Savoy, duca di Chiablese63. Much of his effectiveness depended upon developing cordial Personal relations with successive pontiffs, and William Pitt was informed in 1758, following the election of Clemente XIII Rezzonico, that the cardinal "has found means to ingratiate himself so well with the Pope [that]... It is thought that his Eminency's favor will facilitate an accommodation of the differences still subsisting between this court [of Turin] and the Holy See"64. In addition to acting as a mediator between the two courts, delle Lanze had primary responsibility to represent Savoyard interests at papal conclaves, and the alacrity with which he was deployed in this task was reported to Kaunitz in 1769. "S'appetta a momento l'arrivo del Card. delle Lanze di Turin; sarà il primo cardinale che viene da fuori, mandato con tutta sollecitudine dalla sua corte"65. At delle Lanze's entry into the next conclave, that of 1774, he was "accolto dai cardinali con i più distinti contrassegni d'applausi, per la sollecitudine con cui ha affrettato il suo arrivo"66. For most of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the House of Savoy had been without the services of a House cardinal, and it was only in the eighteenth century that a prelate attached to it by ties of bastardy consistently performed this critically important clientèle role.

28Although the importance of dynastic bastardy has been appreciated for the late medieval period67, its institutional functioning in the early modem period has not been systematically analysed. This is paradoxical, as the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries saw the practice reach a high-water mark, with the concentrated efforts of both Louis XIV of France and Charles II of England to establish their illegitimate children at the very heart of the power establishment and the depiction as father of his country in a very literal sense of Augustus the Strong of Saxony, one of whose reputed 354 bastards, the future Maurice de Saxe, attempted to conquer the sovereign throne of Kurland68. Similar examples of the integration of illegitimate children into the clientèle Systems of their families can be found in sovereignties as diverse as the kingdom of Denmark69 and the principality of Monaco70, and suggest the need for a much wider analysis of dynastic bastardy as a social and political phenomenon than this article can attempt. Following this chronological peak, however, the mid-eighteenth century saw the Virtual elimination of the recognition of princely bastards from the workings of the court System, the resuit of a shift in mœurs either towards discretion or to a different sexual and conjugal comportement71.

29Most models of historical social behaviour are prone to oversimplification and, in emphasizing the coherence of a House policy towards illegitimate children and the consistency of its application, this article runs the risk of presenting the Savoy bastards as a much more harmonious and unified group than it actually was. The memoranda for regulating the precedence within the court etiquette of the various offspring and their families and for resolving the ensuing hierarchical rivalries were the external manifestations of internal fissures running along lines of power politics72. Despite his reputation as a conciliatory intermediary, Gabriele di Savoia, was head of his own party within the extended family and the court of which it was the central organ, using his position as de facto commander of the Savoyard army to distribute regiments to his adherents. Consecutive French residents observed the clear divisions between Gabriele and Pianezza. Villars noted with surprise that Don Gabriele visited the marchesa di Pianezza even though he "n'avoit pas esté des amis de Mr. son mary"73, while his successor, d'Estrades, reported of the tense relations between the two men that "Mr. le marquis de Pianezza... n'est guère de ses amis, quoy qu'ils ne soient pas ouvertement brouillés ensemble"74. This last comment was made at the moment when Pianezza attempted to undermine the position of the Este marchese di Dronero, opposed to the Portuguese marriage, and Dronero enlisted the support of his uncle, Don Gabriele, significantly the «full» brother of Dronero's mother, in his cause. Within this circle of families tied to the House of Savoy by illegitimate links, two full bastard brothers, Gabriele and Antonio di Savoia, closed ranks with their Este nephew, the son of their full sister, to square off against their Simiane kinsman. Nevertheless, despite these internal tensions, d'Estrades's description of Gabriele, Pianezza and Dronero as the leading figures of Maria Giovanna Battista's regency indicates the importance of the House of Savoy's illegitimate relations in staffing the machines of the State and the court75.

30Even here, however, considerable caution is needed, for an analysis which sees the bastards exclusively as the senior servants of the head of the House suggests too strongly a sealed capsule with superior and inferior units. Such a dichotomisation of relations within a family reduces the model to a bi-polar symbiosis of "patron" and "client" which is simply unacceptable for the élite strata of early-modern court society, in which the range and complexity of blood links and service affiliations was, at once, far wider and more subtly nuanced than the myth of omnipotent masters and obedient servants. The dangers are all the greater in this particular structure as the hierarchically superior figures were sovereign princes whom too many historians have been inclined to encircle in a hagiographical glow as centralising state-builders. The nature of their birth placed the Savoy bastards in a juridically delicate position. This vulnerability increased their dependence, at least initially, upon their legitimate relations, but as this legitimate sector of the dynasty was itself frequently even less internally unified than its illegitimate counterpart, the bastards, once "established", were able to use their growing resources to extract profit from the outbreak of armed conflict between the "madamisti" and the "principisti" in the early 1640s, from the nearly chronic shortage of legitimate princes in the main line, a demographic fragility which engendered historiographical and juridical debates over the very nature of the Savoyard succession and of the composition of "lo stato sabaudo" itself, and, during the last decades of the seventeenth century, from the pursuit of three distinct foreign policies, at times opposed to one another, directed by Vittorio Amedeo II, Maria Giovanna Battista and the principe di Carignano from their urban powerbases at, respectively, Palazzo Reale, Palazzo Madama and Palazzo Carignano, located within half a mile of each other at the centre of Turin.

31The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were clearly interested in the dynastic phenomenon of legitimized bastards among the political and social élite, as evidenced by the plays of Lope de Vega and William Shakespeare, and it is, indeed, the Shakespearean canon which captures the tensions and contradictions of contemporary reactions. In King Lear and in Much Ado about Nothing, the one a tragedy, the other a comedy, bastards appear as the source of discord and strife, plotting against their legitimate half-brothers. In the textually confused King John, however, Shakespeare created the bastard Fauconbridge, the reflection of the heroic virtues of his father, Richard I, instantly recognized by his physical features as one of their own by his grandmother, Queen Eleanor, and his uncle, King John, welcomed into the bosom of the family, which he serves with his bluff strength and manly valour, in short, in so far as this drama has one, the moral centre of the play. Despite their conflicting interests and internal tensions, inévitable in an extended family, this representation was much doser to the patterns established by the bastard children of the House of Savoy, and, indeed by those of many other European dynasties, as the élite of their House's clientèle service System.76

32 Note: Given the polyglot nature of the court of Savoy, it has proved impossible to find a consistent policy of nomenclature for individual figures, and, therefore, I have used French forms of names for those francophone members of the dynasty, Italian for those who spent most of their lives in Piedmont The world "Savoy" itself refers to the aggregate territories of the dynasty, with its court established at Turin in the principality of Piedmont, while "Savoie" is used exclusively to denote the duché de Savoie, the predominantly French-speaking part of the lands, the capital of winch was Chambéry. I have used the English form of "Savoy", e.g. Maurizio of Savoy, to indicate legitimate princes and princesses of the House, and "di Savoia", e.g. Gabride di Savoia, for the bastard children.