By Their Blood Shall Ye Know Them
That's quite the story. The one about two infants languishing in a Roman Catholic orphanage in London in the 1960. The children were known by their given names; no family name was assigned to distinguish them as offspring of their biological parents; most discreet. They were, evidently, extremely physically attractive children. Sufficiently so that they took the attention of a regal and titled woman wishing to raise a family of her own. She re-named the two children; they went from Archibald to Jonathan; Mary to Gesine.
An inspiringly attractive name change, to match the children's beauty and new status, as adopted children of Princess Orietta Pogson Doria Pamphilj and her husband, a former Royal Navy Officer from Kent. She was an aristocrat by birth, he by marriage and perhaps inclination. For the children the transformation from orphanage to life in the 1000-room Palazzo Pamphilj in Rome, represented an astonishing change in life's fortunes, although as infants they little realized that change in their futures. But which child wouldn't take well to being pampered and made much of? With opportunities awaiting them not seen by many.
They stood to inherit their mother's $1.6-billion fortune, the Palazzo Pamphilj, another palace in Genoa, recipient of 14 noble titles. And, oh yes, reputedly one of the greatest art collections in the world, including creations by Renaissance masters such as Raphael, Titian and Caravaggio. First the boy was adopted, and then, a year later, the girl. They were both babies at the time of their adoption. Neither would have any recollection of an earlier, deprived life. Their only memories would be of their life of sumptuous luxury, a life they would of course, take for granted, since it would be the only one they knew.
Jonathan, now middle-aged, enjoys a British civil partnership. Like many practising gays with a permanent alliance, he wished to have a family. And for that purpose he employed the services of a surrogate mother. A business transaction, after which the resulting two children, Emily, three, and Filippo Andrea, two, remained with their father. And, of course, his partner. Life can be such a drag, can't it? His sexual orientation and partnership alliance offends his sister, a staunch Roman Catholic. She, echoing Italian law, does not recognize the children as legitimate heirs to the family fortune.
Her own four children, shared with her husband Massimiliano Floridi, have the great good fortune to have been produced in the age-old traditional manner, representing the fruit of conjugal relations between husband and wife, married within the Church. Those four children are legitimately aspirational inheritors of the family fortune. Princess Gesine has asked an Italian court to rule on the matter of disinheritance of her brother's children: "I don't agree at all with surrogate mothers. OK, people have a right to children but children have a right to parents. It has caused a lot of tension with my brother and our relationship has suffered."
The Princess's concerns revolve about the possibility that this upstart professional mother, this surrogate-for-hire will suddenly, at some future date, declare herself to be a legitimate claimant for a portion of this vast and palatial estate and its accompanying fortune and 650 works of art. "Surrogate mothers don't do this sort of thing out of the kindness of their heart - they do it for money as it is a lucrative business so she could just as easily come along and make a claim here. At first I tried to work something out together with my brother, but it didn't work out so I took it to the courts and now they will have to decide."
One can never be too careful, after all. People can be so devious. There is an ancient noble reputation to protect. The fortune is, after all, finite. Divided four ways seems sensible; six ways, not so much. Of course Princess Gesine must love her brother. Doesn't blood run thicker than water? Oh, of course, they are not related by blood, but by circumstance and familial environment. And the noble blood that runs in their veins; neither by convention nor by birth; it has turned, dourly, stringently, to vinegar.
An inspiringly attractive name change, to match the children's beauty and new status, as adopted children of Princess Orietta Pogson Doria Pamphilj and her husband, a former Royal Navy Officer from Kent. She was an aristocrat by birth, he by marriage and perhaps inclination. For the children the transformation from orphanage to life in the 1000-room Palazzo Pamphilj in Rome, represented an astonishing change in life's fortunes, although as infants they little realized that change in their futures. But which child wouldn't take well to being pampered and made much of? With opportunities awaiting them not seen by many.
They stood to inherit their mother's $1.6-billion fortune, the Palazzo Pamphilj, another palace in Genoa, recipient of 14 noble titles. And, oh yes, reputedly one of the greatest art collections in the world, including creations by Renaissance masters such as Raphael, Titian and Caravaggio. First the boy was adopted, and then, a year later, the girl. They were both babies at the time of their adoption. Neither would have any recollection of an earlier, deprived life. Their only memories would be of their life of sumptuous luxury, a life they would of course, take for granted, since it would be the only one they knew.
Jonathan, now middle-aged, enjoys a British civil partnership. Like many practising gays with a permanent alliance, he wished to have a family. And for that purpose he employed the services of a surrogate mother. A business transaction, after which the resulting two children, Emily, three, and Filippo Andrea, two, remained with their father. And, of course, his partner. Life can be such a drag, can't it? His sexual orientation and partnership alliance offends his sister, a staunch Roman Catholic. She, echoing Italian law, does not recognize the children as legitimate heirs to the family fortune.
Her own four children, shared with her husband Massimiliano Floridi, have the great good fortune to have been produced in the age-old traditional manner, representing the fruit of conjugal relations between husband and wife, married within the Church. Those four children are legitimately aspirational inheritors of the family fortune. Princess Gesine has asked an Italian court to rule on the matter of disinheritance of her brother's children: "I don't agree at all with surrogate mothers. OK, people have a right to children but children have a right to parents. It has caused a lot of tension with my brother and our relationship has suffered."
The Princess's concerns revolve about the possibility that this upstart professional mother, this surrogate-for-hire will suddenly, at some future date, declare herself to be a legitimate claimant for a portion of this vast and palatial estate and its accompanying fortune and 650 works of art. "Surrogate mothers don't do this sort of thing out of the kindness of their heart - they do it for money as it is a lucrative business so she could just as easily come along and make a claim here. At first I tried to work something out together with my brother, but it didn't work out so I took it to the courts and now they will have to decide."
One can never be too careful, after all. People can be so devious. There is an ancient noble reputation to protect. The fortune is, after all, finite. Divided four ways seems sensible; six ways, not so much. Of course Princess Gesine must love her brother. Doesn't blood run thicker than water? Oh, of course, they are not related by blood, but by circumstance and familial environment. And the noble blood that runs in their veins; neither by convention nor by birth; it has turned, dourly, stringently, to vinegar.
Labels: Human Fallibility, Human Relations
posted by Pieface | 6:19 PM
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