BHOPAL, INDIA — If France ever decides to call off its revolution and go back to having a king, the line to the throne could begin at the doorstep of a genial, plump Indian man with a name as outsized and incongruous as the massive fleur-de-lis over his porch.
Balthazar Napoleon de Bourbon would answer the doorbell, and the call of duty, if the French nation needed him.
A restoration of the monarchy in France is, of course, improbable. But so is the story of how a possible heir to the throne, a dauphin from the royal house of Bourbon, lives in relative obscurity here in this lakeside city in central India, where he practices law, putters around the family farm and nurses hopes that his lineage, if not his birthright, might one day be recognized by his glittering European relations.
"I am born an Indian," De Bourbon says. "But the fact of life is that I belong to the royal family of France."
Like all good tales of royal intrigue, the story behind his assertion is a swashbuckling adventure full of scheming aristocrats, high treason, forbidden love, narrow escapes, greedy pirates and mysterious disappearances. Fact and legend blend and blur.
But De Bourbon's claim to noble European descent received an unexpected boost last year when one of his putative cousins, Prince Michael of Greece, signaled his support in a historical novel. In "Le Rajah Bourbon," the prince, a noted author, offers a speculative account of the life of Jean Philippe de Bourbon, the ancestor to whom Balthazar traces his origins.
According to the book -- an amalgam of conjecture and research -- Jean Philippe, a nephew of King Henri IV who survived assassination attempts and a kidnapping at sea, eventually washed up in India, where he served at the court of the Mogul Emperor Akbar in the 16th century.
His descendants later moved to central India. In historical records, the De Bourbons are well documented as important and respected administrators in the region for hundreds of years. In latter generations, members of the family intermarried with the local population.
Michael, who lives in Paris, believes Balthazar de Bourbon to be the surviving male heir of this line, an elder branch of the house of Bourbon. This arguably would give Balthazar prior claim to the throne over the descendants of Henri IV, whose unbroken line of succession was lopped off along with the heads of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette under the guillotine in 1793.
