Prince Michel of Bourbon-Parma

Paternally, he was a grandson of Robert I, Duke of Parma (1848–1907), while through his mother he was a great-grandson of Christian IX of Denmark.

Prince Michel was also the younger brother of Queen Anne of Romania.

Prince Michel grew up in Paris, where his father worked for a propane gas tank manufacturer.

Prince Michel of Bourbon-Parma (Michel Marie Xavier Waldemar Georg Robert Karl Eymar de Bourbon-Parme; 4 March 1926 – 7 July 2018) was a French Prince, businessman, soldier and racing car driver, who was a member of the deposed sovereign royal and ducal House of Bourbon-Parma.

He was a son of Prince René of Bourbon-Parma and his wife Princess Margaret of Denmark.

In 1940, Prince Michel and his family fled the German invasion and left for New York City, where his mother worked in a hat shop.

Michel was enrolled in a Jesuit school in Montreal, the Collège Jean-de-Brébeuf.

Three years later, at age 17, he joined the U.S. Army with his father's permission, and was appointed lieutenant.

Serving in Operation Jedburgh, he was parachuted into Nazi-occupied France as part of a three-man sabotage team (with Maj. Tommy Macpherson and Sgt O. A. Brown) to operate deep behind German lines.

After the liberation of France, Prince Michel was deployed to Indochina in order to fight against the Viet Minh.

Dropped on 28 August 1945 by parachute, he was captured the same day by the Vietnamese resistance, who kept him for eleven months, during which his group of six captives attempted several escapes and were recaptured.

They were led from camp to camp through the dense jungle, bound together with strips of bamboo.

Each lived on a bowl of rice a day.

Toward the end of the ordeal, the men were asked to sign statements saying that they had been well treated, which they refused.

Four of them were killed before the two survivors finally made it back to France due to the French negotiating a ceasefire agreement with the Viet Minh at the Geneva Conference.

Prince Michel was one of 3000 prisoners to survive of the 12,000 French prisoners taken by the Viet Minh.

A chevalier of France's Legion of Honour, for his services during war, he was also awarded the British Military Cross and the Croix de Guerre.

Prince Michel had a daughter out of wedlock with Laure Le Bourgeois (born 1950):

Following a civil wedding in Paris on 23 May 1951, on 9 June 1951, the thirtieth anniversary of his parents' wedding, he married religiously at Chaillot, Princess Yolande de Broglie-Revel (1928–2014), daughter of Prince Joseph de Broglie-Revel (1892–1963) and his wife, Marguerite de La Cour de Balleroy (1901-1976).

Demobilized at the age of 20, the prince became a race car driver, participating in the Le Mans 24 Hours in 1964 and 1966.

Both times his car failed to finish.

In 1964, he also raced in the Tour de France Automobile where he finished second.

At the Monaco Grand Prix

Although the couple separated legally on 26 June 1966 and reconciled 19 December 1983, the marriage ended in divorce in 1999.

They had five children together:

in 1967, he was a nearby spectator when the Lorenzo Bandini accident occurred: With the help of a marshal he managed to extract the driver from the burning wreck of his Ferrari.

Prince Michel started civilian life at the age of 20, engaging in business over the following decades.

He worked for a company that had created the Zodiac inflatable rubber boat, which enjoyed huge commercial success after the war.

Later, he negotiated contracts for French companies with Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Shah of Iran, until he was deposed in the Islamic revolution of 1979.

In later life, he lived between his house in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France and his house in Palm Beach, Florida.

In 2003 he married Princess Maria Pia of Bourbon-Parma (1934), daughter of King Umberto II and Maria José of Belgium, who had divorced Prince Alexander of Yugoslavia.