Born in
Turin, he was the next to youngest of the nine children of
Louis Victor of Savoy, Prince of Carignano and his German wife,
Christine of Hesse-Rheinfels-Rotenburg. Although their
family seat was the principality of
Carignano 20 kilometers south of Turin, of which they were nominally
suzerains, as
princes of the blood royal in the
Kingdom of Sardinia, the
Savoy-Carignanos were in attendance at the
royal court of the Savoys in Turin, while also maintaining a residence in
Paris and frequenting the French court. In addition to being a cousin in the first degree of
Victor Amadeus III of Sardinia and of
Louis Joseph of Bourbon, Prince de Condé, Eugènio's sister Maria Teresa (1749-1792) had married
Louis Alexandre de Bourbon, Prince de Lamballe, the heir of a
legitimised branch of the French royal family when he was 13, and had become the close friend and
Surintendante of the French queen,
Marie Antoinette of Austria, by 1775. As his elder brother,
Victor Amadeus, was heir to the Carignano princedom, the traditional occupations for a younger son of a princely house, an episcopal or military
sinecure, beckoned him to the French court. and was known there as "Prince Eugène, comte de
Villefranche". While stationed in
Saint-Malo, on 29 December 1779 the 26 year-old prince secretly married 14 year-old Elisabeth Anne Magon de Boisgarin, the daughter of François Nicolas Magon,
Seigneur de Boigarin, and his wife Louise de Caruel. After the wedding, held probably in the Boisgarin parish of
Spézet in the
Finistère, the bride assumed the title, Countess de Pommeryt. The marriage evoked a scandal, a lawsuit (conducted over many years by the renowned attorney,
Lacretelle the Elder) and, eventually, an annulment ("for not having observed all the formalities prescribed by the civil and military laws of the kingdom") registered by the
Parlement of Paris at the behest of Eugène's parents, as well as the Kings of Sardinia and France, who objected to his elopement with the daughter of a family only ennobled since 1695, whose wealth derived from a prosperous
apothecary ancestor. As the bridegroom persisted in his determination to wed Mlle de Boisgarin,
Louis XVI relented, and King Victor Amadeus III issued a royal decree in September 1780 requiring consent of the head of the house for the marriage of princes of the blood, and
morganatising marriages for brides of "inferior condition or status", whether wed with or without the
royal assent. On 22 February 1781 the marriage was again solemnized at
Saint-Méloir-des-Ondes,
Brittany in accordance with the new Savoyard
house law. Thus, the marriage, being approved in advance, was legal in Sardinia and Eugène did not thereby forfeit his own
dynastic rights or princely title, but his wife and future descendants of the marriage were not recognized as members of the House of Savoy nor as in the line of succession to the throne, although allowed to bear the Savoy surname and to retain the Villafranca countship. The Sardinian king granted the couple an annual allowance of 24,000 livres, supplemented by 44,000 from the French king which, combined with Villefranche's resources yielded an annual income of 100,000 lives. The only child born of this union, a son known as the
Chevalier de Savoie, inherited Eugène's property when he died in his castle at
Domart, Picardy, aged 31. In addition to King Louis designating his finance minister,
Breteuil, to be his tutor, the young chevalier was allowed a 15,000 livres allowance, while his widowed mother was given a 6,000 livre pension. Despite the Parisian mob's murder of his aunt, the Princesse de Lamballe, after the French Revolution he was made a page at the court of
Napoleon I in 1812, became a colonel of the
Hussars 2nd Regiment, and was promoted to lieutenant general during the
Restoration. The chevalier's son, Eugenio (1816-1888), lived to be designated "
heir presumptive to the throne of Italy in the event of extinction of the reigning branch" in 1834. Prince Eugène's Villafranca descent, although made into a dynasty in 1834, survives as the once-again
morganatic Villafranca line, headed by Edoardo, Count of
Villafranca-Soissons. ==Issue==