Émilie Pellapra

Who was Émilie Pellapra?

Émilie Pellapra, comtesse de Brigode, princesse de Chimay, was the daughter of Françoise-Marie LeRoy and possibly Napoleon I of France. She claimed to be the product of her mother's affair with the French Emperor which supposedly took place in April 1805, but this date is incompatible with Émilie's birth in November 1806. She was married firstly to Count Louis-Marie of Brigode and married secondly to Prince Joseph de Riquet de Caraman, 17th prince de Chimay.

Émilie Louise Marie Françoise Joséphine Pellapra was born in Lyon on November 11, 1806, the daughter of Madame Pellapra, née Françoise-Marie LeRoy, herself the wife of a rich financier named Henri Pellapra. Émilie may have been the illegitimate daughter of Napoleon I, as she claimed to be.

Emilie Pellapra made it clear she was the natural daughter of Napoleon. This would have to have been the result of an affair with her mother at the time of a stay by Napoleon in Lyon. Her claim was that an affair took place in April 1805, whilst Napoleon was on the way to Italy to be crowned, but this date is incompatible with Émilie's birth of in November 1806. For Émilie to have been the daughter of Napoleon it would have been necessary that he stayed in Lyon in February 1806. However, no stay in this city at that time seems to have taken place and, according to several authors, Napoleon only met LeRoy in 1810.