Since Mom schooled me on my French Huguenot heritage, I’ve known I was descended from Balthazar Dewolfe, legendary Huguenot asshole. I say “asshole” as his early American records speak to his begetting of slave-traders, intractable public pipe-smoking, and tagging a neighbor lady as a witch after he lost a child.
What I did not know was that descendants of Huguenots, regardless of their country of birth, were allowed dual citizenship in France. I suppose it was a national apology for running the Protestant Huguenots out of Catholic France.
Sadly, Charles de Gaulle revoked the rule going forward in 1945.
If only my grandmother had been on her game in early 1945, instead of working in the munitions factory, and had applied for her dual-citizenship, I could have been one half French citizen, with a pied-a-terre in Paris, and most important, I could have voted for hot French President Emmanuel Macron. Missed opportunity.
3 responses to “TWIL: Dual nationality”
It just has to be cool to be descended from someone named Balthazar, even if B. was an asshole.
This makes me wonder if being Presbyterian (sorta Huguenotish!) would entitle me to dual citizenship in Scotland. Dual citizenship seems like a status to really covet these days.
I always enjoy seeing Macron on the news. Not only is he so very attractive, we have the classic NZ 2 degrees connection (which I may have mentioned before) after he winked at my journalist daughter during a press conference – http://www.travelskite.com/2023/02/double-novelty.html
Common Household M – Amen to that. Would be worth the dual taxes in cases we need to expatriate.
Big Dot – Your daughter has been blessed by the gods. You did mention the NZ two degrees, in fact here is the post with our comments:
https://www.mocklog.com/queen_mediocretia/2020/05/24/space-launch