Duc de Morny, Charles Auguste Louis Joseph
Inspiration for the fictional Philippe, Duke de Lyon.

Charles Auguste Louis Joseph, Duke de Morny, October 21, 1811- March 10, 1865, was the natural son of Hortense de Beauharnais (wife of Louis Bonaparte and queen of Holland) and Charles Joseph, comte de Flahaut, and therefore half-brother of Emperor Napoleon III. Morny devoted himself to Parisian society and to making a fortune before serving in the Chamber of Deputies. Appointed minister of the interior in 1851, he organized the plebiscite that made Louis-Napoleon dictator. As president of the legislature (1856 – 65), he tried unsuccessfully to persuade Napoleon III to give France more liberty.

Politics and high finance went hand in hand with Morny. In 1856 he was sent as special envoy to the coronation of Alexander II of Russia and brought home a wife, Princess Sophie Troubetzkoi who greatly strengthened his social position. (Their daughter Mathilde de Morny, Marquise de Belbeuf (1862-1944), created a scandal at the turn of the 19th century by her affair with the French novelist Colette.) In 1862, Morny was created a duke. Morny played an important role in the development of the Thoroughbred racing and breeding industry in France. In 1860 he purchased the English Triple Crown champion West Australian and brought him to France for breeding purposes. In 1862 Morny built the Deauville-La Touques Race Course near Deauville. The Prix Morny is named in his honor.

But while he was laying the foundations of the "Liberal Empire" his health, undermined by a ceaseless round of political and financial business, of debauchery and dissipation, was giving way, and was further injured by quack medicines. The emperor and the empress visited him just before his death in Paris on March 10, 1865.

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