Philippe Boiry

Philippe Paul Alexander Henry Boiry (February 19, 1927 – January 5, 2014) was the pretender to the throne of the unrecognized Kingdom of Araucanía and Patagonia. Boiry became the pretender after Antoine III abdicated in his favour in 1951.

Following World War II Boiry was involved with public relations. He founded the first public relations agency in Western Europe and developed the European public relations doctrine. He won the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques prize and the companion of the Palmes Académiques award. In 1980, Boiry founded France's first college of communication science in Levallois-Perret. Boiry was the Mapuche representative to UN committees on Indigenous population. In 1989 he visited Mapuche and Tehuelche lands for the first time. Boiry is said to have purchased the title. When he visited Argentina and Chile once, he met with hostility by the local media and cold shoulder by most of the Mapuche organisations.

He has also met Juan Carlos I of Spain and Baudouin I of Belgium and has pictures of them with him in his house in Chourgnac. Boiry labeled himself a "Republican Monarchic" because he works like the rest of the French people.

Boiry was not descended from Orélie-Antoine de Tounens, the founder of the Kingdom of Araucanía and Patagonia, as de Tounens had no children. Boiry was married twice, first to Jacqueline-Dominique Marquain and then to Elisabeth de Chavigny. Both of them died during their marriages to him. Boiry lived in Paris, but kept a secondary residence at Chourgnac in the home of Orélie-Antoine de Tounens. Boiry had no children with either of his wives. Boiry used his royal titles on his French passport after a court order. He earned about 30,000 francs ($6,000) per month for working at the faculty. The marriage license from his last marriage is signed by a Portuguese prince, a Portuguese archbishop and Jose Maria de Montells y Galan (a commander of the Order Civil of Alfonso X the Wise).

Boiry died on January 5, 2014 at his home "Le Chèze" in Chourgnac d'Ans.