The Monaco succession crisis of 1918 arose because France objected to the prospect of a German national inheriting the throne of the Principality of Monaco. Prince Albert I had only one legitimate child, the Hereditary Prince Louis, then heir apparent to the principality. As World War I drew to a close, Prince Louis, at the age of forty-eight, remained (legally) childless, unmarried, and unbetrothed. Dynastic dilemma Louis' nearest legitimate next of kin was Prince Albert I's first cousin Wilhelm, 2nd Duke of Urach (1864–1928). He was born in Monaco in 1864, and was largely raised there as a Francophone Catholic by his mother after her widowhood in 1869. He was educated at the former Jesuit School until 1882. He was, however, a Württemberg national, and his adult domicile and main assets (including Lichtenstein Castle) were in Württemberg. Although he was awarded the Grand Cross of Monaco's Order of Saint-Charles and was a knight of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, he also was awarded much later the Grand Cross of the Order of the Crown of Württemberg and was a knight of Kaiser Wilhelm II's Order of the Black Eagle. In 1871, Württemberg became a part of the German Empire. Wilhelm joined the Württemberg army in 1882, and by 1911 this coloured the status of his claim to Monaco. His father Wilhelm, 1st Duke of Urach, had many connections to France before his marriage in 1863 to Princess Florestine. His first wife, Théodolinde de Beauharnais, was a grand-daughter of Empress Joséphine, Napoléon’s first wife. His cousin Catharina had married Jérôme Bonaparte, and their son Prince Napoléon Bonaparte was a senior adviser in the Second French Empire at the time of Princess Florestine’s marriage. Another cousin, Alexander, had married a daughter of Louis Philippe I in 1837. In turn, Wilhelm the 2nd Duke’s wife Duchess Amalie was descended through her mother from Louis XV. So there was no cultural or dynastic aspect in the von Urachs’ past that was anti-French, rather the opposite; but this meant nothing in the climate of Revanche between the French Third Republic and the new Imperial Germany. The 2nd Duke, a descendant through a morganatic marriage of the royal family of Württemberg, was the elder son of Albert's aunt, Princess Florestine of Monaco. Although he was ineligible to inherit the crown of his patrilineal ancestors in Germany, given the line of succession to the Monegasque throne