Six Charming Princes for Three Castles: LGBT Couples Rebuilding France’s Fairy‑Tale Landscape

First, there were princesses in towers waiting for some vaguely straight prince on a horse. Now it’s 2026, and our fairy tales look very different: six charming princes, three very real “castles”, a lot of rubble, and zero damsels in distress. From a burned‑out manor in Eure‑et‑Loir to an abandoned château reborn as a wedding venue, to a stone farmhouse turned “mini‑chateau”, meet the queer couples rewriting the “happily ever after” in rural France.​

Dimitri & David: the manor that burned, the love that didn’t

Dimitri and David Petitpas fell for the Manoir d’Egmont, a 19th‑century house overlooking the Loir: parquet floors, marble fireplaces, a huge park, everything you’d want in a romantic movie set. They bought it in autumn 2025 with a clear plan: 100 days of intensive work to stabilise the structure and host their wedding there in summer 2026.

In the night of 20–21 November 2025, everything changed. While they were back near the Swiss border, the gendarmerie called: the manor was on fire. By the time they drove back to Cloyes‑les‑Trois‑Rivières, the 150‑year‑old timber structure had collapsed, 90% of the 220 m² living space was destroyed, and their “castle” was a blackened shell open to the sky. Local and national outlets have covered the story, from Intensité to more detailed features about how their dream wedding quite literally went up in smoke.​

Instead of disappearing offline, Dimitri and David turned their pain into a public story of resilience. They launched a fundraising campaign to “save Manoir d’Egmont”, appeared in TV segments and still share updates in videos like “Notre manoir a brûlé” and “1 semaine après l’incendie de notre manoir”. Their goal hasn’t changed: rebuild, tile by tile. For queer viewers, their project resonates way beyond renovation: two men planning a château wedding in the French countryside, claiming a space long reserved for heterosexual fairy tales, then refusing to give it up, even after the fire.

Useful links:

• Article about the fire and their project: https://www.intensite.net/achete-il-y-a-deux-mois-leur-manoir-du-xixe-siecle-reduit-en-cendre​
• Long‑form narrative on the blaze and their wedding plans: https://infominute.fr/incendie-manoir-egmont-leur-mariage-de-reve-reduit-en-cendres​
• France 3 video report + fundraising link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Oc9D9Fg1Cg​

Tom & Damien: rescuing an abandoned château for future queer weddings

If Dimitri and David are in their “phoenix rising from the ashes” arc, Tom and Damien are in the “we actually bought the spooky château” chapter. The married couple from Vancouver moved to France after buying an abandoned château, now known as Château Poséidon, empty and unused since the late 1980s.​​

On their YouTube channel and Instagram account @chateau.poseidon, they document everything: leaving Canada, signing for the property, stepping for the first time into rooms full of dust and forgotten furniture, and slowly bringing the building back to life. Their official website presents the project clearly: Tom and Damien, a French‑Canadian/French duo, restoring a 19th‑century château with their own hands to turn it into “a romantic wedding and event venue unlike any other”. Weekly episodes show ironwork restoration, design plans and the emotional rollercoaster of saving a huge historic house as a queer couple.

Here, the fairy‑tale twist is obvious: two husbands as co‑owners of a French château, designing a space where other couples – queer included – will celebrate their own love stories. It’s a very literal queering of the “destination wedding in a castle” fantasy, swapping the anonymous straight landlord for visible, married, online‑savvy gay hosts.​

Useful links:

• Website: https://www.chateauposeidon.com​
• YouTube (intro episode): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpyRF5CaoDE​
• Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/chateau.poseidon/​

Bram & Simon (VANGAZE): a farmhouse turned “charming chateau” for a queer family

Bram and Simon, two Dutch gay men, have taken a slightly different route: instead of a formal château, they bought an old stone farmhouse in the south of France and are turning it into their own “charming chateau” – their words – plus holiday apartments.

On their VANGAZE YouTube channel, they tell how they sold their house, lived vanlife, then settled in rural France on a property “in pretty rough shape”. In videos like “Self Building and Renovating Gay Couple; The French Farm”, “From Ruins to a Dream Home: Gay Couple’s Farmhouse Renovation” and “Gay Couple’s French Renovation Journey”, they show everything from installing solar panels to taking their first shower in a half‑finished bathroom. At the same time, they speak openly about becoming fathers: their surrogate is pregnant and they are preparing the house for their future baby.

Their project taps into the same fairy‑tale energy, but with a softer, more domestic twist: not a grand château with towers, but a stone house slowly becoming a queer family home, with “château vibes” as they put it. Two dads‑to‑be, two dogs, a big farm in the French countryside: the tropes of the rural dream are all there, just rewritten with a rainbow lens.

Useful links:

• VANGAZE channel (overview of the farm project): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILwby2dRYZM​
• “From Ruins to a Dream Home: Gay Couple’s Farmhouse Renovation”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_q-JSowuQUY​
• “Gay Couple’s French Renovation Journey”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_O09qe_EwEI​

Modern queer fairy tales, just with more dust and invoices

What connects these three couples isn’t just stone and scaffolding; it’s the way they claim spaces historically coded as straight fantasy – manors, châteaux, “maisons de maître” – and insert queer lives right at the centre. Dimitri and David insist that their wedding will happen “no matter what”, even if the setting has to be re‑imagined among the surviving trees or in another castle. Tom and Damien imagine a future where queer and straight couples alike say “I do” under ceilings they lovingly restored. Bram and Simon build not just walls, but a home for a very real LGBTQ+ family, baby included.

In other words, the castle doesn’t rescue them; they rescue the castle – together. And somewhere between insurance meetings, Patreon launches and endless rubble, our childhood fairy tales quietly get an update: “Six charming princes for three castles, and they all lived messily, loudly, queerly ever after.”

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