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Louis Philippe I, Duke of Orleans

Louis Philippe d'Orléans
Duke of Orléans
Louis-Philippe1.jpg
Louis Philippe by Louis-Michel van Loo
Born (1725-05-12)12 May 1725
Palace of Versailles, France
Died 18 November 1785(1785-11-18) (aged 60)
Château de Sainte-Assise à Seine-Port, France
Burial Val-de-Grâce, Paris
Spouse Louise Henriette de Bourbon
Charlotte Béraud de La Haye de Riou
Issue
Detail
Louis Philippe II, Duke of Orléans
Bathilde, Princess of Condé
Full name
Louis Philippe d'Orléans
House House of Orléans
Father Louis d'Orléans, Duke of Orléans
Mother Johanna of Baden-Baden
Religion Roman Catholicism
Signature
Full name
Louis Philippe d'Orléans
Royal styles of
HSH Louis Philippe d'Orléans, Duke of Orléans
Blason duche fr Orleans (moderne).svg
Reference style His Serene Highness
Spoken style Your Serene Highness
Alternative style Monseigneur

Louis Philippe d'Orléans known as le Gros (the Fat) (12 May 1725 – 18 November 1785), was a French prince, a member of a cadet branch of the House of Bourbon, the dynasty then ruling France. The First Prince of the Blood after 1752, he was the most senior male at the French court after the immediate royal family. He was the father of Philippe Égalité. He greatly augmented the already huge wealth of the House of Orléans.

Louis Philippe d'Orléans was born at the Palace of Versailles on 12 May 1725. As the only son of Louis d'Orléans, Duke of Orléans and his wife Johanna of Baden-Baden, he was titled Duke of Chartres at birth. He was one of two children; his younger sister Louise Marie d'Orléans died at Saint-Cloud in 1728 aged a year and eight months. His father, who had been devoted to his German wife became a recluse and pious as he grew older.

Louise Marie was known as Mademoiselle in her short lifetime.

Louis Philippe was hardly fifteen when he and his young cousin Princess Henriette of France (1727–1752), the second daughter of King Louis XV and Queen Marie Leszczyńska, fell in love.

After considering the possibility of such a marriage, Louis XV and his chief minister, Cardinal Fleury, decided against it because this union would have brought the House of Orléans too close to the throne.

In 1743, his paternal grandmother, Françoise-Marie de Bourbon the formidable Dowager Duchess of Orléans, and Louise Élisabeth, Dowager Princess of Conti arranged his marriage to his seventeen-year-old cousin, Louise Henriette de Bourbon (1726–1759), a member of the House of Bourbon-Conti, another cadet branch of the House of Bourbon. It was hoped this marriage would close a fifty-year-old family rift.


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Wikipedia

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