Louise d'Orléans

Louise of Orléans

Louise by Nicaise de Keyser now part of the Royal Collection.

Tenure

9 August 1832 – 11 October 1850

Born

3 April 1812
Palermo, Sicily

Died

11 October 1850 (aged 38)
Ostend, Belgium

Spouse

Issue

Full name
Louise Marie Thérèse Charlotte Isabelle d'Orléans

Father

Mother

Religion

Signature

Full name
Louise Marie Thérèse Charlotte Isabelle d'Orléans

Louise of Orléans (Louise Marie Thérèse Charlotte Isabelle; 3 April 1812 – 11 October 1850) was a Princess of Orléans and was Queen consort of the Belgians as the last wife of King Leopold I. She is an ancestor of the present King of Belgium, Italian Royal Pretender (Prince of Naples), the Grand Duke of Luxembourg and the present Prince Napoléon - head of the Imperial House of France.

Born in Palermo, Sicily, on 3 April 1812, she was the eldest daughter of the future King Louis-Philippe I, King of the French and of his wife Maria Amalia of the Two Sicilies. As a child, she had a religious and bourgeoise education thanks to the part played by her mother and her aunt, Princess Adélaïde of Orléans to whom she was very close. As a member of the reigning House of Bourbon she was entitled to the rank of a Princess of the Blood Royal.

On her father's side, she was a granddaughter of Philippe Égalité, and the great-great-great-granddaughter of Philippe d'Orléans, Regent for Louis XV, Madame de Montespan, she was descended from not only Louis XIV but was also a great-great-great-great granddaughter of his brother Philippe I, Duke of Orléans; both the sons of Louis XIII. On her mother's side, she was a descendant of Maria Theresa of Austria and Catherine de' Medici. At the accession of her father to the throne, under the name Louis-Philippe I, King of the French, when she was eighteen, Louise became a princesse d'Orléans.