Princess Marguerite of Orléans

Princess Marguerite Adélaïde Marie of Orléans, , , (16 February 1846 – 24 October 1893 ) was a member of the House of Orléans and a Princess of France by birth. Through her marriage to Prince Władysław Czartoryski, Marguerite was a princess of the House of Czartoryski by marriage.

Early life

Marguerite was the third child of Prince Louis, Duke of Nemours and his wife Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.

On February 17, 1846, the day after her birth, she was baptized at the Tuileries Palace in Paris and held at the baptismal font by her paternal uncle François of Orléans, Prince of Joinville, and by her paternal great-aunt Princess Adélaïde of Orléans.

She lived in Bushy House after the death of her grandmother, Queen Maria Amalia who received the house after the death of Queen Adelaide; then her father inherited after the death of her grandmother.

In 1865, Marguerite became romantically involved with her first cousin, Louis of Orléans, Prince of Condé, but the young man's premature death the following year put an end to their plans.

Marriage and issue Princess Marguerite Adélaïde Marie d'Orleans married Prince Władysław Czartoryski, second son of Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski and his wife, Princess Anna Zofia Sapieha, on 15 January 1872 in Chantilly.

His first wife was María Amparo Muñoz y Borbón, 1st Countess of Vista Alegre, eldest morganatic daughter of Queen Maria Christina of Spain and her second husband, Agustín Fernando Muñoz y Sánchez, Duke of Riánsares, who died in 1864 leaving Władysław a widower with one infant son, Prince August Czartoryski.

Together, Marguerite and Władysław had two sons:

Prince Adam Ludwik Czartoryski, Duke of Klewan and Zukow (5 November 1872 – 29 June 1937); married an heiress, Countess Maria Ludwika Krasińska and had issue, including Princess Malgorzata Izabella Czartoryska, the wife of Prince Gabriel of Bourbon-Two Sicilies, and Prince Augustyn Józef Czartoryski, the husband of Princess María de los Dolores of Bourbon-Two Sicilies Prince Witold Kazimierz Czartoryski (10 March 1876 – 29 October 1911); unmarried, died in Versailles, Paris, France

Death The death of Princess Marguerite occurred on 24 October 1893, at the age of 47, as the St James's Gazette observes, under painful circumstances.

For some years she had been suffering from tuberculosis and had ceased to play a part in the society of the Faubourg, of which she was once so bright an ornament; henceforth, she devoted all her remaining strength to the care of her two children, Princes Adam and Withold.

During the winter and spring of 1893, which she passed at San Remo, her health had deteriorated. One night she was brought from the sanatorium near Frankfurt, where the summer was spent, to the Hôtel Lambert, her Paris home, "in a well-nigh hopeless state."

She rallied, however, and on Tuesday, at the usual dinner-hour, she was able to take some nourishment, looking forward to congratulating her father, Prince Louis, Duke of Nemours, the next day on the eightieth anniversary of his birth.

An hour later a fatal crisis came on, and at nine o'clock she died in the arms of her devoted husband and in the presence of her sons. The Duke of Nemours, who was sent for at once, arrived too late to take a last farewell of his child, and the Duc de Chartres, the Duke of Aumale, the Prince de Joinville, the Duc and Duchess d'Alençon, and the Comte and Comtesse d'Eu did not reach the house of mourning.

She was buried in Saint-Louis-en-l'Île, Paris, but after some time, both her grave and that of her husband Władysław, were moved to the Czartoryski family crypt in Sieniawa, Poland.

Ancestry