page_title: Elizabeth Charlotte, Madame Palatine
section_title: Children
hierarchical_section_title: Elizabeth Charlotte, Madame Palatine / Life / Children
caption_attribution_description: Wrongly identified sometimes as a "Portrait of Louise de La Vallière and two of her children", which is obviously inaccurate, as is shown by the fleurs-de-lis on the ermine robe, which can be only wear by a member of the royal family, in no case by a mistress of the king.
context_page_description: Princess Elisabeth Charlotte, was a German princess member of the House of Wittelsbach and, as Madame, the second wife of Philippe I, Duke of Orléans and mother of Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, France's ruler during the Regency. She gained literary and historical importance primarily through her correspondence, which is of cultural and historical value due to her sometimes very blunt descriptions of French court life and is today one of the best-known German-language texts of the Baroque period.
  Although she only had two surviving children, she not only became the ancestress of the House of Orléans, which came to the French throne with Louis Philippe I, the so-called "Citizen King" from 1830 to 1848, but also became the ancestress of numerous European royal families, so she was also called the “Grandmother of Europe”. Through her daughter she was the grandmother of Francis I, Holy Roman Emperor, the husband of Maria Theresa, and great-grandmother of Joseph II and Leopold II and Marie Antoinette, the last Queen of France before the French Revolution.
context_section_description: Liselotte and Philippe I of Orléans had three children together:
  Alexandre Louis d'Orléans, Duke of Valois (2 July 1673 – 16 March 1676). Born at the Château de Saint-Cloud and died at the Palais-Royal before his third birthday, his death being attributed to the bloodletting by the Orléans family's doctors; last person to carry the title Duke of Valois.
  Philippe d'Orléans (2 August 1674 – 2 December 1723). Born at the Château de Saint-Cloud, he was titled Duke of Chartres from birth until becoming Duke of Orléans in 1701; married his first cousin Françoise Marie de Bourbon and had issue; died at the Palace of Versailles; Regent of France and Navarre during the minority of Louis XV of France—the era was known as la Régence.
  Élisabeth Charlotte d'Orléans (13 September 1676 – 23 December 1744). Born at the Château de Saint-Cloud and married Leopold, Duke of Lorraine in 1698 and had issue; became the Sovereign Princess of Commercy 1737; she died at Commercy; known as Mademoiselle de Chartres, a title given her at birth; grandmother of Queen Marie Antoinette.
  Liselotte had a warm relationship with her children and the untimely death of her eldest son Alexandre Louis at the age of less than 3 was a very hard blow for her. She cried for 6 months before the birth of her daughter, who apparently helped her over the terrible loss.
  I do not think that one can die out of excessive sadness, because otherwise I would without a doubt go on it, because what I felt in myself is impossible to describe.
  — Liselotte von der Pfalz: Letter to Anna Katharina von Offen from April 1676 about the death of her first son.
  Her younger son Philippe not only looked like her outwardly, but shared her literary, artistic and scientific interests; during his father's lifetime and shortly thereafter, his relationship with his mother was distant, as his father and his favorites influenced him and allowed him everything, while his mother criticized his debauchery. Later, however, their relationship improved and in the end they were very close, which was not exactly common in royal houses at the time.
caption: Elisabeth Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orléans with her two surviving children. Copy by Jean-Gilbert Murat (1837) after an original by Pierre Mignard from ca. 1678–1679.
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