page_title: Elizabeth Charlotte, Madame Palatine
section_title: Marriage
hierarchical_section_title: Elizabeth Charlotte, Madame Palatine / Life / Marriage
caption_attribution_description: Portrait of Elisabeth Charlotte of the Palatinate
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: For political reasons, Liselotte was married in 1671 to the brother of King Louis XIV of France, Philippe I, Duke of Orléans, known as "Monsieur" —in the Ancien Régime this title belonged to the King's eldest brother. Described in her marriage contract as "the Electoral Princess Palatine of the Rhine" (Kurpfalzprinzessin), as wife of the Duke of Orléans, Liselotte  assumed the style of Madame. This union was conceived by Anna Gonzaga, Liselotte's aunt (as widow of Edward, Count Palatine of Simmern, Charles I Louis' younger brother) and an old friend of the Duke of Orléans; she not only negotiated the marriage contract, including the secret Catholic instruction and subsequent public conversion of the fiancée but also escorted Liselotte from Heidelberg for Paris. The wedding per procurationem took place on 16 November 1671 at the Cathedral of Saint Stephen in Metz by Bishop Georges d'Aubusson de La Feuillade; in representation of the groom was the Duke of Plessis-Praslin. The day before, she had already solemnly renounced her old Reformed faith and converted to the Roman Catholic faith. She saw her husband, who was 12 years her senior, for the first time on 20 November 1671 in Châlons.
  Monsieur didn't look ignoble, but he was very short, had pitch black hair, eyebrows and eyelids, big brown eyes, a long and rather narrow face, a big nose, a mouth that was too small and ugly teeth more feminine than man's manners, loved neither horses nor hunting, nothing but games, holding cercle, eating well, dancing and being dressed, in a word, everything that ladies love. ... The King loved gallantry with ladies, I do not believe that my husband has been in love in his life.
  — Liselotte von der Pfalz: Letter to Caroline, Princess of Wales from 9 January 1716 about her husband Philippe, called Monsieur.
  Outwardly, Liselotte led a glamorous life from then on and had (until his death in 1701) her own apartments in her husband's residences, the Palais Royal in Paris, and the Château de Saint-Cloud. However, the couple lived mostly at the royal court, where they had to be present for about three quarters of the year, first in the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye and, after its completion in 1682, in the Palace of Versailles, where they had two adjacent apartments in the main wing. They also had apartments in the Palace of Fontainebleau, where the court went in autumn for the hunting season, in which Liselotte (who unlike her husband) took part with enthusiasm. She often rode with the King through the woods and fields all day long, from morning to night, without being deterred by occasional falls or sunburn. From Fontainebleau, the couple made regular detours to Montargis Castle, which belonged to Monsieur and which, according to their marriage contract, would later fall to Madame as a (hardly used) widow's seat. Liselotte had her own court of 250 people, which cost 250,000 livres annually, while her husband had an even larger one.
  For the Duke of Orléans it was already his second marriage, his first wife and cousin Henrietta of England died suddenly and under mysterious circumstances in 1670. He also brought two daughters into his new marriage, 9-year-old Marie-Louise (with whom Liselotte was able to build a warm, but rather sisterly relationship), and 2-years-old Anne Marie (who had no memory of her birth mother and whom Liselotte loved like her own child).
  Liselotte and Philippe's marriage was problematic for both sides, as he was homosexual and lived it out quite openly.He led a largely independent life, together with and influenced by his main and long-time lover, the Chevalier de Lorraine; he also had other favorites and numerous smaller affairs with younger men, which the Chevalier himself and one of his friends, Antoine Morel de Volonne (whom Monsieur made Liselotte's Hofmarschall during 1673–1683) procured to him. Morel had a very bad reputation even by the standarts of the time: "He stole, he lied, he swore, was atheist and sodomite and sold boys like horses."
  Philippe fulfilled his marital duties rather reluctantly, he didn't want
caption: Elisabeth Charlotte, Princess Palatine, ca. 1670–71. Currently at Reiss Engelhorn Museum, Mannheim.
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