Princess of Bulgaria
Marie Louise was not loved by her husband. Ferdinad was a narcissist and bisexual man who did not find her attractive. However, he made sure that in order to secure his lineage on the Bulgarian throne, she would bear him children. Under pressure from his subjects and looking to be recognized as Bulgaria's sovereign by the Russian emperor, Ferdinand wanted to have their eldest son, Boris, converted to the Bulgarian Orthodox Church in the summer of 1895. Marie Louise, pregnant, argued bitterly against her husband's actions, with the support of her father and her mother-in-law. The second child received baptism with Roman Catholic rites. However, unable to avoid Boris's conversion, Marie Louise, who had threatened to leave the country, left Sofia for Beaulieu in the south of France, the same day.
In May 1896 Marie Louise returned to Bulgaria. In the summer, she went to London with her husband for Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, giving birth the following January to Princess Eudoxia. In July 1898 with her husband and their four year old, Boris, they visited St Petersburg at the invitation of Nicholas II of Russia, and Marie Louise made a success of the visit.
Disillusionment in her private life and bearing four children in five years affected her frail health. Suffering from pneumonia, Marie Louise died in Sofia, twenty four hours after giving birth to her fourth child. Aged just 29, she was buried in the Roman Catholic Cathedral of St Louis of France in Plovdiv.
Read more about this topic: Princess Marie Louise Of Bourbon-Parma
Famous quotes containing the word princess:
“How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people! how is she become as a widow! she that was great among the nations, and princess among the provinces, how is she become tributary!”
—Bible: Hebrew Lamentations 1:1.
Said of Jerusalem.