Biography
Descended from Jean d'Orléans, illegitimate son of Louis I, Duke of Orléans, she was known as Mademoiselle de Longueville prior to her marriage. The Dukes of Longueville had acquired the principality of Neuchâtel through marriage to a Swiss princess, Margravine Johanna of Baden-Hochberg-Sausensberg. After the death of her brother Jean Louis Charles d'Orléans in 1694 she succeeded him as Princess of Neuchâtel.
By her marriage with Henri of Savoy, she became Duchess of Nemours. The couple were married on 22 May 1657 at Trie. The dukes of Nemours were descendents of the Dukes of Savoy having settled in France in the sixteenth century, where they ranked as princes étrangers.
At an early age she was involved in the first Fronde, of which her father and stepmother, Anne Genevieve de Bourbon, were leaders. She married Henri de Savoie, 7th Duc de Nemours in 1657. When he died in 1659, leaving her childless, the rest of her life was mainly spent in contesting her inheritance with her stepmother. Her Savoyard nieces included Marie Jeanne, Duchess of Savoy and Marie Françoise, Queen of Portugal.
She left some interesting memoirs, published by C. B. Petitot in the Collection complete des memoires (1819–1829).
She was the muse for Jean Loret's Muse historique (1650, 1660, 1665), a collection of weekly gazette burlesque reporting on the news of Paris society and the court of Louis XIV in the form of letters to Marie d'Orléans-Longueville which are considered an early example of French journalism.
Read more about this topic: Marie De Nemours
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“A biography is like a handshake down the years, that can become an arm-wrestle.”
—Richard Holmes (b. 1945)
“Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)