Adélaïde de Bourbon-Penthièvre, Duchesse d'Orléans

On the opposite wall, gazing rather sadly at the portrait of the Duc, was a Vigée-Lebrun original of a lady who bore a marked resemblance to Louis XIV. In Turkish dress, her high, frizzled coiffure artfully stuffed into a turban with long, dark ringlets flowing to her waist, the lady's face glowed with quiet resignation, shadowed only by the melancholy sweetness of her smile....
~ from Madame Royale by Elena Maria Vidal

Since the prologue of Madame Royale opens with a description of the portrait of the Duchesse d'Orléans, I was delighted to find that Catherine Delors has written a post about the duchess' fascinating life. To quote Madame Delors:

Yet the story of Adélaïde began in a very ordinary fashion, insofar as the destiny of a princess can be deemed ordinary. Of the eight children of her parents, she was the only daughter to survive to adulthood. Her father was the Duc de Penthièvre, grandson of Louis XIV and Madame de Montespan. Her mother was an Italian princess, Marie Thérèse Félicité d'Este-Modène. Her only surviving brother, the Prince de Lamballe died at the age of twenty, leaving a young widow who would become one of Marie-Antoinette's closest friends.
This left Adélaïde, known as Mademoiselle de Penthièvre, the sole heiress to the largest fortune in France, and one of the most marriageable princesses of her time. As fate would have it, her father, when she was sixteen, arranged a match with another member of the royal family, Louis-Philippe d'Orléans, Duc de Chartres. The wedding was duly celebrated in the Royal Chapel of Versailles.

The young couple settled in the Palais-Royal, in the heart of Paris. And they had many children (six in eight years.) Were they happy? Not quite. Adélaïde's husband, now Duc d'Orléans, was a libertine who found his lovely bride very boring. He preferred the company of many mistresses, including the infamous Comtess de Genlis, by whom he had an illegitimate daughter named Paméla. Unfortunately not a unusual occurrence for princely and aristocratic marriages in the 18th century.

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