Nemours, Marie d'Orleans-Longueville, Duchess de

▪ French princess

born March 5, 1625, Paris, France

died June 16, 1707, Paris

      sovereign princess of Neuchâtel (from 1699), best known for her Mémoires (1709).

      The daughter of Henri II d'Orleans, Duke de Longueville, and his first wife, Louise de Bourbon-Soissons, Marie lost her mother at age 12 and in 1642 came under the authority of her stepmother, the celebrated intriguer of the Fronde, Anne-Geneviève de Bourbon-Condé, Duchess de Longueville (Longueville, Anne-Geneviève de Bourbon-Condé, Duchess de). Raised in a strict, studious atmosphere, Marie came to have little in common with her scandalous stepmother and eventually fled to Dieppe and then to Flanders (1651) upon the renewed outbreak of the wars of the Fronde. For a time she was considered a possible bride for the Duke of York and even for Charles II of England, who had asked her hand. She eventually married Henri II, Duke de Nemours (1657), a near-invalid, who died in 1659, leaving her childless. The rest of her life was spent in a cruel, arduous legal battle with her stepmother's relatives, trying to establish her own inheritance. She lost her case as far as the French property was concerned (1698), but she did establish her right to the sovereign principality of Neuchâtel (1699). In her Mémoires she dealt with the Fronde, writing with sympathy toward her father and with particular hatred for her stepmother and other Condés.

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