| Name | Marie Leszczyńska |
|---|---|
| Full name | Maria Karolina Zofia Felicja Leszczyńska |
| Succession | Queen consort of France and Navarre |
| Caption | Portrait of Marie Leszczyńska ''by Nattier (1748)' |
| Reign | 4 September 1725 – 24 June 1768 |
| Spouse | Louis XV of France |
| Issue | Louise Élisabeth, Duchess of ParmaPrincess HenriettePrincess LouiseLouis, Dauphin of FrancePhilippe, Duke of AnjouMarie Adélaïde, Duchess of LouvoisPrincess VictoireSophie, Duchess of LouvoisPrincess ThérèseLouise Marie, Abbess of Saint Denis |
| House | House of BourbonHouse of Leszczyński |
| Father | Stanislaus I of Poland |
| Mother | Catherine Opalińska |
| Date of birth | June 23, 1703 |
| Place of birth | Trzebnica, Poland |
| Date of death | June 24, 1768 |
| Place of death | Versailles, France |
Marie Leszczyńska (Trzebnica, 23 June 1703 – Versailles, 24 June 1768) was a queen consort of France. She was a daughter of King Stanisław Leszczyński of Poland (later Duke of Lorraine) and Catherine Opalińska. She married King Louis XV of France and was the grandmother of Louis XVI, Louis XVIII, and Charles X. In France, she was referred to as Marie Leczinska. She was the longest serving Queen consort of France.
Maria's early life was troubled by her father's political misfortune. Ironically, King Stanisław's hopeless political career was eventually the reason why his daughter Maria was chosen as the bride of King Louis XV of France. Devoid of political connections, his daughter was viewed by the French as being free from the burden of international alliances.
She was born in Trzebnica, Lower Silesia, the year before her father was made King of Poland by Charles XII of Sweden who had invaded the country that year. She would be brought up as a fugitive princess living for a while in Stockholm, (Sweden).
Very close to her father, Maria shared his exile in Wissembourg in the French province of Alsace, a place suggested by Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, a nephew of Louis XIV and Regent of the Kingdom of France during Louis XV's minority.
The family was supported by a pension from the Régent and, while living in Wissembourg, Maria was asked for her hand in marriage by Louis Henri de Bourbon, Prince of Condé, who became Louis XV's prime minister at the death of the Regent in December 1723. That same year, the young king fell ill and, fearing the consequences of the unmarried king dying without an heir, the prime minister suggested marrying the young king.
Cardinal Fleury, who wanted for the king a royal bride who would not drag France into any complicated political alliances, supported the marriage. One aspect in the choice of Marie was the fact that she was old enough to have children, while the former designated bride, the Infanta Mariana Victoria of Spain, was too young to bear children.
The marriage by proxy took place on 15 August 1725 in the cathedral of Strasbourg, Louis XV being represented by his cousin the Duke of Orléans, Louis le Pieux.
Louis and Marie first met on the eve of their wedding, which took place on 5 September 1725, at the Château de Fontainebleau. Marie was twenty-two years old and Louis fifteen. The young couple was reported to have fallen in love at first sight..
The announcement of the wedding was not received well as the royal court, who considered the match to be a misalliance, as the father of Marie had been a monarch for such a short time. There were rumours before the wedding that the bride was ugly, epileptic and sterile. However, Marie earned popularity among the population from the beginning, when she handed out money on her way to her wedding in Fontainebleau.
Cardinal de Fleury, who had been Louis' tutor, was appointed Grand Chaplain to Marie.
Upon her marriage, Maria's Polish name was modified into French as Marie Leczinska.
The young couple's marriage was initially happy. In August 1727, Maria gave birth to her first children, twin daughters named Louise Élisabeth de France and Henriette Anne de France, at the Palace of Versailles. The elder twin, Louise Élisabeth, later married the Infante Felipe of Spain and eventually became the Duchess Consort of Parma. Through Louise Élisabeth, Marie became an ancestor of Juan Carlos I of Spain.
After the difficult birth of Louise Marie de France, in 1737, which nearly took her life, she had no more children. In 1738, she refused Louis entrance to her bedroom, and after this, their private relationship ended, though the formal marriage continued in spite of her husband's infidelities.
Louis XV was a notorious womaniser. Several of his mistresses, particularly Madame de Pompadour, who was introduced at the court of Versailles in 1745 on the occasion of the marriage of the Dauphin Louis, eventually eclipsed the Queen's social status. Most of her husband's romantic affairs were with her knowledge, and she either simply accepted them, or was powerless to stop them, and throughout, she displayed an attitude of discretion and dignity. She upheld a relatively good relationship toward Madame de Pompadour.
Marie had a very close relationship to her children.
Queen Marie represented the King many times in ceremonial rituals at the court of Versailles during his many absences from such matters.
Louis provided her with a large apartment in the palace where she could live more informally with her circle of friends. Among her most noted guests were the de Luynes couple.
She was given an allowance of 96,000 livres for pleasure, charity and gambling, which was not considered to be very large. She enjoyed a game called cavagnole, and was often in debt because of the reluctance of her husband and father to pay her debts.
Marie was a devout Roman Catholic. Her major contribution to life at Versailles was the weekly event of Polish choral concerts. She was also a great lover of music and painting and the protector of many artists. She met the castrato Farinelli in 1737, and, in 1764, the young Mozart whom she found very charming, and she acted as an interpreter for her husband and family who did not understand German. She also started a correspondence with Voltaire, for whom she secured a pension.
During an era when France was a very powerful nation, often in conflict with Austria, the Austrian ambassador to France, comte de Mercy-Argenteau (who later helped secure the marriage of the Dauphin and Marie Antoinette) was said to have been romantically involved with the queen; this seems highly unlikely and was disregarded as court gossip. Marie was known for her good manners, grace and her piety.
Her daughter-in-law, the dauphine, died at the age of 20 after giving birth to a daughter Marie Thérèse de France, Madame Royale. The Queen, very fond and loving of her only son, encouraged him to take as his second wife Duchess Marie-Josèphe of Saxony the daughter of her father's rival, Frederick Augustus Wettin of Saxony, King August III of Poland. Initially, this connection caused some friction between the Queen and her new daughter-in-law. However, the friction was soon overcome, reportedly because the young German princess was an admirer of the Queen's father. In honour of him, several of the Queen's grandsons received the name Stanislas at their christening.
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Category:1703 births Category:1768 deaths Category:People from Trzebnica Category:French queens consort Maria Category:Polish royalty Category:Burials at the Basilica of St Denis
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
| Name | Diana |
|---|---|
| Title | Princess of Wales; Duchess of Rothesay |
| Imgw | 200 |
| Spouse | Charles, Prince of Wales (29 July 1981, div. 1996) |
| Issue | Prince William of WalesPrince Harry of Wales |
| Full name | Diana Frances Spencer |
| Titles | Diana, Princess of WalesHRH The Princess of WalesThe Lady Diana SpencerThe Hon Diana Spencer |
| Date of birth | July 01, 1961 |
| Place of birth | Park House, Sandringham, Norfolk |
| Father | John Spencer, 8th Earl Spencer |
| Mother | Frances Shand Kydd |
| Place of christening | St. Mary Magdalene Church, Sandringham, Norfolk |
| Date of death | August 31, 1997 |
| Place of death | Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital, Paris, France |
| Place of burial | Althorp, Northamptonshire |
Diana, Princess of Wales (Diana Frances; née Spencer; 1 July 196131 August 1997) was a member of the British royal family and an international personality of the late 20th century as the first wife of Charles, Prince of Wales, whom she married on 29 July 1981. The wedding, which was held at St. Paul's Cathedral, was televised and watched by a global audience of over 750 million people. The marriage produced two sons: Princes William and Harry, currently second and third in line to the thrones of the 16 Commonwealth realms.
A public figure from the announcement of her engagement to Prince Charles, Diana was born into an old, aristocratic English family with royal ancestry, and remained the focus of worldwide media scrutiny before, during and after her marriage, which ended in divorce on 28 August 1996. This media attention continued following her death in a car crash in Paris along with her companion Dodi Fayed and driver Henri Paul (Fayed's bodyguard, Trevor Rees-Jones, was the sole survivor from the crash) on 31 August 1997, and in the subsequent display of public mourning a week later.
Diana also received recognition for her charity work and for her support of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. From 1989, she was the president of the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children.
Diana was only eight years old when her parents were unexpectedly divorced, after much acrimony and as a result of her mother having an affair with a married man. Initially, Frances took Diana to live in an apartment in London's Knightsbridge, where Diana attended a local day school. However, Lord Spencer gained custody of Diana after a court battle in which Frances' mother, Baroness Fermoy, denounced her own daughter as being an unfit mother. Shortly afterwards, following the divorce of her companion Peter Shand Kydd from his wife, Frances married him and moved to the island of Seil on the west coast of Scotland. Henceforth, Diana was raised by her father, but did often visit her mother. On 14 July 1976, Lord Spencer followed in Frances' footsteps by having an affair with a married woman, Raine, Countess of Dartmouth, the only daughter of Alexander McCorquodale and Barbara Cartland. Neither of Diana's parents had any children from their second marriage. Diana also did not get along with either her stepmother or stepfather.
She was also a descendant of King James II of England through an illegitimate daughter, Henrietta FitzJames, by his mistress Arabella Churchill. On her mother's side, Diana was Irish and Scottish, as well as a descendant of American heiress Frances Work, her mother's grandmother and namesake, from whom the considerable Roche fortune was derived.
The Spencers had been close to the British Royal Family for centuries, rising in royal favour during the 17th century. Diana's maternal grandmother, Ruth, Lady Fermoy, was a long-time friend and a lady-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother. Her father had served as an equerry to King George VI and to Queen Elizabeth II.
Diana moved to London before she turned seventeen, living in her mother's flat, as her mother then spent most of the year in Scotland. Soon afterwards, an apartment was purchased for £50,000 as an 18th birthday present, at Coleherne Court in Earls Court. She lived there until 1981 with three flatmates.
In London she took an advanced cooking course at her mother's suggestion, although she never became an adroit cook, and worked first as a dance instructor for youth, until a skiing accident caused her to miss three months of work. She then found employment as a playgroup (pre-preschool) assistant, did some cleaning work for her sister Sarah and several of her friends, and worked as a hostess at parties. Diana also spent time working as a childminder for an American family living in London.
Prince Charles had known Diana for several years, but he first took a serious interest in her as a potential bride during the summer of 1980, when they were guests at a country weekend, where she watched him play polo. The relationship developed as he invited her for a sailing weekend to Cowes aboard the royal yacht Britannia, followed by an invitation to Balmoral (the Royal Family's Scottish residence) to meet his family. There, Diana was well received by Queen Elizabeth II, by Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, and by the Queen Mother. The couple subsequently courted in London. The Prince proposed on 6 February 1981, and Diana accepted, but their engagement was kept secret for the next few weeks.
Twenty-year-old Diana became The Princess of Wales when she married Charles on 29 July 1981 at St Paul's Cathedral, which offered more seating than Westminster Abbey, generally used for royal nuptials. It was widely billed as a "fairytale wedding," watched by a global television audience of 750 million while 600,000 people lined the streets to catch a glimpse of Diana en route to the ceremony. At the altar Diana accidentally reversed the order of Charles's first two names, saying Philip Charles Arthur George instead. She did not say that she would "obey" him; that traditional vow was left out at the couple's request, which caused some comment at the time. Diana wore a dress valued at £9000 with a 25-foot (8-metre) train. The couple's wedding cake was created by Belgian pastry chef S. G. Sender, who was known as the "cakemaker to the kings."
A second son, Harry, was born about two years after William on 15 September 1984. Diana asserted that she and Prince Charles were closest during her pregnancy with "Harry", as the younger prince became known. She was aware their second child was a boy, but did not share the knowledge with anyone else, including Prince Charles.
She was regarded by a biographer as a devoted and demonstrative mother. She rarely deferred to Prince Charles or to the Royal Family, and was often intransigent when it came to the children. She chose their first given names, defied the royal custom of circumcision, dismissed a royal family nanny and engaged one of her own choosing, in addition to selecting their schools and clothing, planning their outings and taking them to school herself as often as her schedule permitted. She also negotiated her public duties around their timetables. from the mid-1980s, the Princess of Wales became increasingly associated with numerous charities. As Princess of Wales she was expected to visit hospitals, schools, etc., in the 20th-century model of royal patronage. Diana developed an intense interest in serious illnesses and health-related matters outside the purview of traditional royal involvement, including AIDS and leprosy. In addition, the Princess was the patroness of charities and organisations working with the homeless, youth, drug addicts and the elderly. From 1989, she was President of Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children.
During her final year, Diana lent highly visible support to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, a campaign that went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997 after her death.
The chronology of the break-up identifies reported difficulties between Charles and Diana as early as 1985. During 1986, Prince Charles turned again to his former girlfriend, Camilla Shand, who had become Camilla Parker-Bowles, wife of Andrew Parker-Bowles. This affair was exposed in May 1992 with the publication of Diana: Her True Story, by Andrew Morton. The book, which also laid bare Diana's allegedly suicidal unhappiness, caused a media storm. This publication was followed during 1992 and 1993 by leaked tapes of telephone conversations which negatively reflected on both the royal antagonists. Transcripts of taped intimate conversations between Diana and James Gilbey were published by the Sun newspaper in Britain in August 1992. The article's title, "Squidgygate", referenced Gilbey's affectionate nickname for Diana. Next to surface, in November 1992, were the leaked "Camillagate" tapes, intimate exchanges between Charles and Camilla, published in Today and the Mirror newspapers.
In the meantime, rumours had begun to surface about Diana's relationship with James Hewitt, her former riding instructor. These would be brought into the open by the publication in 1994 of Princess in Love.
In December 1992, Prime Minister John Major announced the Wales' "amicable separation" to the House of Commons,. and the full Camillagate transcript was published a month later in the newspapers, in January 1993. On 3 December 1993, Diana announced her withdrawal from public life. Charles sought public understanding via a televised interview with Jonathan Dimbleby on 29 June 1994. In this he confirmed his own extramarital affair with Camilla, saying that he had only rekindled their association in 1986, after his marriage to the Princess of Wales had "irretrievably broken down."
While she blamed Camilla Parker-Bowles for her marital troubles, Diana at some point began to believe Charles had other affairs. In October 1993 Diana wrote to a friend that she believed her husband was now in love with Tiggy Legge-Bourke and wanted to marry her. Legge-Bourke had been hired by Prince Charles as a young companion for his sons while they were in his care, and Diana was extremely resentful of Legge-Bourke and her relationship with the young princes.
In December 1995, the Queen asked Charles and Diana for "an early divorce," as a direct result of Diana's Panorama interview. This followed shortly after Diana's accusation that Tiggy Legge-Bourke had aborted Charles's child, after which Legge-Bourke instructed Peter Carter-Ruck to demand an apology.
On 20 December 1995, Buckingham Palace publicly announced the Queen had sent letters to Charles and Diana advising them to divorce. The Queen's move was backed by the Prime Minister and by senior Privy Councillors, and, according to the BBC, was decided after two weeks of talks. Prince Charles immediately agreed with the suggestion. In February Diana announced her agreement after negotiations with Prince Charles and representatives of the Queen, irritating Buckingham Palace by issuing her own announcement of a divorce agreement and its terms.
The divorce was finalised on 28 August 1996.
Days before the decree absolute of divorce, Letters Patent were issued with general rules to regulate royal titles after divorce. In accordance, as she was no longer married to the Prince of Wales, Diana lost the style Her Royal Highness and instead was styled Diana, Princess of Wales. Buckingham Palace issued a press release on the day of the decree absolute of divorce was issued, announcing Diana's change of title, but made it clear that Diana continued to be a British princess.
Buckingham Palace stated Diana was still a member of the Royal Family, as she was the mother of the second- and third-in-line to the throne. This was confirmed by the Deputy Coroner of the Queen's Household, Baroness Butler-Sloss, after a pre-hearing on 8 January 2007: "I am satisfied that at her death, Diana, Princess of Wales continued to be considered as a member of the Royal Household." This appears to have been confirmed in the High Court judicial review matter of Al Fayed & Ors v Butler-Sloss. In that case, three High Court judges accepted submissions that the "very name ‘Coroner to the Queen’s Household’ gave the appearance of partiality in the context of inquests into the deaths of two people, one of whom was a member of the Family and the other was not." for almost two years, before Khan ended the relationship. Khan was intensely private and the relationship was conducted in secrecy, with Diana lying to members of the press who questioned her about it. Khan was from a traditional Pakistani family who expected him to marry from a related Muslim clan, and their differences, not only religion, became too much for Khan. According to Khan's testimonial at the inquest for her death, it was Diana herself, not Khan, who ended their relationship in a late-night meeting in Hyde Park, which adjoins the grounds of Kensington Palace, in June 1997.
Within a month Diana had begun dating Dodi Al-Fayed, son of her host that summer, Mohamed Al-Fayed. Diana had considered taking her sons that summer on a holiday to the Hamptons on Long Island, New York, but security officials had prevented it. After deciding against a trip to Thailand, she accepted Fayed's invitation to join his family on the south of France, where his compound and large security detail would not cause concern to the Royal Protection squad. Mohamed Al-Fayed bought a multi-million pound yacht on which to entertain the princess and her sons.
She is believed to have influenced the signing, though only after her death, of the Ottawa Treaty, which created an international ban on the use of anti-personnel landmines. Introducing the Second Reading of the Landmines Bill 1998 to the British House of Commons, the Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, paid tribute to Diana's work on landmines:
All Honourable Members will be aware from their postbags of the immense contribution made by Diana, Princess of Wales to bringing home to many of our constituents the human costs of landmines. The best way in which to record our appreciation of her work, and the work of NGOs that have campaigned against landmines, is to pass the Bill, and to pave the way towards a global ban on landmines.
The United Nations appealed to the nations which produced and stockpiled the largest numbers of landmines (United States, China, India, North Korea, Pakistan, and Russia) to sign the Ottawa Treaty forbidding their production and use, for which Diana had campaigned. Carol Bellamy, Executive Director of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), said that landmines remained "a deadly attraction for children, whose innate curiosity and need for play often lure them directly into harm's way". ''
Diana's funeral took place in Westminster Abbey on 6 September 1997. The previous day Queen Elizabeth II had paid tribute to her in a live television broadcast. Her sons, the Princes William and Harry, walked in the funeral procession behind her coffin, along with the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Edinburgh, and with Diana's brother, Charles Spencer, 9th Earl Spencer.
In 1998, Azermarka issued the postage stamps with both Azeri and English captions, commemorating Diana. The English text reads "Diana, Princess of Wales. The Princess that captured people's hearts".
In 2003 the Franklin Mint counter-sued; the case was eventually settled in 2004, with the fund agreeing to an out-of-court settlement, which was donated to mutually agreed charitable causes.
Today, pursuant to this lawsuit, two California companies continue to sell Diana memorabilia without the need for any permission from Diana's estate: the Franklin Mint and Princess Ring LLC.
In July 1999, Tracey Emin created a number of monoprint drawings featuring textual references about Diana's public and private life, for Temple of Diana, a themed exhibition at The Blue Gallery, London. Works such as They Wanted You To Be Destroyed (1999) related to Diana's bulimia, while others included affectionate texts such as Love Was On Your Side and Diana's Dress with puffy sleeves. Another text praised her selflessness - The things you did to help other people, showing Diana in protective clothing walking through a minefield in Angola - while another referenced the conspiracy theories. Of her drawings, Emin maintained "They're quite sentimental . . . and there's nothing cynical about it whatsoever."
In 2005 Martin Sastre premiered during the Venice Biennial the film . This fictional work starts with the world discovering Diana alive and enjoying a happy undercover new life in a dangerous favela on the outskirts of Montevideo. Shot on a genuine Uruguayan slum and using a Diana impersonator from Sao Paulo, the film was selected among the Venice Biennial's best works by the Italian Art Critics Association.
In 2007, following an earlier series referencing the conspiracy theories, Stella Vine created a series of Diana paintings for her first major solo exhibition at Modern Art Oxford gallery. Vine intended to portray Diana's combined strength and vulnerability as well as her closeness to her two sons. Immodesty Blaize said she had been entranced by Diana crash, finding it "by turns horrifying, bemusing and funny". Vine asserted her own abiding attraction to "the beauty and the tragedy of Diana’s life".
Diana was revealed to be a major source behind Andrew Morton's Diana: Her True Story which had portrayed her as being wronged by the House of Windsor. Morton instanced Diana's claim that she attempted suicide while pregnant by falling down a series of stairs and that Charles had left her to go riding. Tina Brown opined that it was not a suicide attempt because she would not intentionally have tried to harm the unborn child. Brown cites an aide that says that Diana accidentally slipped and other sources claim it was an accident. In the televised audio tapes, Diana herself clearly admitted that she did indeed throw herself down the stairs, "bearing in mind I was carrying a child" and had "cut her wrists with razor blades" (evidence of further self-harm).
Royal biographer Sarah Bradford commented, "The only cure for her (Diana's) suffering would have been the love of the Prince of Wales, which she so passionately desired, something which would always be denied her. His was the final rejection; the way in which he consistently denigrated her reduced her to despair." Diana herself commented, "My husband made me feel inadequate in every possible way that each time I came up for air he pushed me down again ..."
In 2007, Tina Brown wrote a biography about Diana as a "restless and demanding shopaholic who was obsessed with her public image" as well as being a "spiteful, manipulative, media-savvy neurotic." Brown also claims that Diana married Charles for his power and had a romantic relationship with Dodi Fayed to anger the royal family, with no intention of marrying him.
Posthumously, as in life, she is most popularly referred to as "Princess Diana", a title she never held. Still, she is sometimes referred to (according to the tradition of using maiden names after death) in the media as "Lady Diana Spencer", or simply as "Lady Di". After Tony Blair's famous speech she was also often referred to as the People's Princess.
Diana's full title, while married, was Her Royal Highness The Princess Charles Philip Arthur George, Princess of Wales & Countess of Chester, Duchess of Cornwall, Duchess of Rothesay, Countess of Carrick, Baroness of Renfrew, Lady of the Isles, Princess of Scotland.
Foreign honours
| Notes | As the wife of the Prince of Wales, Diana used his arms impaled (side by side) with those of her father. |
|---|---|
| Crest | Coronet of the Prince of Wales |
| Escutcheon | Quarterly 1st and 4th gules three lions passant guardant in pale or armed and langed azure 2nd or a lion rampant gules armed and langued azure within a double tressure flory counterflory of the second 3rd azure a harp or stringed argent overall an escutcheon of Coat of Arms of the Principality of Wales, the whole differenced with a label of three points argent; impaled with a shield quarterly 1st and 4th argent 2nd and 3rd gules a fret or the whole defaced with a bend sable charged with three escallops argent. |
| Supporters | Dexter a lion rampant gardant Or crowned with the coronet of the Prince of Wales Proper, sinister a griffin winged and unguled Or, gorged with a coronet Or composed of crosses patée and fleurs de lis a chain affixed thereto passing between the forelegs and reflexed over the back also Or |
| Motto | DIEU DEFEND LE DROIT(God defends the right) |
| Previous versions | After her divorce and before her death, Diana used the arms of her father, undifferenced, crowned by a royal coronet. |
Category:Princesses of Wales Category:British humanitarians Category:Daughters of British earls Category:English Anglicans Category:Mine action Category:Mountbatten-Windsor family Category:People from King's Lynn and West Norfolk (district) Category:People from Northamptonshire Category:Recipients of the Order of the Crown (Netherlands) Category:Road accident deaths in France Category:Spencer-Churchill family Category:1961 births Category:1997 deaths
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
