19 Madame Royale, Princess Marie-Thérèse Charlotte of France

Pronunciation

December 19,  1778-October 19,  1851

The eldest child of King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, Marie-Thérèse was the only sibling to reach adulthood and the only royal prisoner to survive the Reign of Terror (1794). She was with her family throughout the Women’s March on Versailles, their move to Tuileries, the attempted flight, and imprisonment. She left France in 1795 for Vienna, just before her seventeenth birthday, but would later return to France during the Bourbon Restoration, only to go into exile for a final time in 1830. She was married to her first cousin, Louis Antoine, Duke of Angoulême, who was the eldest son of the future Charles X, her father’s younger brother. After her husband’s death in 1844, Marie-Thérèse moved to Schloss Frohsdorf, a baroque castle just outside Vienna. Marie-Thérèse died of pneumonia on 19 October 1851, three days after the fifty-eighth anniversary of the execution of her mother.

Bibliography of Sources:

“Marie-Thérèse of France.” Wikipedia:  The Free Encyclopedia. Accessed May 22, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Thérèse_of_France.

Image Citations:

Fig. 1. Heinrich Füger, Portrait of Marie Thérèse Charlotte, called Madame Royale, Daughter of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. After 1795, ivory, diameter: 77 mm. Musée du Louvre, Paris, France. Available from: ARTstor. Accessed April 29. 2019. http://www.artstor.org.

Fig. 2. Antoine-Jean Gros, Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte de France, Duchesse d’Angoulême, Madame Royale. 1816, oil on canvas, 257 x 182 cm. Musée national des châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon, France. Available from: ARTstor. Accessed April 29. 2019. http://www.artstor.org.