Princess Marie Christine Caroline Adélaïde Françoise Léopoldine was born on April 2 1813 in Palermo, the 3rd child and 2nd daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Orléans (later King Louis Philippe & Queen Marie Amélie of the French). Marie was just a year younger than her eldest sister Louise and the 2 were brought up together. The 2 sisters were devoted to each other though they were very different both physically (Louise fair with blue eyes while Marie was dark) and in character. Louise was sweet and painstaking (which earned her the nickname of "angelic" among the family) while Marie was more daring, witty and wild. According to Mme de Boigne, she was Louis Philippe's favorite. Her health was frail and she suffered of tuberculosis though it went unrecognized during years. During her teenage years, the Princess grew more and more sensitive, exalted, moody and introspective - like so many of her generation, she probably suffered from what was known as la maladie du siècle : world-weariness. She wrote to her sister Louise after her marriage to King Léopold of the Belgians : " How unhappy I am since you left my poor friend ! I love you so ! I cannot enjoy anything without you ! [...] Let me tell you again & again how passionately I love you and all I have lost ... I seem to be falling in some kind of raving (I cannot find a French word to express what I feel) and ask myself how I will be able to manage a life where you are not. This is driving me mad ... Chateaubriand once said that "life is a painful dream" and I say that life is a painful reality". And again : "So I turned 20 today ! How old I am ! If only I could be sure I would be reasonable ! In the meantime, I cannot help feeling sad and lonely".
Marie had no leaning toward court life, she hated balls and receptions and enjoyed swimming in the river Seine. When she learnt that her father was to be made king she cried a flood of tears. She was very good at drawing and took lessons with the best masters. She then turned to sculpture where she showed great gift. She sculpted several statues of Jeanne d'Arc which can still be seen today (2 in Paris, another in front of the town hall in Orléans, one apparently in a museum in Dorndrecht ...). She also found inspiration for her sculptures in her own family or in her favorite books.
As a teenager she fell in love with a commoner whose identity has never been discovered - he is evoked in the letters exchanged between Marie's mother and sister Louise under the nickname "Pantalon". Unlike her eldest sister, Marie desperately wished to marry. There was some talk of a possible union with her cousin the Duke of Syracusa but after months of transaction the Neapolitan family refused. It was King Léopold I of the Belgians who finally proposed one of his nephews, Prince Alexander of Würtemberg. They were married in October 1837 in Trianon. Theirs was apparently a happy match and Marie enjoyed life in Germany with her husband. But a fire destroyed their residence and the young couple went back to France where Marie gave birth to a son Philippe in Neuilly in July 1838. The Princess's health was rapidely failing. She left for Italy with her husband - first Genova then Pisa where she died in January 1839. Her favourite brother Nemours, whom she called "Tan", was the only one of her family to be near her when she died.
On her deathbed she made her husband promise that their son would be raised in the Catholic faith. Little Philippe spent the greatest part of his childhood in France with his grandparents.
