Isabelle d'Orléans
Duchess of Guise
Portrait byPierre Mignard
Born	(1646-12-26)26 December 1646 Palais du Luxembourg, Paris, France
Died	17 March 1696(1696-03-17) (aged 49) Palace of Versailles, France
Burial	Carmel of the Faubourg Saint-Jacques, Paris
Spouse	Louis Joseph, Duke of Guise
Issue	Francis Joseph, Duke of Guise
Names Élisabeth Marguerite d'Orléans
House	Orléans
Father	Gaston, Duke of Orléans
Mother	Marguerite of Lorraine
Signature

Élisabeth Marguerite d'Orléans (26 December 1646 – 17 March 1696^[1]), known asIsabelle d'Orléans, was the Duchess of Alençon and, during her husband's lifetime, Duchess of Angoulême. She was the first cousin ofLouis XIV of France, being the daughter ofGaston d'Orléans andMarguerite of Lorraine. She wassuo jure Duchess ofAlençon andAngoulême.

Élisabeth d'Orléans was born in Paris at theLuxembourg Palace, then called thePalais d'Orléans, and now the seat of theSenate of France.^[2] The palace had been given to her father on the death of his mother,Marie de' Medici in 1642. Élisabeth was known by her first name,Élisabeth, but she always signedIsabelle. One of five children, she was not raised with her siblings but in a convent, because she was destined to become abbess ofRemiremont and was styled as such.

Known asMademoiselle d'Alençon until her marriage,Isabelle (Élisabeth Marguerite) was acquainted with the young Louise Françoise de La Baume Le Blanc, who was to becomeduchesse de La Vallière, mistress of Louis XIV, and who grew up at Blois in the entourage of Isabelle's sisterMarguerite Louise d'Orléans. It was assumed that Isabelle's older and more beautiful sister, Marguerite Louise, would marry Louis, and that Françoise Madeleine would marry another European prince. A possible match was one withCharles Emmanuel II, Duke of Savoy, who later married her younger sister on 4 March 1663.

Another possible spouse was her cousinHenri Jules de Bourbon - the futurePrince de Condé andPrince du Sang. This was dropped as Henri Jules preferred the GermanAnne Henriette of Bavaria who was a granddaughter of theQueen of Bohemia.

The choice for Isabelle (who was humpbacked)^[3] fell upon a "foreign prince (prince étranger) naturalized in France":Louis Joseph de Guise. TheDuke of Guise was the titular head of the House of Guise, a cadet branch of theHouse of Lorraine of which Isabelle's mother was a member.

Isabelle and the Duke were married at theChâteau de Saint-Germain-en-Laye on 15 May 1667 in the presence of the Court and thePrinces of the Blood. Her husband, four years younger than she was, was not only under the legal control of his aunt and guardian, the "magnificent" and proudMademoiselle de Guise (Marie de Lorraine de Guise), but in day-to-day protocol, he was treated by Isabelle as the social inferior that he was. From her marriage to her death, Isabelle d'Orléans was known to the French asMadame de Guise. Her brief union with the Duke of Guise produced one child:

• Francis Joseph de Lorraine, Duke of Guise (Hôtel de Guise,^[4] Luxembourg Palace, Paris, 28 August 1670 – 16 March 1675).

Isabelle's husband died in 1671, fromsmallpox contacted on his way back from a visit to the court ofCharles II, King of England. Her son inherited his father's titles:duc de Guise et de Joyeuse andprince de Joinville.

At the death of her mother in 1672, she moved into the Luxembourg Palace along with the little Francis Joseph. Still unable to walk unaided at age four, he was dropped by his nurse and died from a head injury in 1675. He died at the Luxembourg Palace.^[5] Upon her son's death, she became the Duchess of Alençon and Angoulême in her own right.^[6]

After the death of her son, Isabelle (whom the French knew as "Madame de Guise") spent every summer in her duchy of Alençon and most winters at the royal court. When in Paris, she would stay at the Luxembourg Palace which had been ceded to her after her mother's death in 1672. (Haunted by her little son's death throes there, she found it difficult to stay very long at the Luxembourg.) In 1672 she created a private apartment for herself at the abbey ofSaint Pierre de Montmartre, where she often saw Mlle de Guise and her sister, the abbess. After 1675, this little circle expanded when Isabelle's sisterMarguerite Louise, Grand Duchess of Tuscany, left her husband, moved into an apartment within the abbey walls, and was kept under what amounted to house arrest. Always very devout, Isabelle commissioned religious pieces fromMarc-Antoine Charpentier, the composer of Mlle de Guise.^[7] She also commissioned secular works (operas and pastorales) from him, some of which were performed at the royal court.

Isabelle was a fervent supporter of her cousin Louis XIV's policies to bringHuguenots back into the Catholic fold. As early as November 1676, when she supervised the conversion of a Protestant lady, Isabelle commissioned from Marc-Antoine Charpentier the first of a succession of oratorios that recounted how St. Cecilia had won over her bridegroom and his brother to Christianity. The probable author of the libretti wasPhilippe Goibaut, a protégé of the two Guise women. After theRevocation of the Edict of Nantes in October 1685, she created a house for "New Converts" in her duchy of Alençon and actively converted the local Huguenots.

In 1694, she gave the Luxembourg Palace to Louis XIV.^[8] She died in 1696 at thePalace of Versailles and was buried in the Great Carmel of Paris, among the nuns.

The fortune that she had accumulated was willed to her older and only surviving sibling,Marguerite Louise,Grand Duchess of Tuscany.

• Anselme de Sainte-Marie, Père (1726).Histoire généalogique et chronologique de la maison royale de France [Genealogical and chronological history of the royal house of France] (in French). Vol. 1 (3rd ed.). Paris: La compagnie des libraires.

Wikimedia Commons has media related toÉlisabeth Marguerite d'Orléans.

• Funeral Oration of Élisabeth

• 1646 births
• 1696 deaths
• 17th-century French people
• 17th-century French women
• Nobility from Paris
• Dukes of Angoulême
• Dukes of Alençon
• House of Bourbon-Montpensier
• Abbesses of Remiremont
• French suo jure nobility
• Princesses of France (Bourbon)
• Music history of France
• House of Guise
• House of Orléans
• Burials at the Carmel du faubourg Saint-Jacques
• Duchesses of Guise
• Duchesses of Joyeuse
• Princesses of Joinville
• People from the Province of Île-de-France

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