nanshe-of-nina:WOMEN’S HISTORY ✞† HENRIETTA OF ENGLAND (16 June 1644 – 30 June 1670)Henrietta of Eng

nanshe-of-nina:WOMEN’S HISTORY ✞† HENRIETTA OF ENGLAND (16 June 1644 – 30 June 1670)Henrietta of England was the youngest child of Charles I of England and Henriette Marie de France, daughter of Henri IV de France and Maria de’ Medici. When she was born, the First English Civil War had already been ongoing for two years and showed no signs of stopping. In 1645, her father was defeated at the Battle of Naseby and the following year, Henrietta’s godmother and governess, Anne Villiers, spirited her out of England to France where Henriette Marie had already fled.At he French court, Henrietta became known as Anne after her aunt, Ana de Austria. In January of 1649, Charles was executed. Understandably, her mother was griefstricken and was left virtually penniless. Nevertheless, a group of former Royalist exiles soon joined around Henrietta and her mother that included her brothes, Charles, James, and Henry. Though she had been baptized an Anglician, Henrietta was raised as a Catholic by her devout mother. Though Henriette angled to arrange for her daughter to marry Louis XIV, Ana de Austria and Cardinal Mazarin arranged for Louis to marry his Spanish cousin, María Teresa.In 1658, Oliver Cromwell died and Henrietta’s eldest brother, Charles, was invited to return and claim the crown. Shortly afterwards, Louis XIV’s younger brother, Philippe d'Orléans, sought her hand in marriage. To secure a dowry, Henrietta and her mother briefly returned to England where Henriette Marie tried to prevent the marriage of her second son, James, to the commoner Anne Hyde, who was already pregnant with his child. On 31 March 1661, Henrietta and Philippe married. At first their marriage was a happy one, but after the birth of their first child, a daughter named Marie-Louise d'Orléans, things went wrong. Courtiers gossiped that Marie-Louise was actually the daughter of Louis XIV or Armand de Gramont, comte de Guiche causing Philippe to become insanely jealous. He took up again with the love of his life, Philippe, chevalier de Lorraine. Henrietta loathed Philippe de Lorraine and he doesn’t seem to have much cared for her, either. She and Philippe (known as “Monsieur”) had six more children, but only another daughter, Anne Marie, survived infancy. In 1669, Henriette Marie died after taking too many opiates, greatly grieving Henrietta while Monsieur was more interested in trying to claim all of her property before her body was hardly cold.Despite her tense marraige, Henrietta corresponded regularly with figures like Molière and Jean Racine and took a great interest in gardening. She also took a great interest in promoting good relations between France and England. In April of 1670, she became very ill and was dead by the end of June. Rumours quickly spread that Monsieur or the Chevalier de Lorraine had poisoned her, though an autopsy proved that she’d actually died of peritonitis. After her death, Philippe remarried to Pfalzprinzessin Elisabeth Charlotte, though their marriage was no happier. Nine years after her death, Henrietta’s elder daughter, Marie-Louise, married the physically and mentally disabled Carlos II de España, known as “el Hechizado.” She died childless of Appendicitis at the age of twenty-six and rumors spread that she’d been poisoned on the orders of her mother-in-law, Maria Anna von Österreich. Her younger daughter, Anne Marie, married Vittorio Amedeo II di Savoia. After the death of Anne of Great Britain, she had a claim to the British throne, but was passed over on account of her Catholicism in favor of the Protestant George of Hanover, a descendant of Henrietta’s paternal aunt, Elizabeth Stuart. -- source link

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