Until the 19th century, most princesses didn’t meet their husbands until after they were already married to them. You’re probably asking yourself how it was possible to marry someone without being physically present. The answer is simple: through an institution called “marriage by proxy.” This was a ceremony in which an envoy of the intended groom would travel to the princess’s hometown and “marry” her in a formal church ceremony. The couple would then move to the palace and lie down side by side in bed (while all the wedding guests watched).
The “groom” would touch the exposed leg of the “bride” with his foot, and from that moment the marriage took effect. This kind of wedding had plenty of advantages: it allowed economic and military contracts tied to the marriage to be ratified without waiting for the actual wedding to take place. Another advantage was that the intended bride and groom couldn’t run away from each other once they found out who they had married…
The Traumatic Meeting with the Duc d’Orléans
This was the case with Philippe d’Orléans (1640-1701), the openly homosexual younger brother of Louis XIV, and his second wife, Elizabeth Charlotte of the Palatinate (1652-1722). When the bride and groom met for the first time, they both gasped in shock.
She saw a long aristocratic nose peeking out from an enormous black wig, grotesque earrings, rows of jangling bracelets, ridiculously decorated trousers, and giant high-heeled shoes. He, meanwhile, saw a flat, wide face, ruddy skin, tiny piggy eyes, and an enormous German backside.
This was, without a doubt, a classic case of loathing at first sight.
Scenes from the Duchesse d’Orléans’s Married Life
From that moment on, the duchess’s married life became an ongoing nightmare. Although the duke was openly homosexual, he was forced to sleep with his wife in order to produce an heir. To get through this difficult task (pun intended), he decided to tie medallions with pictures of saints to his genitals… After their son was born, the couple agreed to stop sleeping together.
And so the duke could go back to his lovers and leave the saints’ medallions in a drawer. This didn’t bother the Duchesse d’Orléans at all, but what did bother her a great deal was the fact that the duke made sure to hand out all her jewelry and clothes to his lovers. One day, for example, the duchess caught her husband in her room taking all the silverware she had received from Heidelberg, without even leaving her the small box where she kept her handkerchiefs…
While Philippe was remarkably generous with his lovers, he was almost pathologically stingy with his wife. So while he lavished money on his various lovers, his wife and children came close to starving and had to beg just to get shirts or sheets.
Also a Way to Communicate
It’s no surprise, then, that the couple barely spoke to each other. The Duchesse d’Orléans wrote in a letter to the Duchess Sophia of Hanover about one dinner where she and her husband didn’t exchange a single word for several hours. After a silence that seemed to last forever, the duke stood up from his chair, let out a loud fart, turned to his wife and asked, “Did you want to tell me something, Madame?”
The duchess, without missing a beat, turned her back to him and let out a fart of her own. “That’s exactly what I wanted to tell you, Monsieur,” she said. Their son Philippe, the future regent during the reign of Louis XV, who was present at the dinner, told his parents, “If that’s the best you two can say to each other, I can do better than both of you.” You can imagine what he did next…
This unhappy marriage ended in 1701 with Philippe d’Orléans’s death from a stroke. According to the marriage contract, Elizabeth was supposed to be sent to a convent, but she managed to persuade Louis XIV to keep her at court, and even secured a generous pension for herself.
Now, at last, she no longer had to beg anyone when she wanted to buy underwear. She died at 70 and left us a collection of letters, written in colorful language, describing the court at Versailles from her own unique point of view (Madame de Maintenon, for instance, the king’s last mistress and second wife, appears there as “the old witch”). And if you want to meet the Duc and Duchesse d’Orléans, you can watch the film A Little Chaos, which is actually about the story of the gardens of Versailles, but features the couple in a guest appearance.
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