Françoise Marie de Bourbon (Légitimée de France; 4 May 1677 1 February 1749) was the youngest illegitimate daughter of King Louis XIV of France and his maîtresse-en-titre, Françoise-Athénaïs de Rochechouart, Marquise de Montespan. At the age of 14, she married her first cousin Philippe d'Orléans, the future regent of France during the minority of Louis XV. Through two of her eight children, she became the ancestress of several of Europe's Roman Catholic monarchs of the 19th and 20th centuries—notably those of Belgium, Italy, Portugal, Spain, and France.
Françoise Marie wielded little political influence. She participated in the botched Cellamare Conspiracy in 1718 which the conspirators orchestrated to oust her husband as regent in favour of her brother Louis-Auguste, Duke of Maine.
Early life (1677–1692) Françoise Marie was born in 1677 at the Château de Maintenon, owned since 1674 by Françoise d'Aubigné, Marquise de Maintenon, the governess of Madame de Montespan's illegitimate children by King Louis XIV. She and her younger brother, Louis Alexandre de Bourbon, Count of Toulouse were cared for by Mmes de Monchevreuil, de Colbert, and de Jussac under Mme. de Maintenon's supervision, as their mother was ostracised from court eventually. As a child, she also went to Versailles to visit her parents occasionally.
Mademoiselle de Blois
On 22 November 1681, when she was four and a half years old, Louis XIV legitimised Françoise Marie and gave her the courtesy title of Mademoiselle de Blois, a style once held by her older half-sister Marie Anne de Bourbon, a legitimised daughter of the king by Louise de La Vallière. Louis XIV did not mention his daughter’s mother in the act of legitimisation because Madame de Montespan was still married to the Marquis de Montespan, who might have counter-claimed paternity and custody of his wife's children. By the time of her birth, her parents' relationship was coming to an end because of Madame de Montespan's possible involvement in the Affaire des poisons.
Her older siblings Louis Auguste and Louise Françoise had been legitimised on 19 December 1673 by letters patent registered at the Parlement de Paris. Her younger brother, Louis Alexandre, was legitimised at the same time as she and received the title of comte de Toulouse. She remained close to him and their older brother, Louis-Auguste de Bourbon, Duc du Maine, for her entire life. However, she never had closeness to her legitimate half-brother, Louis, Dauphin of France.
She inherited her mother's beauty, such that Madame de Caylus commented that Françoise was “naturally timid and glorious and was a little beauty with a beautiful face and beautiful hands; completely in proportion.” She took pride in her royal ancestry and the royal blood of the House of Bourbon that she inherited from her father. Later, it was joked that she would “remember she was a daughter of France, even while on her chaise percée.” The Marquis d'Argenson said she was very like her mother, but had also Louis XIV's orderly mind, failing of injustice, and that of his harshness.
Marriage
Madame de Maintenon was a childless widow who, as the king's morganatic wife from the mid-1680s, promoted her charges' interests, scandalising the court by securing the marriage of Mlle de Blois to the king's only legitimate nephew, Philippe d'Orléans in 1692. Then known by his father's subsidiary title, Duke of Chartres, he was the son of Philippe de France, Duc d'Orléans, known, as the king's only brother, as Monsieur. The mésalliance between bastard and legitimate blood royal disgusted Philippe's mother, Elizabeth Charlotte of the Palatinate, who harbored well-known prejudice against her brother-in-law's bastards. Upon learning of her son's acquiescence to the betrothal, she slapped him in front of the court, then turned her back on the king who had bowed in salutation to her. She remained an enemy to her daughter-in-law and indifferent to her grandchildren by her.
On the occasion of the marriage between their respective children, Louis XIV gave to his brother the Palais-Royal in which the Orléans had resided, but had not owned. It was the Palais Cardinal previously, but Cardinal Richelieu, its builder, bequeathed it to the crown upon his death in 1642. Louis XIV also promised an important military post to the Duke of Chartres and gave 100,000 livres to the Duke of Orléans' favourite, the Chevalier de Lorraine. Upon being informed of the identity of her future husband, Françoise remarked: Je ne me soucie pas qu'il m'aime, je me soucie qu'il m'épouse. ("I care not that he love me, but that he marries me")