Princess Marguerite of Orléans

Princess Marguerite Adélaïde Marie of Orléans, Marguerite d'Orléans, Małgorzata Orleańska, (16 February 1846 – 24 October 1893 ) was a member of the House of Orléans and a Princess of France by birth. Through her marriage to Prince Władysław Czartoryski, Marguerite was a princess of the House of Czartoryski by marriage.

Early life


Marguerite was the third child of Prince Louis, Duke of Nemours and his wife Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. On February 17, 1846, the day after her birth, she was baptized at the Tuileries Palace in Paris and held at the baptismal font by her paternal uncle François of Orléans, Prince of Joinville, and by her paternal great-aunt Princess Adélaïde of Orléans. She lived in Bushy House after the death of her grandmother, Queen Maria Amalia who received the house after the death of Queen Adelaide where then her father inherited after the death of her grandmother.

In 1865, Marguerite became romantically involved with her first cousin, Louis of Orléans, Prince of Condé, but the young man's premature death the following year put an end to their plans.

Marriage and issue
Marguerite married Prince Władysław Czartoryski, second child of Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski and his wife Princess Anna Zofia Sapieha, on 15 January 1872 in Chantilly. Marguerite and Władysław had two sons:


 * Prince Adam Ludwik Czartoryski (5 November 1872 – 29 June 1937)
 * Prince Witold Kazimierz Czartoryski (10 March 1876 – 29 October 1911)

Death
The death of Princess Marguerite, seems to have occurred, the St James's Gazette observes, under painful circumstances. For some years she had been suffering from tuberculosis, and had ceased to play a part in the society of the Faubourg, of which she was once so bright an ornament, devoting all her remaining strength to the care of her two children, Princes Adam and Withold.

The winter and spring of 1893, which she passed at San Remo, the she had made terrible progress, and a fortnight before she was brought from the sanatorium near Frankfurt, where the summer was spent, to the Hôtel Lambert, her Paris home, in a well-nigh hopeless state.

She rallied, however, and on Tuesday, at the usual dinner-hour, she was able to take some nourishment, looking forward to congratulating her father, Prince Louis, Duke of Nemours, the next day on the eightieth anniversary of his birth.

An hour later a fatal crisis came on, and at nine o'clock she breathed her last in the arms of her devoted husband and in the presence of her sons. The Duke of Nemours, who was sent for at once, arrived too late to take a last farewell of his child, and the Duc de Chartres, the Duke of Aumale, the Prince de Joinville, the Duc and Duchess d'Alençon, and the Comte and Comtesse d'Eu did not reach the house of morning.