The Futility of Madame: Marguerite of Lorraine and Elisabeth-Charlotte of the Palatinate in the Service of Their Threatened Homelands

Spangler, Jonathan ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6938-3607 (2023) The Futility of Madame: Marguerite of Lorraine and Elisabeth-Charlotte of the Palatinate in the Service of Their Threatened Homelands. In: Resilience and Recovery at Royal Courts, 1200–1840. Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 41-64. ISBN 9783031201226 (hbk); 9783031201233 (ebk)

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Abstract

The exchange of royal brides in the early modern period was an important part of the diplomatic process, intended to provide peace and stability between neighbours and forge (or repair) links between ruling dynasties. This essay examines two marriages between the Bourbon dynasty of France and its smaller neighbours and in particular the roles played by the two brides: Marguerite of Lorraine in 1632 and Elisabeth-Charlotte of the Palatinate in 1671. Both marriages quickly became exercises in futility, as French armies soon occupied and devastated each woman’s homeland—and, worse, in both cases their marriages provided the casus belli for the invasion. Each woman’s powerlessness contrasted to her formal position at court as ‘Madame’, the second lady of France, sister-in-law to the king. In the longer term, both women demonstrated the importance of loyalty, not to a physical homeland, but to dynasty and to dynastic identity: the House of Lorraine not only survived, it thrived in the generations that followed.