Elisabeth Therese of Lorraine

Elisabeth Therese of Lorraine (15 October 1711 3 July 1741) was Queen of Sardinia as the wife of Charles Emmanuel III of Sardinia. She was born a Princess of Lorraine as the daughter of Leopold, Duke of Lorraine and Élisabeth Charlotte d'Orléans. She became the coadjutor bishop of Remiremont Abbey in 1734, before her marriage to Charles Emmanuel III. She died from puerperal fever, after childbirth. Early life (1711–1736) Princess Elisabeth Therese was born on 15 October 1711 at the Château de Lunéville in Lorraine. She was the seventh daughter and eleventh child of Leopold Joseph of Lorraine and his wife, Élisabeth Charlotte d'Orléans. As a Princess of Lorraine, she was entitled to the style of Highness as well as the rank of foreign princess in France. During the coronation of Louis XV in October 1722, Elisabeth Therese, her mother, and her sisters Anne Charlotte and Marie Louise went to the French royal court. Elisabeth Therese's grandmother, Princess Palatine, found her three granddaughters very charming as well as attractive, though Anne Charlotte was deemed the most beautiful. In the spring of 1725, the young French king, Louis XV, was fifteen and unmarried. He was engaged to Mariana Victoria of Spain, but the young princess was sent back to Spain because she was too young to conceive. As a result, Élisabeth Charlotte began negotiations to marry Elisabeth Therese to the king. However, this was met with opposition from the king's prime minister, the Duke of Bourbon, who arranged for the king to marry an obscure Polish princess later that year. The Duke of Bourbon stated that marriages between kings of France and princesses of Lorraine always resulted in strife, and that the House of Lorraine was too closely related to the House of Habsburg, which would cause discontent and conflict within the French nobility.