Significance of Marie Adelaide

The importance of the young Italian princess whose father was so politically astute at the time she was selected to announce that he was now French is worth a comment.

Of all the people of the court who Saint-Simon seems to like it would be Marie Adelaide. She was called a little monkey. She was warm, funny, childish, and playful. She brought great joy and happiness to everyone who came to make her acquaintance.

When she realized that she would someday be the Queen of France, she went a little mad at the prospect, and danced in merriment and glee. She would probably have made a great and popular queen had she ever been able to fulfill that role. She appears to have been so well-liked by all who come to know her.

She did party all the time, as she went to Paris, to the opera, to dances, having pushed herself into a life of frivolity and pleasure. Her husband was trained and taught to be a serious minded, responsible, and rather austere religiously minded young man. He did not fare well in the military and was a disappointment in that respect, but his wife prayed for his safety all the while. When being prepared for his role as future king upon the death of his father, he took his studies seriously and proved to be fully responsible in assuming the role of dauphin.

He loved his wife wholly and faithfully, truly more than would be expected in that court, and everyone noted it. They were a beloved pair.

It is sad to know that when she knew she was to die, she asked him who he would marry after her death, and he told her, nobody, as he was going to follow soon after her. He did keep his promise as he caught the measles that had killed her and in turn, a few weeks later, died also.

A son survived because a guardian took him away from the snares of the physician who everyone suspected was the real cause of the death of so many at one time...Wisely, she turned out to be right and the child survived to become Louis XV, who just as his grandfather had died before him, died of smallpox also.

Louis XIV had developed an immunity to it when a child. It is interesting to me to note that both Louis XIV and George Washington both had contracted smallpox when young but survived and maintained an immunity due to it. Both had pock marks on their faces, and both remained unsusceptible to its strain years later when it made its way through the populations of each again.

I had a small pox shot as a child that did not leave a depressed mark but has a freckle to show where it had been given.

Smallpox has always been a frightful disease, and when I was young, everyone received vaccinations against it.

The sorrow of the French monarchy is that it is now a memory of the past. The joy of it to me is that I have discovered it, and have benefited from this time period in many ways. Marie Adelaide has a special place in my heart since she is one of my memories that I have enjoyed, and I understand well why the king loves her so. She reminds me a lot of one of my cousins in Ohio. That cousin is alive and well today and knows nothing of these memories and studies that I have made. I just recognized something that makes me think of each in the same light.

Another cousin makes me think of Louis XIV's son, the Dauphin, a lot. I seldom ever mention this either as that cousin is also alive and well. There are definite similarities but it is best to keep these to myself.

I have always seen my own mother as being a combination of three people in the King's family: his mother, Anne of Austria, Madame deMontespan, and Madame de Maintenon, and Liselotte also So actually, four people. She is the one person with whom I did share this information while she was alive. I have always seen the similarity between my dad in some of the statements that Liselotte made about Monsieur, her husband. I have a friend who believes that he had been Monsieur. I don't argue with anyone about beliefs and who is who. I just see that people do often have characteristics that are similar to others.

Oddly, that friend's name has always been a puzzle to me...but I cannot explain why on a blog which may get into the wrong hands.I will just say that his last name is a match to a famous editor in my hometown.