Princess Sophie Hélène Béatrice of France
| Sophie | |||||
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Sophie by Élisabeth Vigée-Le Brun (1786)
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| Born | 9 July 1786 Palace of Versailles, France |
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| Died | 19 June 1787 (aged 11 months 10 days) Palace of Versailles, France |
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| House | Bourbon | ||||
| Father | Louis XVI of France | ||||
| Mother | Marie Antoinette | ||||
Princess Sophie Hélène Béatrice of France (9 July 1786 – 19 June 1787) was the daughter of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI of France.
Biography
Sophie was born at the Palace of Versailles, the youngest of the four children of King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette. She was named after her great-aunt Sophie, Louis XV's sixth daughter who had died four years earlier.
Sophie was born a very large baby,[1] but her fragile health was undermined by tuberculosis. She died in Versailles after suffering five or six days of convulsions caused by the cutting of new teeth.[2] She was only eleven months old.
Her death was a cause for much sorrow on the part of her parents. When Marie Antoinette's foster-brother, Joseph Weber,[3] attempted to console her with the fact that given Sophie's tender age Marie Antoinette must not have grown overly attached to her, the bereaved mother said only, "Don't forget that she would have been my friend." This was a reference to her words after the birth of Sophie's older sister in 1778.[4]
She was buried at the Royal Basilica of Saint Denis north of Paris.
| The Royal Family of France, 1787 |
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Queen Marie Antoinette with her children, 1787 at Versailles; (L-R); Marie Thérèse, known as Madame Royale at court; the Queen with the Duke of Normandy on her lap; the Dauphin is on the right pointing into an empty cradle; the cradle used to show Madame Sophie; she died later in the year and had to be painted out; by Élisabeth-Louise Vigée-Le Brun; the Fleur-de-lis of France and the Bourbons can be seen behind on the cabinet
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Ancestry
References
- ↑ Lever, Evelyne, Marie-Antoinette, Fayard, Paris, 1991, p. 414, ISBN 2-213-02659-9,
- ↑ Fraser, Antonia, Marie Antoinette, The Journey, Anchor Books, USA, 2001, p. 257, ISBN 0-385-48949-8.
- ↑ Fraser, p. 4. Joseph Weber was the son of Marie-Antoinette's wet nurse, Constance Weber. His memoirs were published by Baudouin Frères, Imprimeurs-Libraires, in Paris, in 1822: https://archive.org/stream/mmoiresdeweberc03tolgoog/mmoiresdeweberc03tolgoog_djvu.txt
- ↑ Fraser, p. 257.
