Marie of Cleves | |
Duchess of Orléans | |
Birth Date: | 19 September 1426 |
Death Place: | Chaunay |
Burial Place: | Couvent des Célestins, Paris |
Issue: | Marie, Viscountess of Narbonne Louis XII of France Anne, Abbess of Fontevraud |
House: | La Marck |
Father: | Adolph I, Duke of Cleves |
Mother: | Mary of Burgundy |
Marie of Cleves (19 September 1426 - 23 August 1487) was the third wife of Charles, Duke of Orléans. She was born a German princess, the last child of Adolph I, Duke of Cleves and his second wife, Mary of Burgundy.
Marie was a patron of letters and commissioned many works; she was also an active poet herself, producing ballads and other verses.[1] After the Duke's death she was secretly remarried in 1480 to one of her gentlemen of the chamber, the Artesian "Sieur de Rabodanges", who was some years her junior.[2] She died in Chaunay.
At the age of fourteen, Marie was married to 46-year-old Charles of Valois, Duke of Orléans, a man 32 years her senior, on 27 November 1440, in Saint-Omer.[3] She became his third and last wife. Their eldest child was born fully 17 years after the wedding. They had three children together, being:
Marie is a character in Hella Haasse's historical novel about Charles, Duke of Orléans In a Dark Wood Wandering (original Dutch title Het Woud der Verwachting).