Maria Theresa of Savoy

Maria Theresa of Savoy (; 31 January 1756 – 2 June 1805) was a French princess by marriage to Charles Philippe, Count of Artois; he being the grandson of Louis XV of France, and younger brother of the future Louis XVI of France. Nineteen years after Maria Theresa’s death, her spouse assumed the throne of France as King Charles X. Her son, Prince Louis Antoine, married Marie Antoinette’s daughter Marie-Thérèse Charlotte, they being the King and Queen of France for approximately 20 minutes on 2 August 1830. Biography Princess Maria Theresa of Savoy was born at the Royal Palace in Turin during the reign of her grandfather Charles Emmanuel III of Sardinia. The daughter of the heir apparent Victor Amadeus and his wife Maria Antonia Ferdinanda of Spain, she was the couple's third daughter and fifth child of twelve children. She was raised with her sister Princess Maria Giuseppina, who was three years her senior and whom she would join later as a member of the Royal House of France. Marriage Her aunts, Maria Luisa of Savoy and Eleonora of Savoy, were once proposed as brides for Louis Stanislas' father Louis. Following a series of dynastic alliances, Maria Theresa was betrothed to the Count of Artois, the youngest grandson of the reigning Louis XV of France and his popular wife, Queen Marie Leczinska. Artois had previously been intended to marry Louise Adélaïde de Bourbon, the daughter of the Prince of Condé. However, the union never took place as her rank was much lower than Artois who, as a male-line descendant of a French monarch, was a grandson of France.