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Marie-Jeanne de Savoie-Nemours
(1644–1724)

Other names: Marie-Jeanne-Baptiste, Madame Royale

Biographical

Regent of Savoy 1675-80

Marie-Jeanne, considered a beautiful, fascinating, and intelligent, but dissolute and unscrupulous woman, assumed the reins of government for her son, Victor Amadeus, upon her husband's death in 1675. She was blindly devoted to French interests, more so than the previous regent of Savoy, Princess Christine of France, her husband's mother. Madame Royale, as she was called, had a natural appetite for domination sharpened by the subordinate position to which her husband had relegated her. She seized power with a determination to retain it as long as possible, following the example set by Duchess Christine during the preceding regency. Christine, by consistently refusing to associate her son in the authority she exercised in his name or to give him any political training, contrived to maintain a controlling influence in state affairs long after she had nominally resigned them. Victor Amadeus bitterly resented the subjection in which he perceived that it was the Regent's intention to keep him, and his irritation against her was intensified as he grew older by his knowledge of 'the little empire which she possessed over her heart,' to borrow the euphemistic expression of her friend Madame de la Fayette. The princess's gallantries indeed, and the open rivalry for the first place in her affections between two noblemen, the Marchese di San Maurizio and the Conte di Masino, which was the talk of Turin, constituted a grave scandal, and so disgusted the young Duke that on the rare occasions when Madame Royale condescended to embrace her son before retiring for the night, the latter was observed to rub his cheek vigorously, as though he had been touched by some plague-stricken person. Victor Amadeus felt keenly, too, the humiliating position to which his country was reduced, for Louis XIV, pushed by Louvois and encouraged by the complaisance of Madame Royale, treated Savoy as an appanage of the crown of France, rather than an independent state, and the condition of servitude to which he desired to condemn her grew every year more intolerable.

In 1677 Madame Royale began to plan a union between Victor Amadeus and her niece, the Infanta Donna Isabella Luisa, heiress to the throne of Portugal. Under Portuguese law, such a marriage would have required the Duke to reside in Portugal until the birth of an heir. With the Duke in Portugal, this would have left the Regent in control of Savoy. A strong party among the nobility could not conceal its hostility to the proposed expatriation of their youthful sovereign. The Marchese Pianezza and two other members of the Council of Regency entered into a conspiracy to carry off Madame Royale, shut her up in a convent, and declare the majority of her son. But their intentions were discovered by the Regent, and it was the conspirators themselves who went into confinement. Although on the 14th of May 1680, Madame Royale's regency nominally came to an end, she continued to govern with the full consent of her son, whose part in affairs of state appeared to be confined to signing the decrees which she laid before him. But, unknown to his mother, the Duke sent to his ambassadors instructions diametrically opposed to those which they received from the princess, and worked in secret to strengthen his party at the court and in the country, which daily received fresh accessions.

Meanwhile, Madame Royale's plans for her son to marry the Infanta failed, and this was followed by two comparatively uneventful years, during which Madame Royale continued to govern, without, so far as appearances went, any opposition from her son, who judged the time had not yet come to strike a blow for his independence. In secret, however, the young Duke continued to work to strengthen the hands of his party, and kept a very watchful eye on the actions of his mother, whose rule he perceived, with great satisfaction, was becoming more and more unpopular. The ministers then secretly planned a match between the Duke and a daughter of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, but when France discovered the project, Louis XIV gave orders for three thousand French troops to cross the frontier into Piedmont. Madame Royale expostulated vigorously against this high-handed action, being well aware that the arrival of foreign troops would be the death-blow of the little popularity that remained to her. But her remonstrances came too late; the French had already entered Piedmont, and there Louis XIV intended them to remain until the Tuscan marriage had been definitely abandoned. The King instead wanted the Duke to marry his niece, Anne Marie d'Orléans, a union which Victor Amadeus favoured. Madame Royale endeavoured to prolong her tenure of power by delaying the nuptials, but after her son married, the regency finally came to an end, and she retired to the Palazzo Madama at Turin.

Place of birth: Paris
Place of first marriage: Turin
Place of second marriage: Turin
Place of death: Turin

Daughter of Charles-Amédée de Savoie-Nemours and Elisabeth de Bourbon-Vendôme. She was married firstly to Charles V of Lorraine in 1662, the marriage being annulled in 1665, and secondly to Carlo Emanuele II di Savoia in 1665, and had issue.

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