Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma

Marie Louise was an Austrian archduchess who became Napoleon’s second wife and empress of the French in 1810. She gave birth to Napoleon II and, after the emperor’s fall, ruled the duchies of Parma, Piacenza and Guastalla under the settlement imposed by the victorious powers.

Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma also held the offices or ranks of Princess of Hungary and Princess of Bohemia. Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma belonged to the House of Habsburg-Lorraine and operated within Habsburg monarchy; France. Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma was born in Vienna and died in Parma.

Michelle Moran’s The Second Empress makes Marie Louise the young Austrian archduchess compelled to marry Napoleon after France’s victory over her family, following the dynastic pressure to provide an heir and her uneasy place inside the Bonaparte household. Baroness Orczy’s The Bronze Eagle moves to 1815, when a fortune removed from Marie Louise’s convoy becomes part of a royalist and Bonapartist struggle during Napoleon’s return from Elba, linking the former empress to the political uncertainty of the Hundred Days.