Charlotte Aglaé d'Orléans (22 October 1700 – 19 January 1761)[1][2] was Duchess of Modena and Reggio by marriage to Francesco III d'Este.

She was born a princesse du sang, and had ten children, including Ercole III d'Este, Duke of Modena.

She was one of eight children of Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, nephew of King Louis XIV of France, and Françoise Marie de Bourbon, the latter's legitimized daughter.

Her grandmother made a pen portrait of her granddaughter at this time: Mademoiselle de Valois is not, in my opinion, pretty, and yet occasionally she does not look ugly.

She has white teeth, a large, ill-looking nose, and one prominent tooth, which when she laughs has a bad effect[4] The Dowager Duchess of Orléans also said of her granddaughter that: She has a good deal of the Mortemart family in her, and is as much like the Duchess of Sforza, the sister of Montespan Her cousin, Louis Henri, Duke of Bourbon, proposed to her on behalf of his younger brother Charles de Bourbon, comte de Charolais.

In 1718, Charlotte Aglaé began a romantic affair with Louis François Armand du Plessis, duc de Richelieu.

Earlier projects to marry Charlotte Aglaé to either an English prince or to Charles Emmanuel III of Sardinia had failed.

Her grandmother is known to have written to Charlotte Aglaé's aunt, Anne Marie d'Orléans, Queen of Sicily, on the marriage proposal.

According to her grandmother's writings, her future husband had fallen in love with the young Charlotte Aglaé upon, "the mere sight of her portrait".

Her distant cousin, Marguerite Louise d'Orléans, who had previously been wedded against her will to Cosimo III de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany in 1661, had suffered through a disastrous marriage.

The grand duchess noticed the similarities between herself and her younger cousin and, unable to deal with the situation, refused to speak to Charlotte Aglaé about her impending nuptials: the Grand Duchess of Tuscany says that she will not see Mademoiselle de Valois nor speak to her, knowing very well what Italy is, and believing that Mademoiselle de Valois will not be able to reconcile herself to it.

After this, there was a banquet at the Palais Royal where the young king Louis XV attended and presented his gifts to the new Hereditary Princess of Modena.

Charlotte Aglaé received an enormous dowry of 1.8 million livres, half of which was contributed in the name of the young king, Louis XV, on orders of the Regent.

Although by rank she was neither a fille nor petite-fille de France, Charlotte Aglaé was allowed to keep the Duchess of Villars in attendance as a lady-in-waiting at the Modenese court.

Everyone was expected to rise very early and attend Mass; dinner was served at an hour when many of the fashionable ladies of Paris and Versailles were sipping their morning chocolate; the usual occupation of the ducal family in the afternoon was a carriage ride, the carriages proceeding at an almost funeral pace; supper was at eight o'clock; and ten was bed time.

Her boredom was only agitated when her father-in-law's favourite, the Count of Salvatico (an admirer of Charlotte Aglaé) was made Grand Master of Ceremonies.

He intercepted her mail from relatives and friends in France, and actually had the audacity to stop delivery of several letters from her father, in order to create the impression that she had quarrelled with the Regent.

Following her father's death, Charlotte Aglaé and her husband were asked to stay at the prince's villa at Rivalta, in a sort of private exile away from the court of Modena.

Her mother, trying to keep her scandalous daughter away from Paris and Versailles, wrote to the Duke of Modena to make sure that Charlotte Aglaé and her husband stayed in Lyons.

Initially, she and her husband lived at the Hôtel de Luynes Rue du Colombier (where her son Benedetto was born), not far from the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés.

Charlotte Aglaé persuaded Cardinal Fleury to convince the young king to once again let her stay in Paris and not depart with her husband.

In 1743, due to the War of the Austrian Succession, Charlotte Aglaé was forced to ask for permission to return to Paris with her eldest daughter, Maria Teresa.

This request was at first ignored but help came from her old lover, the Duke of Richelieu, who used his influence over Louis XV's current mistress, the Duchess of Châteauroux, to gain the necessary approval.

Louis Jean Marie de Bourbon, was Charlotte Aglaé's younger first cousin and was the heir to the vastly wealthy House of Bourbon-Penthièvre.

Their eldest child, the Prince de Lamballe, married Maria Teresa Luigia di Savoia, the future friend of Marie Antoinette, in 1767.

At Maria Teresa's death in 1754, Monsieur de Penthièvre travelled to Italy where another of Charlotte Aglaé's daughters was proposed, the Princess Matilde.

Maria Fortunata, like her older sister, married one of her mother's cousins, Louis François II de Bourbon, Prince of Conti.