[1] One year and six weeks after the wedding, Charlotte Catherine gave birth to Éléonore de Bourbon-Condé (1587–1619), who would become the Princess of Orange in 1606 upon marrying the eldest son of William the Silent.

An autopsy indicated he might have been poisoned and, being about three months pregnant at the time[2] (some said, by her page, Prémilhac de Belcastel) Charlotte Catherine was deemed to have a potential motive and was arrested for murder, as was a Condé household servant by the name of Brillant who was put to death after being tortured.

In 1592 the still childless and Protestant King Henry IV chose to recognise her son as his legitimate, heir presumptive and, as the child's godfather, arranged that he be christened with Huguenot rites but then promptly conducted to Saint-Germain-en-Laye Abbey to be raised as a Catholic, despite the House of Condé's Calvinism.

Young Henri remained heir presumptive after the king's conversion to Catholicism in 1593 and until the birth of his son, the future Louis XIII, in 1601.

When it became apparent that one of the reasons for the marriage was to enable the king access to her new daughter-in-law, she was charged by her son to keep a watchful eye on the young princess at Condés country estate.

Despite her son being in disfavor with the king the dowager princess was nevertheless seen as of sufficiently high rank to be one of the ladies allowed to carry the train of Marie de Medici at the queen's coronation in 1610.