Her offspring was raised in anonymity; however, as Prince Charles Stuart's only grandchildren, they have been the subject of Jacobite interest since their lineage was uncovered in the 20th century.

[4] However, he was also an Episcopalian Protestant and a Jacobite who had fought for the Prince's father in the rising of 1715, been captured at the Battle of Sheriffmuir, before escaping from Stirling Castle and fleeing to continental Europe.

[5] The Prince came to Sir Hugh's home in early January 1746, where he first met Clementina, and he returned later that month to be nursed by her from what appears to have been a cold.

In the following years, he had a scandalous affair with his 22-year-old first cousin Louise de Montbazon, who was married to his close friend and whom he deserted when she became pregnant, and then with the Princess of Talmont, who was in her forties.

[7] In 1752, he heard that Clementina was at Dunkirk and in some financial difficulties and so he sent 50 louis d'or to help her and then dispatched Sir Henry Goring to entreat her to come to Ghent and to live with him as his mistress.

[11] Charles was already a disillusioned, angry alcoholic when they began living together, and he became violent towards and insanely possessive of Clementina,[7] treating her as a "submissive whipping post".

[14] [7] James agreed to pay her an annuity of 10,000 livres and, in July 1760, there is evidence to suggest he aided her escape from the watchful Charles, with the seven-year-old Charlotte, to the convent of the Nuns of the Visitation in Paris.

[17] For the next twelve years, Clementina and Charlotte continued to live in various French convents, supported by the 10,000-livre pension granted by James Stuart.

[19] Charlotte, now in penury, had consistently been writing to her father for some time, and she now desperately entreated him to legitimise her, provide support and bring her to Rome before an heir could be born.

In April 1772, Charlotte wrote a touching, yet pleading, letter to "mon Auguste Papa" which was sent via Principal Gordon of the Scots College in Rome.

[28] When Charlotte eventually left France for Florence, she entrusted her children, and she was only just recovering from her son's birth,[29] to the care of her mother, and it appears that few, and certainly not her father, knew of their existence.

In July 1784, having granted his wife Louise a legal separation, Charles wrote to his daughter calling her "ma chère fille".

[34] She continually, and unsuccessfully, sought gifts of jewels or money from her close-fisted father;[35] but this was probably largely out of a concern for the welfare of her mother and children.

a tall, robust woman of a very dark complexion and a coarse-grained skin, with more of a masculine boldness than feminine modesty or elegancy, but easy and unassuming in her manners, amply possessed of... volubility of tongue and... spirit of coquetry.Charlotte sorely missed her mother (whom she vainly hoped Charles would allow to come to Rome) and her children, writing to her mother as many as 100 times in a single year;[10] she also feared that Rohan would take another lover; all this is revealed in her dispirited letters home, as she awaited Charles's death.

[37] In Rome, Charlotte remained her father's carer and companion, and did her best to make his life bearable until he died of a stroke two years later on 30 January 1788.

[39] Charlotte inherited much of her father's property, including his Florentine residence, furniture and ornaments, although many of the Sobieski family jewels passed to Henry Stuart.

On 9 October 1789, while staying in Bologna at the Palazzo Vizzani Sanguinetti, the home of her friend the Marchesa Giulia Lambertini-Bovio, a relative of Pope Benedict XIV, she died there at age 36 of liver cancer.

[42][43] For many years, Charlotte's children remained unknown to history, and it was believed that the direct line of James II and Mary of Modena ended with the death of Henry in 1807.

The reason that the children remained secret can be explained by the fact that the relationship between Archbishop Ferdinand de Rohan and Charlotte, who had been forbidden to marry, was highly illicit and would have been scandalous.

Calling himself Count Roehenstart (Rohan+Stuart), he was educated by his father's family in Germany and became an officer in the Russian army and a general in the Austrian service.

[55] A former chairman of the Royal Stuart Society, however, stated that Pininski's evidence seemed "genuine",[56] and the peerage editor Hugh Massingberd described it as "painstakingly researched ... proof to surely the most sceptical pedant's satisfaction".

In 1823, his mother had married again, to the naval officer Corbet James d'Auvergne [frr], brother of the adopted son of the Duke of Bouillon, and she eventually died at Nice in March 1871.

[60] Since then, Pininski has responded to Backhurst latest articles in a 2024 paper,[47] in which he argues that every piece of evidence concerning Charlotte's three children is circumstantial, as their parentage is either false or not given in primary sources.

[61] Pininski mentions that Charlotte's correspondence with her mother indicates the existence of a fourth child, Marie Aglaë, who has not been accounted for (and perhaps died young).

[47] He argues that had she really been Jules's daughter the usual procedure would have been to register her with the French court, but he did not do that as it could have potentially revealed his younger brother's secret affair with Charlotte.

He speculates that Marie Victoire's marriage to Paul Nikorowicz may have been arranged by Ferdinand de Rohan through Charlotte's family connections.

Furthermore, Charles Edward de Roehenstart ever only made one explicit reference to a sibling, when he was in financial difficulties in New York in 1813 and asked his one of his sisters for money.

[47] Pininski claims this could only have been Madame Nikorowicz (by then a rich widow), as Charlotte Maximilienne had died in childbirth in 1806, and, as pointed by Backhurst herself, Victoire Adélaïde had few resources of her own as the wife of a French military doctor imprisoned by the Russians.

Pininski observes that throughout her life Marie Victoire never mentioned her mother and that the only hint to her parentage comes from the family arms attributed to Madame Nikorowicz on an official genealogy provided by her great-grandson to the Habsburg court in the 1890s.

He points out that several facts of Marie Victoire's life indicate a close connection to Charles Edward, as they seem to have frequented the same Central and Eastern European emigré and ultraroyalist circles, and there are obscure references in his personal documents to de Roehenstart's Polish heirs.