Fanny Dillon

[citation needed] Having served as Governor of Tobago and the representative of Martinique to the Estates-General, her father was guillotined in Paris as a royalist during The Terror in 1794 when Fanny was eight years old.

[3] When introduced to the imperial court in 1805, general Henri Gatien Bertrand, the Emperor's aide-de-camp, soon became Fanny's chief suitor.

Napoleon personally made known to her his aide's proposal of marriage, which Fanny nonetheless rebuffed, telling the emperor that it was her intention to marry Prince Alfonso Pignatelli d'Aragona.

Pignatelli, however, fell ill with tuberculosis, and though he proposed marriage to Fanny on his deathbed, so that he might leave her his wealth, she declined, thinking that to accept would have been unjust to his family.

[6] When she requested a delay because her mother had just suffered the death of her daughter, the Duchess of FitzJames, and was in no fit state to organise a wedding, the emperor responded, "Have your sister come.

"[7] A letter from Maret was then indeed dispatched to Fanny's half-sister, the Marquise de la Tour du Pin, duly informing her of her task.