Marie Françoise de Brancas (1650-1715),[1] Princess of Harcourt and Marquise of Maubec, was a French aristocrat and courtier during the reign of Louis XIV.
She was a lady-in-waiting to Queen Marie Thérèse and later became an intimate friend of Madame de Maintenon, the King's morganatic second wife.
[5] In his memoirs, the Duke of Saint-Simon paints an unflattering picture of the Princess d'Harcourt, calling her "a blonde Fury, nay more, a harpy: she had all the effrontery of one, and the deceit and violence; all the avarice and audacity...".
[6] He described her as "a tall fat creature, mightily brisk in her movements, with a complexion like milk-porridge, great ugly thick lips, and hair like tow, always sticking out and hanging down in disorder, like all the rest of her fittings-out.
Dirty, slatternly, always intriguing, pretending, enterprising, quarrelling..."[7][8] Harcourt was hated by Marie Adélaïde of Savoy, Duchess of Burgundy, who was the wife of the Dauphin Louis.