Marie was the daughter of Duke Max Joseph in Bavaria and his wife Ludovika of Bavaria. At the age of 17, on 8 January 1859, she was married to Crown Prince Franz (1836-1894), the eldest son of King Ferdinand II of both Sicilies, in the absence of the bridegroom in Munich, to a man she only knew from an embellished picture she had been given in Munich of her future husband. ...mire in the picture, as a brooch with a medallion.
Marie stayed at St. Ursula's Convent in Augsburg at the turn of the year 1862/1863 after the revolutionary turmoil in Italy and the fall of her kingdom of Naples-Sicily. The reason was a pregnancy out of wedlock, which called the family council into action.
In Possenhofen, the home seat of Marie's ducal family, the Bavarian King Maximilian II and his wife Marie Friederike of Prussia were joined by the Austrian imperial couple and thus sister Sisi. Initially, it was determined that Marie should be accommodated in the secluded Biederstein Palace on the English Garden in Munich. Then, on 5 October 1862, Marie went to the Dominican convent of St. Ursula in Augsburg.
Officially it was said that Marie had to recover from the dramatic events around the fortress of Gaeta near Naples. There she had once again tried to save her kingdom with all her might. Presumably, however, she gave birth to an illegitimate daughter in the convent of St. Ursula on 24 November 1862.
In Rome, Marie was fell in love with a young papal zouves, long believed to be a young Belgian aristocrat (when he was still French), Emmanuel de Lavaysse, with whom she is soon pregnant. Her family discreetly gives birth to a little girl, Daisy de Lavaysse, in a convent in Augsburg.
Reconciled with her husband, he consents to a phimosis operation, which finally makes it possible to consummate the marriage.
The couple gave birth to a daughter, Maria-Cristina-Pia, in Rome in 1869, who died in the cradle.
Widowed in 1894, Marie led a fashionable life and depended on the financial support of the Rothschild family. On her way to meet them, the Empress was murdered in 1898, a year after the tragic death of the Duchess of Alençon in the fire of the Bazar de la Charité.
She survived the First World War and the fall of the Austrian, German and Russian monarchies.
The Queen died in 1925 at the age of 83. Her body was buried in Rome alongside that of her husband in the Church of the Holy Spirit of the Neapolitans, then in 1984 they were both returned to the Basilica of Santa Chiara in Naples, necropolis of the Kings of the Two Sicilies.
Of her biological daughter, Daisy de Lavaysse, it is recently known that she grew up mainly in her father's family in the southwest of France. Allied with the family of the Comte de Gineste dans le Tarn, the hidden child stayed for a long time at the castle of Garrevaques near Revel. She dies before her mother when she attends her daughter's funeral in Paris, to the great astonishment of the press.
The great-great-granddaughter of the Comte de Gineste dans le Tarn, published the true identity of Daisy in her book and revealed that the Queen of Naples had never broken off her relationship with this hidden child.
The dress of Queen Marie of Naples-Sicily, a sister of Empress Elisabeth.
The silk dress, elaborately made with sequins, metal threads, bobbin lace and linen lace, is on loan from the Wettenhausen Monastery, where the dress still adorns Our Lady and the Child Jesus at times.
The ex-queen's stay in the Augsburg monastery has been handed down in concrete terms. As a farewell gift, Marie also gave the Dominican nuns one of her precious dresses. Since the nuns had little use for such a princely robe for themselves, the dress, consisting of skirt, bodice and veil, was made into a splendid garment for the statue of Mary with the Child Jesus and worn on special occasions, such as the Corpus Christi procession.
The dress and the statue of the Virgin are now in the Wettenhausen Monastery, which the Dominican Sisters of Augsburg were able to establish as a monastery and school in 1864 with the support of King Maximilian II.
The Queen's dress is part of the Bavarian State Exhibition 2021 "Twilight of the Gods II - The Last Monarchs" in Regensburg.
Source:wikipedia;www.hdbg.de/goetterdaemmerungII; Archive Ursula Butschal;
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