Duchess. Charlotte Aglaé d'Orléans, fourth daughter of Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, and his wife Françoise Marie de Bourbon, was born at the Palais Royal in Paris. Her three older sisters included one who had died infancy. The others were Marie Louise Élisabeth and Louise Adélaïde. She and her sister Louise Adélaïde went to live at the Abbey of Chelles when they were young. In 1714, Charlotte, the granddaughter of Louis XIV, was sent to the Val-de-Grâce Abbey. The following year, she was allowed to return to the Palais Royal. Her family became preoccupied with arranging a marriage for her. However, in 1718, Charlotte began a romance with Louis François Armand du Plessis, Duke of Richelieu. The following year, the duke was arrested and jailed for his role in the Cellamare Conspiracy. Charlotte requested that her father pardon him. However, as a precondition of the liberation of her lover, she had to marry the heir of Modena, Prince Francesco d'Este. The proxy ceremony took place on February 11, 1720 at the Tuileries Palace. The formal wedding was on June 21, 1720 in Modena, the bride and groom just having met the day previously. The marriage produced ten children. She contracted smallpox not long after the wedding, but recovered. Charlotte was restless in Modena. She and her husband lived in several different cities in Italy. They were allowed to go to France in 1734 and, despite the objections of the family, stayed there. When her father-in-law died in 1737, her husband received the title Francesco III d'Este, Duke of Modena. Charlotte returned to Modena and decided to promote the arts to make the city more fashionable. In 1743, during the War of Austrian Succession, she returned to Paris, not going back to Modena until 1759. There, she discovered that her husband had eloped with another woman. Charlotte died in Paris in 1761. After her death, her husband married twice more, morganatically. The Duchess of Modena and Reggio was interred at the Abbey of Val-de-Grâce, where she had spent part of her youth.