Charlotte, Duchess of Albany

Charlotte, Duchess of Albany (Liège, October 1753 – Bologna, November 17, 1789) was the illegitimate daughter and only known child of Prince Charles Edward Stuart and his mistress Clementina Walkinshaw, of a Jacobite family of Lanarkshire . Charlotte was born at Liège, where Charles was living with his mistress, who had gone to join him in the Low Countries in 1752.

In 1760 Clementina left Charles on account of his ill treatment of her and lived in Paris with her daughter under the name of the "Countess of Alberstrof".

Charles ignored his natural daughter until his separation from his wife began to appear permanent. He gave his daughter the title of Duchess of Albany in the peerage of Scotland, as well as the style "Her Royal Highness", and made a new will in 1783, making her his personal heir, but, being illegitimate, she had no right of succession. She went to live with her father at Florence and Rome until his death in 1788. Although she never married, she did have two daughters and a son by her lover, Prince Ferdinand de Rohan . Raised in strictest secrecy, their identities concealed by a variety of alias and ruses, all three children were thought to have left no issue. They were not mentioned in her detailed will, in which every member of her household is remembered, down to the unnamed Moor [1].

However, according to Peter Pininski , The Stuarts' Last Secret, 2001), Charlotte's younger daughter, Marie Victoire de Rohan, demoiselle de Thorigny , married Paul Anthony Louis Bertrand de Nikorowicz , a Polish nobleman. Their granddaughter, Julia de Nikorowicz , married Count Leonard Pininski and became author Peter Pininski's great-great-grandmother.

External link

• The Jacobite Heritage: Charlotte, Duchess of Albany

Reference

• Peter Pininski, Peter, The Stuarts' Last Secret, Tuckwell Press, 2001