The bride was passionately in love with her husband, but his attentions were elsewhere.[citation needed] It was well known at court that he had an affair with his wife's sister-in-law, the Duchess of Bourbon; it was also said that he had homosexual tendencies[2] and did not pay his wife much attention.
Marie Thérèse had a difficult relationship with her children and, as a result, lived quietly at the various Conti residences, mainly at the Château de L'Isle-Adam. The family later reconciled after the death of the Prince de Conti. Marie Thérèse was known for her quiet personality and her piety, much praised by many at court[citation needed]. Elizabeth Charlotte of the Palatinate, Dowager Duchess of Orléans and mother of the Regent Philippe d'Orléans, wrote of the widowed Marie Thérèse:
This Princess is the only one of the House of Condé who is good for anything. I think she must have some German blood in her veins. She is little, and somewhat on one side, but she is not hunchbacked. She has fine eyes, like her father; with this exception, she has no pretensions to beauty, but she is virtuous and pious. What she has suffered on account of her husband has excited general compassion;[3]
Queen of Poland
In 1697, Marie Thérèse's husband was offered the Crown of Poland by Louis XIV. The Prince de Conti went to Poland to inspect his potential new kingdom, while Marie Thérèse stayed in France. During this time, she was considered the titular Queen of Poland and her husband the king.[4] Based on votes that cast by the Polish nobility, her husband was the more popular candidate, but when he arrived in Gdańsk, he found that Augustus II the Strong had taken his place on the throne, and so he returned to France.
Dowager princess
In 1709, her husband died in Paris. In order to tell the widows apart after the death of their respective husbands, the dowager Princesses of Conti were each accorded the title of Douairière preceded by the number corresponding to the order in which they had been consort to the head of the Bourbon-Contis, e.g., Madame la Princesse de Conti première douairière. In 1727 the two dowager Princesses de Conti were joined by a third, Louise Élisabeth de Bourbon.
After the death of her husband, she started to renovate the Parisian home of the Conti family, the Hôtel de Conti on the Quai de Conti on the left bank of the Seine.
Marie Thérèse died on 22 February 1732 at the Hôtel de Conti, probably due to the syphilis she had contracted from her husband.[citation needed] She was buried at the Église Saint-André des Arcs, in L'Isle d'Adam.
^Robert Neuman (1994) Robert de Cotte and the Perfection of Architecture in Eighteenth-Century France, Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press, ISBN9780226574370, pp. 142–143; Alexandre Gady (2008) Les Hôtels particuliers de Paris du Moyen Âge à la Belle Époque, Paris: Parigramme, ISBN9782840962137, pp. 313, 316. The site of the former Hôtel du Maine is at 84–86 rue de Lille.
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