Marie Louise d’Orléans

Born in 1662 as the granddaughter of Louis XIV, Marie Louise was the daughter of Philippe I, Duke of Orléans, and Princess Henrietta of England. At seventeen she became Queen of Spain on 19 November 1679, wed to Charles II in a match meant to bind Bourbon France to Habsburg Spain. The marriage remained childless, a fact that shadowed her decade on the throne. She died on 12 February 1689, likely of appendicitis, at twenty-six—leaving the succession question that would soon tear Europe apart.