Princess Françoise d'Orléans (Françoise Isabelle Louise Marie; 25 December 1902 – 25 February 1953) was born an
Orléans
Orléans (,"Orleans" (US) and ''Genealogisches Handbuch des Adels, Fürstliche Häuser'' XVII. "Griechenland". C.A. Starke Verlag, 2004, pp. 14-15, 19. (German) . She was thus a member of the
Greek royal family
The Greek royal family () was the ruling family of the Kingdom of Greece from 1863 to 1924 and again from 1935 to 1973. The Greek royal family is a branch of the Danish royal family, itself a cadet branch of the House of Glücksburg. The famil ...
and a descendant of the "Citizen-King"
Louis-Philippe
Louis Philippe I (6 October 1773 – 26 August 1850), nicknamed the Citizen King, was King of the French from 1830 to 1848, the penultimate monarch of France, and the last French monarch to bear the title "King". He abdicated from his throne ...
Orléanist
Orléanist () was a 19th-century French political label originally used by those who supported a constitutional monarchy expressed by the House of Orléans. Due to the radical political changes that occurred during France in the long nineteenth ...
pretender to the throne of France under the name Jean III) and his wife, the French Princess Isabelle of Orléans. Françoise's brother, Prince Henri, Count of Paris, succeeded their father as the Orleanist pretender, under the name Henri VI.
In
Palermo
Palermo ( ; ; , locally also or ) is a city in southern Italy, the capital (political), capital of both the autonomous area, autonomous region of Sicily and the Metropolitan City of Palermo, the city's surrounding metropolitan province. The ...
on 11 February 1929, she married
Prince Christopher of Greece and Denmark
Prince Christopher of Greece and Denmark (, romanized: ''Christóphoros''; 10 August 1888 – 21 January 1940) was the fifth and youngest son and youngest child of King George I of Greece, belonging to a dynasty which mounted and lost the throne ...
(1888–1940). This was Christopher's second marriage - he was the youngest son of
King George I of Greece
George I (Greek language, Greek: Γεώργιος Α΄, Romanization, romanized: ''Geórgios I''; 24 December 1845 – 18 March 1913) was King of Greece from 30 March 1863 until Assassination of George I of Greece, his assassination on 18 March ...
King Christian IX of Denmark
Christian IX (8 April 181829 January 1906) was King of Denmark from 15 November 1863 until his death in 1906. From 1863 to 1864, he was concurrently List of dukes of Schleswig, Duke of Schleswig, List of dukes of Holstein, Holstein and Saxe-Laue ...
(1818–1906), nicknamed "the father-in-law of Europe" due to his six children all marrying into other royal families.
This royal marriage was unusual in that era, with a Catholic marrying a non-Catholic (he was Greek Orthodox, whilst she was
Catholic
The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...
). They had only one child, the writer
Prince Michael of Greece and Denmark
Prince Michael of Greece and Denmark ( 7 January 1939 – 28 July 2024) was a Greek historian, author, and member of the Greek royal family. He wrote several historical books and biographies of Greek and other European figures, Montgomery-Massin ...
House of Savoy
The House of Savoy (, ) is a royal house (formally a dynasty) of Franco-Italian origin that was established in 1003 in the historical region of Savoy, which was originally part of the Kingdom of Burgundy and now lies mostly within southeastern F ...
. Francoise died in Paris on 25 February 1953, aged 51. She is buried alongside her husband in Tatoi Royal Cemetery,
Greece
Greece, officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. Located on the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula, it shares land borders with Albania to the northwest, North Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to th ...