Béatrix de Cusance, duchesse de Lorraine

Pope Alexander VII praised Béatrix de Cusance as the most beautiful woman of the seventeenth century. Comments about her beauty and wit are often encountered in contemporary sources. She also had enemies. It is said that the Lorraine soldiers adored her, but at the French court, where the first wife of Duke Charles resided, Béatrix was contemptuously labeled 'la femme de campagne du duc de Lorraine' [: the field wife of the Duke of Lorraine]. Caroline of Austria, the mother-in-law from her first marriage, has done everything she can to portray her in a negative light in the lengthy lawsuits over the paternity of Béatrix' son.

In 1634, she became the mistress of Charles IV, Duke of Lorraine, who was at the time in the service of Spain. To avoid a scandal, her mother arranged a marriage to Leopold-Eugène Perrenot de Granvelle, Prince de Cantecroix (1615–1637), whom she married in 1635. On 9 April 1637, nine days after the death of her first husband, a marriage contract with Charles IV was signed. Six months after the ceremony she gave birth to a boy, whom Charles acknowledged. The boy, Joseph, died in February 1638.

Issue

1. Béatrix de Granvelle (1636 - died young).
2. Joseph de Lorraine (October 1637 - February 1638).
3. Anne de Lorraine [1] (1639 † 1720), married her cousin François Marie de Lorraine (1624 † 1694), Prince of Lillebonne in 1660,had issue;
4. Charles Henri de Lorraine[2] (1649 † 1723), Prince of Vaudémont and of Commercy.

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• Béatrix de Cusance
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