Empress Maria Luisa of Spain was born on 24 November 1745, exactly on her mother’s 21st birthday. She was born in Italy, where her father Charles ruled as King of Naples and Sicily. In 1759, Charles succeeded his childless brother on the Spanish throne, and the family moved to Spain. Together with her surviving siblings, Maria Luisa received a strict Catholic upbringing.
In the 1760s, the Houses of Habsburg and Bourbon were eagerly strengthening their political and familial ties. Young princes and princesses in Vienna, Versailles, Madrid, Naples and Parma were moved around like pieces on a game board. On some occasions, these manoeuvres proved almost comic. Maria Luisa, for instance, had to be negotiated as a bride for three of Maria Theresa’s sons in succession: the first two attempts failed for different reasons, and only the third resulted in her marriage to Archduke Leopold. Curiously enough, the same triple pattern soon repeated with Maria Luisa’s younger brother Ferdinand, whose first two intended fiancées died prematurely before the choice finally fell on Archduchess Karolina.
Maria Luisa and Leopold spent most of their lives ruling the Duchy of Tuscany. Only in their final two years, after the death of Leopold’s brother Joseph II in 1790, did they ascend the Imperial throne. Maria Luisa proved to be a devoted mother to her sixteen children, including several sons. The couple founded the new main line of the Habsburgs, which endures to this day.
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