Sophie Charlotte was born in
Munich, the residence of her paternal family, the
Dukes in Bavaria. She was a daughter of
Duke Maximilian Joseph in Bavaria and
Princess Ludovika of Bavaria and the ninth of ten children born to her parents.
Marriage Upon the 1861 marriage of her elder sister
Duchess Mathilde Ludovika to the Neapolitan prince
Louis of the Two Sicilies, her parents looked for a suitable husband for Sophie Charlotte. Sophie then was engaged to her cousin
King Ludwig II of Bavaria, and their engagement was publicised on 22 January 1867, but after having repeatedly postponed the wedding date, Ludwig finally cancelled it in October as Ludwig had homosexual tendencies (he was never again engaged to be married), and also because it seemed Sophie had fallen in love with the court photographer
Edgar Hanfstaengl. Five love letters from Sophie to Edgar were published by Edgar's daughter Erna. In one, she wrote: ''"I love you so dearly, my Edgar, so dearly, that I've shamefully neglected the duties to my poor King."'' Other proposed husbands included the renowned homosexual
Archduke Ludwig Viktor of Austria, brother of both
Franz Joseph I of Austria and
Maximilian I of Mexico, as well as the future
Luís I of Portugal. Another candidate was
Duke Philipp of Württemberg, the first cousin of her eventual husband. She refused all the candidates, and was sent to stay with her aunt
Amalie Auguste, then the Queen of Saxony as wife of
King John. It was in Saxony Sophie Charlotte met
Prince Ferdinand of Orléans,
Duke of Alençon, the son of
Prince Louis, Duke of Nemours and grandson of the late
King Louis Philippe. Soon after, on 28 September 1868, she married him at Possenhofen Castle, near
Starnberg. King Ludwig II attended the reception.
Duchess of Alençon She had a good relationship with her husband as well as with her sister-in-law
Princess Marguerite Adélaïde of Orléans, wife of
Prince Władysław Czartoryski. Her mother-in-law,
Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, cousin of
Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom, had died in 1857. Sophie Charlotte did not have an overly good relationship with her father-in-law, the widowed
Duke of Nemours. The year after their marriage, the ducal couple moved into
Bushy House in the
Teddington area of
Southwest London, where Sophie Charlotte gave birth to her first child,
Princess Louise of Orléans.
Affair and stay at a sanatorium In the winter of 1886–1887, Sophie came down with diphtheria and scarlet fever. On the advice of her brother Karl Theodor, she sought treatment in Munich and, eventually, recovered thanks to the care of Dr. Franz Joseph Sebastian Glaser. He was a married physician with three children, who was a year her junior. They fell in love, and planned to divorce their spouses to marry each other. In June 1887, Dr. Glaser divorced his wife. That same month, her husband and various physicians declared that the Duchess of Alençon suffered from 'moral delusion'. On the advice of the physicians, and ironically, Karl Theodor, the Duke of Alençon sent his wife to the Mariagrün Sanatorium, near
Graz. She was allowed to stay there with her maid Paula and her dog Ponto. The sanatorium was run by the psychiatrist
Richard von Krafft-Ebing, who was specialised in sexual perversions. One of the alleged treatments used at Mariagrün was sprinkling ice-cold water on the patients. Sophie smuggled three letters to Dr. Glaser, but no responses from him have been found. He married another woman in December 1888. Identifying Sophie Charlotte's remains was not easy; her personal maid was unable to recognise the body, as it had been severely disfigured by the fire. The Duchess's dentist, M. Lavanport, was called in. After two hours examining various bodies, he identified Sophie Charlotte on the basis of her gold fillings. Thus she became one of the first people whose remains were identified by
forensic dentistry. She was buried at the
Chapelle royale de Dreux. ==Issue==