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- BIOGRAPHY
Charlotte Amélie de La Trémouille was born on 3 January 1652 at Thouars, daughter of Henri Charles de La Trémouille, Prince de Tarente et de Talmont, and Aemilia, Landgräfin von Hessen-Kassel.
As a young child she was sent with her brother to their grandparents. As long as her grandmother was alive, their Protestant religion was respected. However, a month after her grandmother had died, her mother received warnings and quickly came to France to take them back to The Netherlands. After five years her father forced the whole family to return to France and tried to make them all change to the Catholic religion. When only force made her brother convert, Charlotte and her mother fled the country, only to have her father follow and catch up with them. However, unable to persuade them to convert, he allowed them to continue their journey. On arrival in Germany, they received the news of his death.
After bringing Charlotte Amélie to Copenhagen, her mother returned to France. Now all alone and unable to speak German at a Court where no French was spoken, she was very lonely. Her mother was a cousin of the Danish queen and it was a brother of the king who took a fancy to her. To avoid trouble, she accepted the marriage proposal of the much older Count von Aldenburg, a widower with only daughters. However, as the count was the illegitimate son of a count von Oldenburg, her mother in France tried to prevent the marriage. They were happy but for only a very short period, as only months later the count von Aldenburg died.
Ulrik Frederik Gyldenlöve, Greve af Laurvig, an illegitimate son of Frederik III, king of Denmark, and married to Anton's eldest daughter, came and simply took all movable items, jewellery, furniture, carriages, horses, cows and even statues. Ulrik had reduced her to poverty.
A few months later she gave birth to their son Anton who was named after his father. She then went to live in The Netherlands at the castle of Doorwerth. Here she died many years later, in 1732, the last Protestant of their family.
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