Infantin Eulalia von Spanien (1864–1958)

Eulalia, Infanta of Spain, was known for her controversial writings and progressive views for a 19th-century princess. She was the youngest child of Queen Isabella II of Spain and her husband Francis, Duke of Cádiz. In 1868, the Queen was deposed after a revolt known as the Glorious Revolution, and the family went into exile in Paris. Eulalia was educated with her sisters Pilar and Maria de la Paz at a convent school there. Six years later, Eulalia's brother was restored to the Spanish throne in place of their mother as King Alfonso XII. Eulalia and her family returned to Spain and resumed their royal status. According to Eulalia's memoirs, this abrupt change undermined her belief in the privileges due to royalty, and she grew opposed to the strictures of royal life. At age 22, she dutifully married a first cousin, Antonio de Orléans y Borbón, Duke of Galliera (Antoine d'Orléans, son of the duc de Montpensier), with whom she had two sons. After the birth of her children, Eulalia lived apart from her husband, although she was unable to divorce. She set up her own households in Paris and Madrid, and often visited England. In 1893, she traveled to the USA to attend the World’s Fair in Chicago. There she shocked society by smoking in public, attending church in a poor parish, and avoiding high society events in favor of rubbing elbows with the other attendees at the fair. In 1912, she published The Thread of Life, a book in which she expressed her opinions about education, the independence of women, the equality of social classes, religion, marriage, and traditions. A few years later, she wrote an article about Kaiser Wilhelm II for the Strand Magazine, and published Court Life from Within (1915). Eulalia also wrote Courts and Countries After the War (1925), and her official memoirs written in French, Mémoires de S.A.R. l'infante Eulalie, 1868-1931 (1935). In her obituary, The New York Times said that Eulalia spent much of her life "turning her royal relatives crimson with rage. She spent more time in the headlines of newspapers than in the Court of Spain."