Maria Stella

Maria Stella (born April 16, 1773, Modigliana, Papal States—died Dec. 28, 1843, Paris) was an Italian adventuress who contested the parentage of Louis Philippe, duc d’Orléans, upon his accession to the French throne in 1830.

Brought up as the daughter of Lorenzo Chiappini, constable of Modigliana, and his wife, Maria Stella was trained as a singer and dancer and appeared on the stage in Florence. When Lorenzo Chiappini died in 1821, he left a letter stating that Maria Stella’s real father was not he but a nobleman who had exchanged her for Chiappini’s son and had later died. Finding that in 1773 a couple travelling under the name of Comte and Comtesse de Joinville had been at Modigliana, Maria Stella built up the story that these two were the duc and duchesse de Chartres, Louis Philippe Joseph, later duc d’Orléans and named Louis Philippe Égalité, and his wife, Adélaïde de Bourbon-Penthièvre, and that the Duc had exchanged a daughter for Chiappini’s son in order to keep the Penthièvre inheritance in his own house. The son whose parentage was thus contested was Louis Philippe, the duc d’Orléans and later king of the French. The ecclesiastical court of Faenza in 1824 accepted Chiappini’s letter but rejected the identification of the nobleman with the Duc de Chartres.

The appearance of Maria Stella’s apologia, Maria Stella ou un échange criminel d’une demoiselle du plus haut rang contre un garçon de la condition la plus vile (“Maria Stella, or an Exchange of a Girl of Higher Rank for a Boy of Baser Station”), coincided with Louis-Philippe’s accession. Its publication may have been arranged by partisans of the Duchesse de Berry as a counterblast to pamphlets (supposedly of Orleanist inspiration) casting doubt on the legitimacy of her son the Duc de Bordeaux, who was regarded by the Bourbon Legitimists as the rightful king Henry V.