Carte de visite Paul Frecker The Emperor Alexander II helped to arrange the marriage of Princess Sophie Troubetskoi. a beautiful, but in court terms penniless, Demoiselle d'Honneur of the Empress, and in 1856 she married the French ambassador to Russia, the illegitimate half-brother of Napoleon III, the Comte (later Duc) de Morny, one of the most influential figures of the Second Empire.
Although devoted to her husband, she disliked having to entertain on his behalf. It is said that her discovery after his death of his unburned love-letters was a shock. In 1867, she married again, this time to a cousin of the Empress, the Duke del Sesto. She died in Spain in 1896.
