Maria Stella

Maria Stella Wynn, Lady Newborough (later Baroness Ungern-Sternberg; ; 16 April 1773 – 23 December 1843) was an Italian-born memoirist, the self-styled legitimate daughter of Louis Philippe II, Duke of Orléans. She was the second wife of the Welsh peer Thomas Wynn, 1st Baron Newborough, after whose death she married the Estonian Baron Heinrich George Eduard von Ungern-Sternberg.

According to her, King Louis Philippe I was not the son of Philippe, Duke of Orléans, but a supposititious child, his father being one Lorenzo Chiappini, a constable at the village of Modigliana in Emilia Romagna. The story is that the Duke and Duchess of Orléans, travelling under the incognito of Comte and Comtesse de Joinville, were at this village on 16 April 1773, when the duchess gave birth to a daughter; and that the duke, desiring a son in order to prevent the rich Penthièvre inheritance from reverting to his wife's relations in the event of her death, bribed the Chiappinis to substitute their newborn male child for his own. Provided by Wikipedia