Who married Princess Isabella of Parma?

Isabella of Bourbon-Parma (Spanish: Isabel María Luisa Antonieta, German: Isabella Maria Ludovica Antonia, French: Isabelle-Marie-Louise-Antoinette; 31 December 1741 – 27 November 1763) was a princess of Parma and infanta of Spain from the House of Bourbon-Parma as the daughter of Philip, Duke of Parma, and Louise-Élisabeth of France. She became an archduchess of Austria and crown princess of Bohemia and Hungary in 1760 by her marriage to Archduke Joseph of Austria, the future Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor (she never became empress due to her early death).

Secretly an Enlightenment thinker, she was a prolific writer, and nineteen separate works by her have been preserved. She discussed philosophy, religion, ethics, politics, diplomacy, military theory, world trade, education and childrearing, human culture and societies, and the position of women. In secret essays, she argued for the intellectual equality of women. None of her writings were published in her life. Her Méditations chrétiennes ('Christian Meditations') were published in 1764, a year after her death. Some of her personal correspondence and other works have been published by biographers and historians.

Although her husband loved her, she did not fully return his feelings and found more fulfillment in her (likely romantic, possibly sexual) relationship with her sister-in-law, Archduchess Maria Christina. Despite her popularity at the Viennese court, she was unhappy because of the guilt of being unable to reciprocate her husband's feelings, compounded by the same-sex attraction that she considered sinful. A lonely childhood with demanding and unaffectionate caretakers, the sudden loss of her mother, a difficult birth and two miscarriages in the span of ten months, and later a fourth pregnancy all adversely affected her physical and mental health. She was described as melancholic and experienced suicidal ideation. Biographers have suggested that she suffered from depression or bipolar disorder, to which she was likely genetically predisposed. She died at the age of 21 from smallpox.

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Joseph II (13 March 1741 – 20 February 1790) was Holy Roman Emperor from 18 August 1765 and sole ruler of the Habsburg monarchy from 29 November 1780 until his death. He was the eldest son of Empress Maria Theresa and her husband, Emperor Francis I, and the brother of Marie Antoinette, Leopold II, Maria Carolina of Austria, and Maria Amalia, Duchess of Parma. He was thus the first ruler in the Austrian dominions of the union of the Houses of Habsburg and Lorraine, styled Habsburg-Lorraine.

Joseph was a proponent of enlightened absolutism like his brother Leopold II; however, his commitment to secularizing, liberalizing and modernizing reforms resulted in significant opposition, which resulted in failure to fully implement his programs. Meanwhile, despite making some territorial gains, his reckless foreign policy badly isolated Austria. He has been ranked with Catherine the Great of Russia and Frederick the Great of Prussia as one of the three great Enlightenment monarchs. False but influential letters depict him as a somewhat more radical philosophe than he probably was. His policies are now known as Josephinism. He was a supporter of the arts, particularly of composers such as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Salieri. He died with no known surviving legitimate offspring and was succeeded by his younger brother Leopold II.

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