(1840-1927)
Queen Louise described her daughter as high-spirited, impatient, tlakative and attonishingle intelligent, and she was decided to read since she bfore she was three.
By the time of Charlotte's fourth birthday, Queen Louise wrote to her mother: "Charlotte, as your predicted, has become her father's pet. Today, being her birthday, she dined with us, surrounded by her presents and crowned with a wreath of roses".
Like King Leopold, Charlotte was interested n the most various subjects; since she was five, she talked like a grown-up and used the most complicated words; she used to attedn Te Deums at St. Gudule, studying her prayer book with attention and looking herself as adorable as an angel.
Queen Louise used to take Charlotte to visit her grandparents, King Louis Phillppe and Queen Marie Amalie in the Tulleries palace in Paris. The little girl used to launched herslef into her grandfather's arms.
In 1848, when Charlotte was eight, King Louis Philippe was deposed form the French throne and he had to flee from Paris. Charlotte shared her mother's grief of seing her grnadparents exiled in England. King kouis Philippe wrote: "What more could I do but abdicate, when not a hand out of all those who gar from us in the past, was raised in my defense". Charlotte did not agree with her grandfather's decision. Her father had tought her of the burdens and responsabilities of power and of the danger of negelcting one's duties. She did not agree with the idea of abdication. King Louis Philippe died in England twio years later, in 1850; his gramnddaughter was convinced that he died because he could not survive the humiliation of exile. Queen Louise coud not overcome her father's death and she died on October 10, 1850, when Charlotte was only ten years old.
After her mother's funeral Charlotte wrote to her grandmother, Queen Marie Amalie, consoling her: "We are grateful you were with us to shre in our grief. But leaken is a very lonley place now that you have gone. It has been a terriblo blow to you but I will try to be very good to make up to you as far as I can, for all that you have lost".
King Leopold was inconsolable and he only found some consolation in his daughter. Charlotte tried by all means to take her mother's place but it was too much for such a young girl; her character changed from an affectionate and cheerful child into a serious and introspective young girl, who liked to read Plutarch and other philosophers and prefered Bach's music and knew by memory the names and dates of the Kings of England.