Doña María Manuela Enriqueta Kirkpatrick de Grivegnée, Countess of Montijo, was the mother of Eugénie, Empress of the French.
Background
She was born in Malaga, Spain, the daughter of an expatriate Scotsman, William Kirkpatrick, a wine merchant and consul of the United States of America, and his Liège-born wife, Marie Françoise de Grivegnée, whose sister Catherine married the French diplomat Matthieu de Lesseps.
Career
María Manuela Kirkpatrick was brilliant, vivacious and talented. Their daughters were María Francisca de Sales (1825–1860), generally known as "Paca", who inherited most of the family honours, and María Eugenia, born one year later. In the 1830s Manuela and the girls moved to Paris for their education.
There she renewed her association with George William Frederick Villiers, later Earl of Clarendon, who is rumoured to have been her lover.
Manuela was Mérimée"s source for the story of Carmen. In 1844 Paca became the wife of one of the richest men in Europe: Jacobo Luis Fitz-James Stuart y Ventimiglia (1821–1881), 8th Duke of Berwick, 8th Earl of Tinmouth, 8th Baron Bosworth, 8th Duke of Liria and Xérica, and 15th Duke of Alba de Tormes.
Her great-great-granddaughter Cayetana Fitz-James Stuart was the most titled noble in the world.