Duchesse de Morny
(1826-1896)

Tsar Alexander II himself 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 Napoléon 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 of his unburned love-letters after his death in 1865 was a shock. In 1867, she married again, this time to a cousin of the Empress, the Duke del Sesto.

She died in 1896.