Laetizia Bonaparte

She was born in Ajaccio, Corsica, to Nobile Giovanni Geronimo Ramolino (13 April 1723 – 1755), Captain of Corse Regiments of Chivalry and Infantry in the Army of the Republic of Genoa, and wife Nobile Angela Maria Pietrasanta (circa 1725–1790). The distant cousins of the Ramolinos were a low rank of nobility in the Republic of Genoa. Letizia was not formally educated. After the death of her father, her mother remarried to the Swiss-born noble naval officer Franz Fesch, a captain in the service of the Republic of Genoa stationed at Corsica, and gave birth to two children, among them her half-brother Joseph Fesch.

On 2/7 June 1764, when she was 13, she married attorney Carlo Buonaparte at Ajaccio. She bore 13 children, eight of whom survived infancy, and most of whom were created monarchs by Napoleon:

She was a harsh mother, and had a very down-to-earth view of most things. When most European mothers bathed children perhaps once a month, she had her children bathed every other day.

Letizia never learned French. When she was 35, her husband died of cancer. She was decreed "Madam, the Mother of His Majesty the Emperor" (Madame Mère de l'Empereur), Imperial Highness, on 18 May 1804 or 23 March 1805. Napoleon paid her 25,000 francs a month. In 1814 she shared Napoleon's exile in Elba, where he treated her fondly. After 1815 she moved to Rome, in Palazzo D'Aste-Bonaparte in piazza Venezia, where she lived out her days with her younger brother Joseph Fesch. She died of old age in 1836, aged 85, three weeks before the 50th anniversary of her husband's death. By then she was nearly blind and had outlived her most famous son Napoleon by 15 years. During her years in Rome, she rarely saw any other family members than her brother, who rarely left her.