double adultery" also married within the extended royal family, as their status as illegitimate barred them from marrying into foreign courts and even into other noble families in France, yet the King refused to have them marry below their "station". Liselotte and the courtiers viewed this marriage as a mésalliance and a humiliation, and she reacted with indignation and anger. Various chroniclers report that she was no longer in control of her emotions, and burst into tears of desperation in front of the whole court.Saint-Simon writes that she slapped her son in front of the whole court for consenting to the marriage. The wedding took place on 18 February 1692. The King gave his daughter a pension of 50,000 écus and jewelry worth 200,000 écus, and a two million dowry was promised in the marriage contract, which, in the end, was never paid. The marriage was not a happy one, and Philippe would have affairs throughout his entire life. In 1693, Elisabeth Charlotte fell ill with life-threatening smallpox. She defied the instructions of contemporary doctors and managed to survive the disease, but ended up with a pockmarked face. She did not concern herself with this, since she had always considered herself ugly (in excessive exaggeration, as earlier portraits by Mignard and Largillière, among others, prove) and had no interest in make-up. Possibly as a further consequence of the disease, from 1694 onwards she gained so much weight, that it began to interfere with her walks. Even so, she continued to hunt, but only with horses that were big and strong enough to support her weight. The external change in her appearance is clearly documented in the surviving portraits from this period. In September 1700 she complained to her aunt Sophia: "Being a Madame is a great craft, I would have sold it like the batches here in the country, I would have long since carried it for sale". Sophia, who grew up in relatively modest circumstances in exile in Holland, commented on her niece's lamentations in a letter to her (rather poor) half-brother Karllutz: When Sophia was declared heir to the British throne in the spring of 1701 by the Act of Settlement, Liselotte (who would have had a better claim had she not become Catholic) commented on 15 May in a letter to her half-sister Raugräfin Luise: "I would rather be elector than king in England. The English humor