She was chosen over more prominent European princesses because the French court wanted children quickly and she seemed likely to produce them. Marie Leszczyńska arrived at Versailles at twenty-two to marry a fifteen-year-old king she had never met, the daughter of a deposed Polish king who had spent his exile in a small house in Alsace unable to pay his own servants' wages. The court considered her beneath them. She outlasted all of them. She spoke six languages, painted under the tutelage of the master Oudry, played three instruments, received the young Mozart as a private guest, and gave the king ten children in ten years. She founded a convent school in Versailles for the education of poor girls, established workhouses and charitable programmes across France, and was so consistently beloved by ordinary French people that even after decades of being eclipsed at court by Madame de Pompadour and then Madame du Barry, the public's affection for her never wavered. She simply refused to become interesting in the way Versailles required and remained dignified instead. She died on 24 June 1768, one day after her sixty-fifth birthday, having been Queen of France for forty-two years and nine months, the longest tenure of any queen consort in French history. Her three grandsons became Louis XVI, Louis XVIII, and Charles X. The woman chosen because she seemed useful produced the next three kings of France and was largely forgotten by history in favour of the mistresses who surrounded her husband. Born on this day in 1703, Marie Leszczyńska. The longest-serving queen consort in French history, and one of the most quietly remarkable women at the court of Versailles. Follow History Roadshow for a new untold story every day.