Anne of Austria
Anne of Austria was a Spanish princess married to a French king who did not like her, suspected by his minister of treason with her own country, childless for twenty-three years, and then, as regent for the son she had at thirty-seven, the woman who with Mazarin held the crown through the Fronde and handed Louis XIV a monarchy that had won. She was born in 1601, the daughter of Philip III of Spain, and was married at fourteen in 1615 to Louis XIII, fourteen too, in a double wedding with his sister and her brother. The marriage was cold and the court was Richelieu's; she was Spanish while France went to war with Spain, and in 1637 the cardinal had her correspondence with her brother seized and made her sign a confession. The same year she was pregnant, and Louis was born in September 1638 and a second son in 1640. Louis XIII died in May 1643 leaving a council meant to bind her, and within a week the Parlement of Paris had set it aside and given her full regency. She kept Richelieu's man Mazarin, which nobody had expected, and whether she married him is the court's oldest unanswered question. The Fronde began in 1648 over the Parlement's refusal of new taxes and became a war of the princes. Twice she had to get the boy king out of Paris in the night, in January 1649 and again in 1651. She had Condé arrested, released him, exiled Mazarin twice and brought him back twice, and outlasted everyone. Louis was declared of age in September 1651 and the court came home to Paris in 1652. She withdrew from government when Mazarin died in 1661 and her son took it himself, and died of breast cancer at the Louvre in January 1666. She built the Val-de-Grâce in thanks for the birth. Dumas made her the queen with the diamond studs, which is how most people met her.
- Lived: 1601 CE – 1666 CE
- Nationality: Spanish
- Roles: queen, regent
