1575-1642, Queen and Regent of France
Here we have a much more light-hearted entry than the previous one!
Marie de Medici has a complex and contradictory legacy: she was a spectacular failure at all things political but a greatly successful and important patroness of art and architecture. I suspect she is here mainly because she is responsible for having the Luxembourg palace and gardens built, as she was an incompetent regent.
Marie was a member of the extremely influential Medici family of Florence, who, rising in just a few generations, managed to spread the progeny through all the major houses of Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries. Her childhood was not significant, so we'll skip to her marriage in 1600.
Marie's husband was Henry IV, King of France and son of Jeanne d'Albret. He had had to convert to Catholicism upon gaining the crown to satisfy the overwhelmingly Catholic country, and he had done it cheerfully. In 1600 he had just succeeded in annulling his childless first marriage, and the Catholic Marie de Medici was a good choice, politically. However, people soon realized this would be a rocky union: Henry had an official mistress, with whom Marie fought constantly, using rough and colorful language that shocked the nobles. She additionally made a point of befriending Henry's exiled first wife, seemingly just to annoy him and his advisers. They lived with a lot of bickering for the next ten years, until Marie was officially crowned queen in 1610.
Henry was one of the most popular kings ever in French history, both during his reign and since. However, just one day after Marie's coronation Henry was assassinated by a fanatical Catholic determined to be rid of a once-Protestant king. Because their son was only nine years old at the time Marie was made regent for him, and this is when her lack of skill was truly allowed to shine.
Her first order of business was to banish her late husband's mistress. The second was apparently to fall under the influence of her scheming maid, of all people, who had an ambitious husband. Marie succeeded in creating him a Marquis soon afterwards. She then proceeded to dismiss most of Henry's best ministers and to completely change the course of France's foreign relations; she decided to ally with all the Hapsbergs (an Austrian ruling family that had spread to Germany and Spain) she could find despite France's traditional anti-Hapsberg policy. This did not go well. In response, some of the most powerful nobles rebelled and she was forced to buy them off because she didn't have enough power to reason with them.
Six years into her regency Marie's son asserted his authority and kicked her out: she was exiled, her maid's husband assassinated, her diplomacy changed back, and he appointed the famous Cardinal Richelieu to his council. Marie soon became the figurehead of a weak aristocratic revolt which was very unsuccessful. Richelieu convinced the king to forgive his mother and she was no longer exiled. As years passed, though, Marie came to resent and hate Richelieu for his influence over the king, and she attempted a coup against him in 1630. It failed, and she was again exiled, but this time from the country. She traveled around Europe in grand fashion, ignoring her disfavor with her son, until her death in 1642.
Despite her poor political record, unpopularity, and condemnation from most historians, it has to be said that Marie was an extraordinary patroness of the arts. Her favorite painter was the renowned Reubens, and he not only painted her portrait but also a crazy cycle of huge paintings of scenes of her life for the Luxembourg palace. I don't mean they're artistically crazy; they're very good of course. But they show her in such an exaggeratedly favorable light that they're frankly ridiculous. She also of course commissioned the whole Luxembourg palace and gardens as her new residence, and supported other artists of the time.
Marie de Medici is one of those figures in history that you kind of have to snicker at. She was just so lacking in self awareness and had an overblown opinion of herself, but got practically nothing done and caused lots of unnecessary trouble in her lifetime. While I do appreciate her good contributions, historically she is just a footnote.
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