Anne of Austria, Queen and Regent of France

1601-1666, Queen and Regent of France

Literature fans will recognize her as the queen who plays a role in The Three Musketeers - but her part in it is entirely fictionalized, there has never been a suggestion that she had an affair with the Duke of Buckingham.

Anyway, her nickname is a bit confusing because she was actually a Spanish princess, not Austrian.  But because she was a member of Hapsburg ruling family, who originally came from Austria, she is called "of Austria." 

So Anne grew up in Spain (she did not learn French as a child) and married the king of France, Louis XIII, when they were both 14.  She had some trouble with both her new mother-in-law, the previously profiled Marie de Medici, who refused to cede her place to Anne as the new queen, and the court in general.  There was a lot of pressure on the young couple to come into power quickly, because no one liked Marie de Medici as regent; there was also a lot of pressure on them to have a child early because people seemed to feel there was a danger of the marriage being annulled.  However, Louis was not particularly interested in his bride, and she spent most of her time with her Spanish ladies, speaking Spanish and not integrating into French court life.

Finally in 1617 Louis took power from his mother and things improved between the royal couple.  Anne started dressing in French styles, her Spanish ladies were replaced with French ones, and the king and queen spent more time together.  She suffered a few miscarriages before 1622, one from falling down a staircase while horsing around with her ladies.  Louis blamed her for it and their relationship cooled for many years.

Around that time the king's main adviser Cardinal Richelieu (the Musketeer's archnemesis) began to favor war with the powerful Hapsburg family, of which Anne was a member; she was in a very difficult position and people began to suspect her sympathies lay with her brother, the king of Spain.  Her letters were read and she was monitored very closely.  Things were very troubled with the monarchy at this point, primarily because it didn't seem like Louis and Anne would have any more children.  Finally when Anne was thirty seven (very old by the standards of the time) she gave birth to a seeming miracle baby, would would become the famous Sun King of Versailles, Louis XIV.

The king died when young Louis was only four years old, and Anne managed to secure herself as regent.  She proved to be much more competent as regent than her late mother-in-law, and pursued moderate political policies in relation to her Spanish family.  She had never gotten along with Cardinal Richelieu and everyone was afraid she'd reverse his work, but to their surprise she kept his main protege, the Cardinal Mazarin, as her adviser.  Anne was even able to easily put down a rebellion led by one of her son's uncles in an attempt to take the throne from the little boy.  She later arranged for her son to marry her niece, another Hapsburg Spanish princess. 

The interesting thing about Anne of Austria, in my mind, was that she had a very quiet, sneaky kind of political savvy.  She was able to gently push people (except her husband) in the right direction and she almost always ended up getting what she wanted.  Of course, she also raised and supervised the education of Louis XIV, who was possibly the greatest ever French monarch.  I suspect that is most of the reason she's in the gardens.