Anne of Austria was Spanish, waited 23 years for an heir, then ruled France
She was born in Valladolid, called Austrian because of her Habsburg dynasty, and married to Louis XIII at fourteen. After five miscarriages and more than two decades without children, she produced the future Louis XIV in 1638, then outmanoeuvred rivals to govern France as his regent.
Ana María Mauricia came into the world on 22 September 1601 at the Benavente Palace, eldest daughter of Philip III of Spain and Margaret of Austria. The label Austria reflected her family, the senior branch of the House of Austria later known as the Habsburgs. Raised mostly at the Alcázar of Madrid by unusually devout and attentive parents, she lost her mother in childbirth in 1611 and mothered her younger siblings, who called her mother in return.
At eleven she was promised to Louis XIII, with a dowry of 500,000 crowns and a clause sending her home with it if he died young. She renounced her claims to the Spanish throne. On 18 October 1615 she was married by proxy in Burgos, while Louis's sister wed her brother, the future Philip IV, in Bordeaux; the two brides were swapped on the Isle of Pheasants. Louis largely ignored his wife, his mother Marie de' Medici kept acting as queen, and Anne clung to Spanish manners and ladies-in-waiting. After 1617 the royal favourite Luynes replaced her Spanish entourage with French women and nudged the couple together, and some warmth grew.
The marriage stayed strained, soured by her miscarriages and by Cardinal Richelieu's hostility to the Habsburgs while France and Spain were at war. Then, after twenty-three childless years, Louis was born in 1638 and his brother Philippe two years later.
When the king died in 1643, Anne secured sole regency for her four-year-old son and made Cardinal Mazarin chief minister. Their government survived the Fronde, a major noble revolt, and her regency ended formally in 1651 when Louis was declared of age. Courtiers noted how close mother and son were, and her disapproval of his affairs behind the back of his wife Maria Theresa, who was also Anne's niece. She withdrew from politics in 1661 to the convent she had founded, Val-de-Grâce, and died there of breast cancer on 20 January 1666.
Source: Anne of Austria
