[close] Anne of Austria (22 September 1601 – 20 January 1666) was Queen Consort of France and Navarre and regent for her son, Louis XIV of France. During her regency (1643–1651) Cardinal Mazarin served as France's chief minister. She is one of the central figures in Alexandre Dumas's novel, The Three Musketeers.

The marriage began with the fourteen-year-old couple forced to consummate the marriage, to forestall any possibility of future annulment. Although installed with all propriety in her own suite of apartments in the Louvre, Anne was ignored. Louis' mother, Marie de' Medici, continued to conduct herself as Queen of France, without any deference to her daughter-in-law, while the timid and private young king appeared profoundly uninterested. As a Spaniard, among her entourage of high-born Spanish ladies-in-waiting, Anne was out of the mainstream of French culture; she continued to live according to Spanish etiquette and failed to improve her stilted French. People, though, were amazed by her beauty; she had chestnut colored hair, fair skin, blue eyes, and famously beautiful hands, which she protected with elegant gloves and accented with beautiful braclets.

In 1617, Louis conspired with Charles d'Albert, duc de Luynes to dispense with the influence of his mother in a palace coup d'état, having her favorite Concino Concini assassinated on 26 April of that year. During the years he was in the ascendancy, the duc de Luynes attempted to remedy the formal distance between Louis and his queen. He sent away the Spanish ladies and replaced them with French ones, notably the princesse de Conti and Marie de Rohan-Montbazon, his wife, and organized court events that would bring the couple together under amiable circumstances. Anne began to dress in the French manner, and in 1619 Luynes pressed the King to bed his Queen: some affection developed, to the point where it was noted that Louis was distracted during a serious illness of the Queen.

A series of miscarriages disenchanted the King and served to chill their relations. On 14 March 1622, while playing with her ladies, Anne fell on a staircase and suffered her second miscarriage, for which Louis blamed her and was angry with Mme de Luynes for having encouraged the Queen in what was seen as negligence. Henceforth, the King had less tolerance for the influence the duchesse de Luynes had over Anne, and the situation deteriorated after the death of Luynes (December 1621). The King's attention was monopolized by his war against the Protestants, while the Queen defended the remarriage of her inseparable companion, center of all court intrigue, to her lover, the duc de Chevreuse, in 1622.

Louis turned now to Cardinal Richelieu as his advisor; Richelieu's foreign policy of struggle against the Habsburgs, who surrounded France on two fronts, inevitably created tension between himself and Anne, who remained childless for another sixteen years, while Louis depended ever more on Richelieu, who was his first minister from 1624.

Under the influence of la Chevreuse, the Queen let herself be drawn into political opposition to Richelieu and became embroiled in several intrigues against his policies. Vague rumors of betrayal circulated in the court, notably her supposed involvement with the conspiracies of the comte de Chalais that La Chevreuse organized in 1626, then of the king's treacherous lover, Cinq-Mars, who had been introduced by Richelieu.

In 1635, France declared war on Spain, placing the Queen in an untenable position. Her secret correspondence with her brother Philip IV of Spain passed beyond the requirements of sisterly affection. In August 1637, Anne was suspected, with enough cause that Richelieu forced her to sign covenants regarding her correspondence, which was henceforth open to inspection. The duchesse de Chevreuse was exiled and close watch was kept on the Queen.

Surprisingly, in such a climate of distrust, the Queen was soon pregnant once more, a circumstance that contemporary gossip attributed to a single stormy night that prevented Louis from travelling to Saint-Maur and obliged him to spend the night with the queen[1]. The Dauphin Louis Dieudonné was born on 5 September 1638, securing the Bourbon line.

The birth soon afterwards of a second son failed to reestablish confidence between the royal couple. It was at Saint-Germain-en-Laye that Anne gave birth to her second son; Philippe de France, duc d'Anjou and later the founder of the modern House of Orléans.

Richelieu made Louis a gift of his palatial hôtel, the Palais Cardinal, north of the Louvre in 1636, but the King never took possession: Anne fled the Louvre to install herself there with her two small sons, and remained as Regent (hence the name Palais-Royal the structure still carries) Louis tried to prevent Anne from obtaining the regency after his death, which came in 1643, not long after that of Richelieu.

Anne was named regent upon her husband's death. With the aid of Pierre Séguier, she had the Parlement de Paris revoke the will of the late king, which would have limited her powers. Their four-year-old son was crowned King Louis XIV of France. Anne assumed the regency but to general surprise entrusted the government to the chief minister, Jules Cardinal Mazarin, who was a protegé of Richelieu and figured among the council of the regency. Mazarin left the hôtel Tuboeuf to take up residence at the Palais Royal near Queen Anne. Before long he was believed to be her lover, and, it was hinted, even her husband.
Two Queens of France: Anne d'Autriche with her niece and daughter-in-law, Maria Theresa of Spain, the Queen of her son Louis XIV, who holds her own son, Louis, Dauphin of France, (1661–1711)

With Mazarin's support, Anne overcame the revolt of aristocrats, led by Louis II de Bourbon, Prince de Condé, that became known as the Fronde. In 1651, when her son Louis XIV officially came of age, her regency legally ended. However, she kept much power and influence over her son until the death of Mazarin. [close]