Elizabeth of Valois, Philip’s third wife, dies…
October 1568 CE
Elizabeth of Valois, Philip’s third wife, dies a few months after Don Carlos, leaving the king with two daughters to whom he is devoted.
The king is wrongly accused of murdering both his son and his wife.
Modern historians think that Don Carlos died of natural causes, but it will later be claimed that he had been poisoned on the orders of his father, especially by William the Silent in his Apology, a 1581 propaganda work against the Spanish king.
The idea of King Philip confining and murdering his own son will later play a minor role in establishing the anti-Spanish Black Legend.
It also forms the basis for Johann Christoph Friedrich Schiller’s 1787 tragedy Don Karlos, Infant von Spanien; Schiller's play will be adapted into several operas, most notably Giuseppe Verdi's Don Carlos.
After the death of Elisabeth, Catherine de' Medici offers her younger daughter Margaret as a bride for Philip; he declines the offer.
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Antonis Mor: Elisabeth of Valois (1568)
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