Anne of Austria, the lively and beautiful…
April 1622 CE
Anne of Austria, the lively and beautiful Queen consort of France and Navarre, has had a series of miscarriages, disenchanting her husband Louis XIII and serving to chill their relations.
Anne had fallen on a staircase on March 14, 1622, while playing with her ladies, and suffered her second miscarriage, for which Louis had blamed her; he had been angry with Marie de Rohan, Mme de Luynes, for having encouraged the Queen in what was seen as negligence.
The King has since had less tolerance for the influence the duchesse de Luynes had over Anne, and the situation had deteriorated after the death of Charles d'Albert, duc de Luynes in December 1621.
The King's attention has been monopolized by his war against the Protestants, while the Queen defends the remarriage of her inseparable companion, center of all court intrigue, to her lover Claude of Lorraine, Duke of Chevreuse, on April 21, 1622.
Louis turns now to Cardinal Richelieu as his advisor; Richelieu's foreign policy of struggle against the Habsburgs, who surround France on two fronts, inevitably created tension between himself and Anne, who is to remain childless for another sixteen years, while Louis depends ever more on Richelieu, who will become his first minister from 1624.