Anne of Austria was betrothed at age eleven to King Louis XIII of France. Her father gave her a dowry of 500,000 crowns and many beautiful jewels. For fear that Louis XIII would die early, the Spanish court stipulated that she would return to Spain with her dowry, jewels, and wardrobe if he did die. Prior to the marriage, Anne renounced all succession rights she had had for herself and her descendants by Louis, with a provision that she would resume her rights should she be left a childless widow. On 24 November 1615, Louis and Anne were married by proxy in Burgos while Louis’s sister, Elizabeth of France, and Anne’s brother, Philip IV of Spain, were married by proxy in Bordeaux. These marriages followed the tradition of cementing military and political alliances between France and Spain that began with the marriage of Philip II of Spain to Elisabeth of Valois in 1559 as part of the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis. Anne and Elisabeth were exchanged on the Isle of Pheasants between Hendaye and Fuenterrabía. She was lively and beautiful during her youth. She was also a noted equestrian, a taste her son, Louis, would inherit. At the time, Anne had many admirers, including the handsome Duke of Buckingham, although her intimates believed their flirtations remained chaste.

Anne and Louis, both fourteen years old, were pressured to consummate their marriage in order to forestall any possibility of future annulment, but Louis ignored his bride. Louis’s mother, Marie de’ Medici, continued to conduct herself as queen of France, without showing any deference to her daughter-in-law. Anne, surrounded by her entourage of high-born Spanish ladies-in-waiting, continued to live according to Spanish etiquette and failed to improve her French. In 1617, Louis conspired with Charles d’Albert, Duke of Luynes, to dispense with the influence of his mother in a palace coup d’état and had her favorite Concino Concini assassinated on 26 April of that year. During the years he was in the ascendancy, the Duke of 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 of Conti (Louise Marguerite of Lorraine) and his wife Marie de Rohan-Montbazon, with whom he 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 stillbirths disenchanted the king and served to chill their relations. On 14 March 1622, while playing with her ladies, Anne of Austria fell on a staircase and suffered her second stillbirth. Louis blamed her for the incident and was angry with the Duchess of Luynes for having encouraged the queen in what was seen as negligence. Henceforth, the king had less tolerance for the influence that the duchess had over Anne, and the situation deteriorated after the death of her husband Luynes in December 1621. The king’s attention was monopolized by his war against the Protestants, while the queen defended the remarriage of her inseparable companion Marie de Rohan-Montbazon, center of all court intrigue, to her lover Claude, Duke of 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 of Austria, who remained childless for another sixteen years, while Louis depended ever more on Richelieu, who was his first minister from 1624 until his death in 1642. Under the influence of Marie de Rohan-Montbazon, 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 Count of Chalais that Marie organized in 1626, then those of the king’s treacherous favorite, Cinq-Mars, who had been introduced to him by Richelieu.

In 1635, France declared war on Spain, placing Anne of Austria 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 came under so much suspicion that Richelieu forced her to sign covenants regarding her correspondence, which was henceforth open to inspection. Her favourite Marie was exiled and close watch was kept on the queen. Anne was named regent upon her husband’s death in spite of her late husband’s wishes. 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 of Austria assumed the regency but to general surprise entrusted the government to the chief minister, Cardinal Mazarin, who was a protégé of Cardinal Richelieu and figured among the council of the regency. Mazarin left the Hôtel Tubeuf 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.

With Mazarin’s support, Anne of Austria overcame the aristocratic revolt, 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. In 1659, the war with Spain ended with the Treaty of the Pyrenees. The following year, peace was cemented by the marriage of the young King to Anne’s niece, the Spanish Habsburg princess Maria Theresa of Spain. In 1661, the same year as the death of Mazarin, an heir to the throne was born, Anne’s first grandchild Louis. Many other children would follow, but all in the legitimate line would die except for Louis. Some time after, Anne retired to the convent of Val-de-Grâce, where she died of breast cancer five years later. Her lady-in-waiting Madame de Motteville wrote the story of the queen’s life in her Mémoires d’Anne d’Autriche. Many view her as a brilliant and cunning woman and she is one of the central figures in Alexandre Dumas, père’s novel, The Three Musketeers and its sequels.