Marie de' Medici
Queen of France (1575-1642); second wife of King Henry IV of France
Marie de' Medici (French: Marie de Médicis; Italian: Maria de' Medici; 26 April 1575 – 3 July 1642) was Queen of France and Navarre as the second wife of King Henry IV. Marie served as regent of France between 1610 and 1617 during the minority of her son Louis XIII. Her mandate as regent legally expired in 1614, when her son reached the age of majority, but she refused to resign and continued as regent until she was removed by a coup in 1617. After Henry's assassination in 1610, Maria became Queen Regent of France for her young son, Louis XIII, giving her significant political influence.
Marie was a member of the powerful House of Medici in the branch of the grand dukes of Tuscany. Her family's wealth inspired Henry IV to choose Marie as his second wife after his divorce from his previous wife, Margaret of Valois. The assassination of her husband in 1610, which occurred the day after her coronation, caused her to act as regent for her son, Louis XIII, until 1614, when he officially attained his legal majority, but as the head of the Conseil du Roi, she retained the power.
Noted for her ceaseless political intrigues at the French court, her extensive artistic patronage and her favourites (the most famous being Concino Concini and Leonora Dori), she ended up being banished from the country by her son and dying in the city of Cologne, in the Holy Roman Empire.
Life
Early years
Born at the Palazzo Pitti of Florence, Italy on 26 April 1575, Maria was the sixth daughter of Francesco I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, and Archduchess Joanna of Austria. She was a descendant of Lorenzo the Elder –a branch of the Medici family sometimes referred to as the 'cadet' branch– and was also a Habsburg through her mother, who was a direct descendant of Joanna of Castile and Philip I of Castile.
Of her five elder sisters, only the eldest, Eleonora (born 28 February 1567) and the third, Anna (born 31 December 1569) survived infancy. Their only brother Philip de' Medici, was born on 20 May 1577.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Marie de' Medici” as queen of France (1575-1642); second wife of King Henry IV of France. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as queen of France (1575-1642); second wife of King Henry IV of France. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q182021. VIAF identifies the subject as 12420076. The Library of Congress control number is n82006848. 4 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1575, 1642, 1610 and 1617.
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This entry incorporates text from “Marie de' Medici” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.