On June 22, 1559, Paris attended with emotion the wedding by proxy of Elizabeth, the second of the children of Henry II of France and Catherine de’ Medici, with the Spanish monarch Philip II. No one suspected then that, two weeks later, the joyous ringing of the bells of Notre Dame would become a death knell. An unfortunate accident during one of the jousts organized to celebrate the occasion ended the life of the French monarch and seemed to fill what was supposed to be a happy event with dark omens.
It certainly was. The marriage between the young Isabel de Valois and the Spanish monarch was the result of the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis, the treaty that concluded a long period of confrontation between France and Spain, a non-aggression pact between the two monarchies that had been wanted reinforce with a blood alliance.
It was planned that, after the ceremony and a long week of wedding festivities, Isabel would leave for what was already her kingdom, but the tragic death of her father altered the plans, and the young princess had to delay her trip to Spain to attend to the funeral honors of Henry II and the proclamation of his brother, Francis II, as the new King of France.
There was no rush. Elizabeth was not yet nubile – she had been born in Fontainebleau on April 2, 1545 – and, therefore, the marriage could not be consummated. Hence, in Spain the young queen was patiently awaited, who finally crossed the Pyrenees in January 1560 to, at the beginning of February, ratify the marriage in the palace of the Infantado in Guadalajara.
The dire omens predicted by the link did not come true. On the contrary, Felipe II felt pleasantly surprised when he met his wife, who had little or nothing to do with his predecessors. The monarch had been married to his cousin, María Manuela of Portugal, a modest and shy young woman who died a year and a half after the wedding, and to María I of England, eleven years older than him and with whom Felipe II barely lived, if Well, he had serious differences with her.
Elizabeth, on the other hand, was beautiful and sweet and possessed great charm. She had inherited from her mother her dark eyes and delicate white complexion, while her father had bequeathed to her an eminent seductiveness, exquisite manners, and extremely refined taste.
An enormous current of sympathy was immediately established between the newlyweds. Felipe II was almost eighteen years older than his wife, but he did not mind waiting for Isabel to reach sexual maturity to consummate the marriage. The “joie de vivre” that his very young wife brought to her existence was enough for her.
Although the monarch was not the taciturn and perpetually dressed in black man that tradition has wanted, he had had to assume from a very young age a series of responsibilities that had not allowed him to enjoy life’s pleasures to an excess.
As the adolescent that she was, the young queen had a changeable mood and was somewhat capricious, which contrasted with the disciplined and austere character of the king, but she made up for those defects with her lively and cheerful character, her passion for hunting, her condition as a excellent reader or his taste for surrounding himself with art, qualities very much to the liking of Felipe II.
Elizabeth was quick to adapt to her new status, despite her youth and the rigidity of the Burgundian protocol of the Habsburgs. It is true that, in a letter to his mother, he did not hesitate to complain about the sobriety of the uses and customs of the Spanish court, but, as he also commented to her in 1561, it made up for her to have “such a good husband who makes me so happy that, even if the court was a hundred times more boring, I would still want to be here.
The young woman prevented monotony and tedium from taking over her day to day. Surrounded by a lively group made up of her brothers-in-law, Juana and Juan de Austria, Prince Carlos and other courtiers, among whom were Alejandro Farnesio, son of Margarita de Parma, and Ana de Mendoza, princess of Éboli, Isabel entertained her days and those of the king through small excursions to the mountains of El Pardo, representing farces or organizing dances and hunting parties.
He also entertained himself with music and drawing. For this she had an exceptional teacher, Sofonisba Anguissola (c. 1530-1625), the best female brush of the Renaissance, who had accompanied her from France. In turn, she had an organ, two harps, a zither and a clavichord in her rooms, instruments that she mastered perfectly.
Isabel was perfectly prepared to become a suitable government advisor. Intelligent and endowed with the same political intuition as her mother, she enjoyed her husband’s confidence to the point of defending Spanish interests at the Bayonne Conference in April 1565, where an attempt was made to get France to restrain its policy in favor of the Huguenots. It is said that she did it so effectively that her mother, also present at the conference, did not hesitate to exclaim: “You are very Spanish, ma’am!”
Only one issue darkened the life of the royal couple and alarmed the court: the queen did not get pregnant. Since it was solemnly announced on August 11, 1561 that Elizabeth had had her first menstruation and that, therefore, the marriage could now be consummated, month after month the announcement of her actual pregnancy was eagerly awaited.
Despite the fact that the dynasty already had an heir, Prince Carlos, born from the marriage of Felipe II with María Manuela of Portugal, his delicate health, both physical and mental, made one fear the worst, so it was urgent to strengthen the line of succession .
Isabel was the first to share such concerns. In the abundant correspondence with her mother, the queen shows her concern about the possibility of being sterile, while she reveals a series of intimate details that surprise her because of her frankness: she suffered from hemorrhoids and menstruated every three weeks.
Concern increased when, in 1564, Elizabeth suffered the termination of a twin pregnancy. Plunged into a deep depression, she seemed to forget her lively mood, she withdrew from everything and everyone and, for a few months, lived withdrawn in her chambers with the only company of Sofonisba, the constant presence of the king and some ladies at his service.
The retreat was brief. A few months later a new pregnancy was announced, and on August 12, 1565, the Infanta Isabel Clara Eugenia was born in the Valsaín palace (Segovia), who was followed, on October 10, 1567, by Catalina Micaela.
The absence of a son did not seem to particularly worry the monarchs. Nothing prevented, in the event of Prince Charles’ death, a woman inheriting the throne. Although the agnatic law existed, that is, the primacy of the man over the woman at the time of inheriting the throne, the Salic law did not prevail. On the other hand, Elizabeth was very young, she belonged to a family with a reputation for being fertile, and it was hoped that she could give more children to the king.
Meanwhile, the possibility of removing the Prince of Asturias from the throne was gaining more and more strength. Added to his physical ailments were an unstable temperament and a propensity for intrigue that demonstrated an obvious mental imbalance. The situation reached such a point that, in January 1568, Felipe II was forced to confine him in his rooms, where he died six months later.
At that time it was suspected that Isabel was pregnant again. However, certain symptoms made the doctors doubt that she was pregnant, and to alleviate her discomfort, certain remedies were applied to her that were harmful to the proper progress of the pregnancy.
In the summer of 1568, during the stay of the court in Aranjuez in order to avoid the rigors of the hot Madrid summer, the queen’s health worsened due to gravid pyelonephritis. On October 3 of that year, Isabel gave birth to a premature girl who barely lived a few hours. Nor did the most beloved wife of the Prudent King survive childbirth. Tradition says that this was the only day that Felipe II was seen crying.
This text is part of an article published in number 655 of the Historia y Vida magazine. Do you have something to contribute? Write to us at redaccionhyv@historiayvida.com.
