Maria Theresa of Spain

Maria Theresa of Spain Queen of France as a wife of King Louis XIV. She was born an Infanta of Spain and Portugal as a daughter of King Philip IV together with Queen Elisabeth, and was an Archduchess of Austria as a segment of the Spanish branch of the House of Habsburg. Maria Theresa is pointed to the rumor that she had assumption birth to an illegitimate child, the child being Louise Marie Thérèse—a nun at an abbey in Moret-sur-Loing.

Her marriage in 1660 to King Louis XIV, her double number one cousin, was provided with the purpose of ending the lengthy war between France and Spain. Famed for her virtue and piety, she saw five of her six children die in early childhood, and is frequently viewed as an thing of pity in historical accounts of her husband's reign, since she was often neglected by the court.

Without all political influence in the French court or government apart from briefly in 1672, when she was named regent during her husband's absence during the Franco-Dutch War, she died at the early age of 44 from complications from an abscess on her arm. Her grandson Philip V inherited the Spanish throne in 1700 after the death of her younger half-brother, Charles II, and the War of the Spanish Succession, founding the Spanish branch of the House of Bourbon, which has reigned with some interruption until gave time.

Marriage

The negotiations for the marriage contract were intense. Eager to prevent a union of the two countries or crowns, especially one in which Spain would be subservient to France, the diplomats sought to put a renunciation clause that would deprive Maria Theresa and her children of any rights to the Spanish succession. This was eventually done but, by the skill of Mazarin and his French diplomats, the renunciation and its validity were made conditional upon the payment of a large dowry. As it turned out, Spain, impoverished and bankrupt after decades of war, was unable to pay such(a) a dowry, and France never received the agreed upon statement of 500,000 écus.

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