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Cardinal Charles de Bourbon, Catherine de Medici of Florence, Francis of Anjou, Grand Duke of Lithuania, Henry III of France, King Charles IX of France, King Henry II of France, King of France, King of Poland, King Philip II of Spain, Louise of Lorraine, Pope Gregory XIII, Queen Elizabeth I of England and Ireland, War of the Three Henrys, Wars of Religion
Henri III (September 19, 1551 – August 2, 1589) was King of France from 1574 until his assassination in 1589, as well as King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania from 1573 to 1575.
Prince Henri de Valois of France was born at the royal Château de Fontainebleau, the fourth son of King Henri II of France and Catherine de’ Medici. Catherine was born in Florence to Lorenzo de’ Medici, Duke of Urbino, and Madeleine de La Tour d’Auvergne.
In 1533, at the age of 14, Catherine married Prince Henri, the second son of King François I and Claude de Valois of France, Duchess of Brittany, the eldest daughter of King Louis XII of France and Duchess Anne of Brittany.
Prince Henri would become Dauphin of France upon the death of his elder brother François in 1536. Catherine’s marriage was arranged by her uncle Pope Clement VII. During his reign, King Henri II excluded Catherine from state affairs and instead showered favours on his chief mistress, Diane de Poitiers, who wielded much influence over him.
Prince Henri de Valois of France was a grandson of King François I of France and Claude de Valois of France, Duchess of Brittany His older brothers were King François II of France, King Charles IX of France, and Prince Louis de Valois of France. Prince Henri was made Duke of Angoulême and Duke of Orléans in 1560, then Duke of Anjou in 1566.
As the fourth son of King Henri II of France, Prince Henri was not expected to inherit the French throne and thus was a good candidate for the vacant throne of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, where he was elected monarch in 1573. During his brief rule, he signed the Henrician Articles into law, recognizing the szlachta’s right to freely elect their monarch.
Sexuality
Reports that Prince Henri engaged in same-sex relations with his court favourites, known as the mignons, date back to his own time. He was known to have enjoyed intense relationships with them. The scholar Louis Crompton maintains that all of the contemporary rumours were true.
Some modern historians dispute this. Jean-Francois Solnon, Nicolas Le Roux and Jacqueline Boucher have noted that Henri had many famous mistresses, that he was well known for his taste in beautiful women, and that no male sex partners have been identified.
They have concluded that the idea he was homosexual was promoted by his political opponents (both Protestant and Catholic) who used his dislike of war and hunting to depict him as effeminate and undermine his reputation with the French people.
The portrait of a self-indulgent sodomite, incapable of fathering an heir to the throne, proved useful in efforts by the Catholic League to secure the succession for Cardinal Charles de Bourbon after 1585.
Marriage
Princess Louise of Lorraine was the third daughter and youngest child born to Nicholas of Lorraine, Duke of Mercœur, and his first wife, Countess Margaret of Egmont (1517–1554). She was the only surviving child of her parents; her older siblings, two sisters and one brother, died in infancy.
Louise’s mother died shortly before her first birthday in 1554, and her father quickly remarried, in 1555, Princess Joanna of Savoy-Nemours (1532–1568).
Princess Louise of Lorraine would first meet Prince Henri in the autumn of 1573, when Henri, Duke of Anjou, was on his way to Krakow, as the new King Henryk of Poland-Lithuania. She attracted Henri’s interest during a celebration in honor of Henri’s election as King of Poland-Lithuania .
Following the death of Charles IX of France on May 30, 1574, King Henryk of Poland-Lithuania succeeded him under the name of King Henri III of France and he returned clandestinely to France.
Louise was with her family traveling to Reims for Henri’s coronation, when Philippe Hurault de Cheverny and Michel Du Guast arrived to make Henri’s marriage proposal.
Louise and Henri’s wedding took place at the Cathedral of Reims in a ceremony celebrated by Charles, Cardinal de Bourbon two days after Henri’s coronation, February 15, 1575. At the end of the month, the new King and Queen of France made their official entry into Paris.
France was at the time plagued by the Wars of Religion, and Henri’s authority was undermined by violent political factions funded by foreign powers: the Catholic League (supported by King Felipe II of Spain and Pope Gregory XIII), the Protestant Huguenots (supported by Queen Elizabeth I of England and the Dutch) and the Malcontents (led by Henri’s own brother the Prince François, Duke of Anjou and Alençon, a party of Catholic and Protestant aristocrats who jointly opposed the absolutist ambitions of the king). King Henri III was himself a politique, arguing that a strong and centralised yet religiously tolerant monarchy would save France from collapse.
After the death of Henri’s younger brother François, Duke of Anjou, and when it became apparent that King Henri III would not produce an heir, the Wars of Religion developed into a succession crisis, the War of the Three Henry’s.
King Henri III’s legitimate heir was his distant cousin, King Henri III of Navarre, a Protestant. The Catholic League, led by Henri I, Duke of Guise, sought to exclude Protestants from the succession and championed the Catholic Charles, Cardinal of Bourbon, as Henri III’s heir.
In 1589, Jacques Clément, a Catholic fanatic, murdered King Henri III. He was succeeded by the King Henri III of Navarre who, as King Henri IV, assumed the throne of France after converting to Catholicism, as the first French king of the House of Bourbon.