ABSTRACT
Born in 1519 and the daughter of the powerful Duke Lorenzo de’ Medici, Catherine was married to the heir to the French Crown for political reasons and became Queen of France in 1547. After the premature death of her husband Henry II in 1559, Marie was forced to act as regent for her underage sons whilst France was increasingly torn apart by religious strife between Catholics and Protestants. Her eldest daughter Elizabeth was married to Philip II of Spain in 1559 and gave birth to two daughters – Isabella and Catalina – before her death as a result of a miscarriage in 1568. Catherine kept a steady correspondence with the French Ambassador in Spain Raimond Beccarie de Pavie, Seigneur de Fourquevaux, as well as her powerful son-in-law. Preserving the peace with Spain, France’s main rival in the 1500s, was crucial to Catherine’s diplomatic aims. Moreover, her two granddaughters at the Spanish court were potentially valuable pawns in the high-stake game of sixteenth-century dynastic politics. Her letters to the ambassador reveal the affection of a grandmother for the motherless Isabella and Catalina and her anxieties that the girls should not suffer a loss of status under their new stepmother (Anna of Austria, whom Philip married soon after the death of Elizabeth). The letter of the French ambassador on 4 May 1571, informing Catherine of the birth of a son and heir to Philip and Anna, makes it clear that the dowager 91Queen of France would be disappointed by this news (since the newborn prince displaced his older half-sisters in the line of succession to the throne of Spain) but emphasized the need for a feigned display of joy.
