Queens Marie of France Trivia Quiz

The first lady named Marie (or Maria, as she is named by some sources) to become Queen of France was the only daughter of Henry III, Duke of Brabant. The Duchy of Brabant was an Imperial State of the Holy Roman Empire that covered parts of modern day Belgium and the Netherlands and she was born in what is now the Belgian city of Leuven in 1254. She was 20 years old when she married King Philip III of France on August 21st, 1274 and was crowned in a coronation held 10 months later. Philip III (also known as Philip the Bold) was a widower with three sons by his first wife, Isabella of Aragon, so Marie's children were not in the direct line of succession to the throne. However, her only son Louis was the father of King Philip III of Navarre and her younger daughter, Margaret, became Queen of England as the second wife of King Edward I.

In the end she was only queen for nine years as her husband died of dysentery while leading his troops in the Aragonese Crusade of 1284-85. She also outlived all three of her children, dying in 1322 at the monastery she had retired to a few years earlier.

Marie of Luxembourg, the eldest daughter of the late Henry VII, Holy Roman Emperor and Margaret of Brabant (a niece of Marie of Brabant), married King Charles IV of France on September 21st, 1322, following the annulment of his first marriage to Blanche of Burgundy. Marie's coronation was held in May 1323 but her tenure as Queen of France was cut tragically short when she fell out of a carriage while on a journey to visit the Pope in Avignon in March 1324. The accident caused the 20-year-old queen to go into premature labour and both mother and baby died shortly after the birth.

King Charles IV turned out to be the last French monarch of the direct line of Capetians known as the House of Capet. He married for a third time after Marie's death, but had only one surviving daughter; as the French monarchy operated a system of male primogeniture, the throne passed to his cousin King Philip VI, founding the House of Valois.

Marie of Anjou held the title of Queen of France for nearly 40 years, but was never had a coronation ceremony. She was the daughter of Louis II, Duke of Anjou and a great-granddaughter of King John II of France, which made her a second cousin of her husband King Charles VII. The couple's marriage took place on December 18th, 1422 when Marie was 18 years old and her husband just one year older. Charles' reign coincided with the latter part of the Hundred Years' War with England and it was his wife's influential family that have been credited with providing the financial and military support that ultimately resulted in the French victory. In particular, Marie's mother, Yolande of Aragon, was notable as an influential backer of the army led by Joan of Arc.

Marie herself had significant influence at the French court and regularly acted as regent when her husband was absent. The couple had 14 children (although it cannot have been an entirely happy marriage as Charles also had an official mistress, Agnes Sorel) and their eldest son inherited as King Louis XI on Charles' death in 1461. Marie died two years later at the Abbaye de Chateliers-en-Poitou in November 1463.

As a member of the wealthy and influential Medici family of Florence, Italy, it shouldn't be too surprising that Marie de' Medici was not just a Queen Consort of France, but also wielded power as regent for her son King Louis XIII. Marie was the youngest daughter of Francesco I, Grand Duke of Tuscany and Joanna of Austria, daughter of Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor. She married King Henry IV of France on December 17th, 1600, a year after the annulment of his 27-year marriage to Margaret of Valois, and they had a total of six children (five of whom survived to adulthood) who also included Henrietta Maria, the wife of the ill-fated King Charles I of England.

Marie's coronation as Queen Consort took place on May 13th, 1610, nearly ten years after she first gained the title. Ironically though it turned out that her coronation marked the end of her tenure rather than its beginning, as her husband was assassinated by a Catholic zealot just one day later. She then became regent for her eight-year-old son and used her new found power to direct France's foreign policy towards support for her Habsburg relations and organised the marriages of her eldest children to a son and daughter of King Philip III of Spain. Louis XIII legally became of age to control the throne at the age of 13 in 1614, but his mother refused to give up the regency; he eventually had to organise a coup d'etat to overthrow her in 1617 and had her imprisoned in the Chateau de Blois.

However, that wasn't the end of Marie's story as she escaped from imprisonment and went on to invoke not one, but two uprisings against her son. Surprisingly she was forgiven and welcomed back to the court, where she became a noted patron of the arts through the 1620s, until a failed attempt to oust Cardinal Richelieu from political power resulted in her final exile from France. She died in Cologne in 1642, aged 67.

Maria Theresa of Spain was the wife of the King Louis XIV of France - also known as the "Sun King" - and the longest-reigning French monarch of all time at 72 years and 110 days. Maria Theresa's tenure as his consort was considerably shorter - she gained the title on their marriage on June 9th, 1660 and died just over 23 years later in July 1683 at the age of 44. The marriage was designed to cement the relationship between France and Spain and end a long-running war between the two countries. Despite this though, the couple were very closely related as double first cousins - Maria Theresa's mother was Elisabeth of France, the eldest sister of Louis' father Louis XIII, and Louis' mother was Anne of Austria, the eldest sister of Maria Theresa's father, Philip IV of Spain. (This pair of marriages having been organised by Marie de' Medici, grandmother of both Maria Theresa and Louis.)

Louis XIV and Maria Theresa had six children, but only one - Louis, the Grand Dauphin - survived to adulthood. While the high infant mortality rates of the time meant this situation was not unusual, the close genetic relationship of their parents would likely have been a factor in their poor health.

Marie (originally known as Maria) Leszczyńska was the daughter of King Stanislaus I of Poland, although he had been deposed from that position at the time of his only surviving child's marriage to King Louis XV of France on September 4th, 1725. While Louis was the successor of France's longest serving king (his great-grandfather Louis XIV), his wife Marie became the longest serving French queen in history, with a tenure as consort that lasted 42 years and 294 days until her death in June 1768. Despite this fact, Marie has largely been overlooked in the history books in comparison to Louis' most famous mistress, Madame du Pompadour, and she also had little political influence or even prominence at court during her lifetime.

The couple had a total of ten children - two sons and eight daughters - but only seven survived into adulthood and only two (the eldest son and eldest daughter) married and had children of their own.

Marie Antoinette is arguably the most famous of all French queens for a whole string of unfortunate reasons. At birth she was known as Archduchess Maria Antonia of Austria, as the eleventh and youngest daughter of the ruling Holy Roman Empress Maria Theresa and her husband Francis I, but she took on the French version of her name on her marriage to the French Dauphin in 1770. She became Queen of France when her husband ascended to the throne as King Louis XVI on May 10th, 1774.

The lavish lifestyle of the French court under Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette was one reason behind their growing unpopularity and poor reputation with the French people, especially when the wealth, pomp and circumstance of the court contrasted starkly with the poverty and starvation rife in the working classes. This unpopularity has since been summed up in history by the (probably) apocryphal claim that she announced "Let them eat cake" when told that the starving people had no bread, but other pre-revolution scandals surrounding her included a false accusation of involvement in a diamond necklace fraud and persistent rumours of infidelity and affairs.

Finally in 1789 the French Revolution began which resulted in the dissolution of the monarchy on September 21st, 1792 and the end of Marie Antoinette's tumultuous time as Queen of France. The end of her life followed shortly afterwards when she was guillotined on October 16th, 1793 following a trial in which she was accused of a whole array of crimes, including incest.

Marie Louise of Austria was the second wife of Napoleon Bonaparte, the Republican military leader who had been crowned as "Emperor of the French" in December 1804. As such, upon her marriage on April 1st, 1810 Marie Louise became Empress of the French, rather than the previous title for the consort of Queen of France. While her husband had no royal pedigree, Marie Louise was the eldest daughter of Francis II, Holy Roman Emperor and a great-niece of her executed predecessor Marie Antoinette.

Napoleon and Marie Louise had one son, also named Napoleon, born a year after their marriage. He was briefly known as Napoleon II after his father's second defeat and exile to the island of Elba, but his claim to the title of Emperor of the French was both short-lived and disputed.

While Marie Thérèse of France is included in some lists of queen consorts of France, her claim to that title is disputed and, even if accepted, was extremely short-lived. She was the eldest child of the ill-fated King Louis XVI of France and his consort Marie Antoinette and the only one of the couple's four children to survive to adulthood. She was married in 1799 to her first cousin Louis Antoine, Duke of Angouleme, who was the eldest son of King Charles X of France, but their union proved to be childless.

Charles X was deposed on August 2nd 1830 following that year's July Revolution and abdicated in favour of his only grandson Henry. However, that required Louis Antoine's agreement as he was next in the line of succession and would also need to abdicate. Louis initially refused to do so and therefore had a disputed claim to be known as King Louis XIX for the 20 minutes or so between his father's abdication and his own agreement to do the same. As a result Marie Thérèse had a similar claim to be a 20 minute Queen of France.

The last lady named Marie or Maria to be consort to a French monarch was Maria Amalia of Naples and Sicily as the wife of King Louis Philippe. She was the daughter of King Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies and Maria Carolina of Austria and a niece of Marie Antoinette. She was 27 years old when she married Louis Philippe, Duke of Orleans in 1809 and the couple spent the first few years of their marriage living in exile until the Bourbon Restoration of 1815 meant the couple could return to his native France.

Following the July Revolution of 1830 Louis Philippe briefly acted as regent for grandson of the previous king Charles X, but then took advantage of the political situation to have himself proclaimed as king instead. He ruled as King of the French for 18 years, with Maria Amalia as his Queen Consort, until his own abdication during the February Revolution of 1848. Louis Philippe and Maria Amalia then fled France for England and yet another period in exile at Claremont House in Surrey. They both later died there, Louis Philippe in 1850 and Maria Amalia in 1866.