Le Ballet de l'Acier | 1612 | Obsidian Portal

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The Queen Regent, in order to strengthen ties with the Habsburgs, the ruling family of Spain, contracts for her son Louis to marry the Infanta Ana María Maurícia de España while sending her daughter Elisabeth to wed Felipe de España, the heir to the Spanish throne. The contracts are greeted with strong reservations by the Huguenots, fearful of alliance between the two greatest Catholic powers of Europe, and by the princes of the blood, Condé and Soissons, who feel the young king is too strongly under the influence of the regent’s “Italian” favorites and therefore not receiving approriate guidance from the monarch’s “natural advisors,” specifically themselves and the other grands . In particular they object to Concino Concini, an Italian secretary named marquis d’Ancre by Marie de’ Medici, and Concini’s wife, Leonara Dori Galigaï, a companion of Marie’s since childhood.