#francois ii

[edwardiionlyfans]

Mary Queen of Scots (2013)

[scotianostra]

On April 24th 1558 15 year old Mary Queen of Scots married the French Dauphin 14 year old Francis de Valois.

The couple  were married with spectacular pageantry and magnificence in the cathedral of Notre Dame, scene of the tragic fire last week, by the Cardinal Archbishop of Rouen, in the presence of Henry II, Queen Catherine de’ Medici, the princes and princesses of the blood and a glittering throng of cardinals and nobles. The Duke of Guise was master of ceremonies. Mary in a white dress with a long train borne by two young girls, a diamond necklace and a golden coronet studded with jewels, was described by the courtier Pierre de Brantôme as ‘a hundred times more beautiful than a goddess of heaven … her person alone was worth a kingdom.’ 

The wedding was followed by a procession past excited crowds in the Paris streets to a grand banquet in the Palais de Justice with dancing far into the night.

This marriage and the coronation which took place a few months later were to be major landmarks on the path of the Auld Alliance.

Francis, a sickly child from birth, suffered from chronic respiratory problems all of his life.  One day, a chronic  inflammation of the middle ear brought on by constant ear infections made him very ill.  A huge swelling appeared behind his ear caused by the spreading of the inflammation/infection and his condition worsened.  He died when an abscess formed in his brain as a result of the inflammation, he was just 17.

Whether the marriage was ever consummated is uncertain. Mary’s mother also died in 1560 and it suited the French to send her back to Scotland and claim that she was the rightful queen of England as well. She would eventually meet political and romantic disaster in Scotland, enduring years of imprisonment in England where, too dangerous a threat to Elizabeth’s throne, she was executed in 1587, at the age of forty-six.

You can find a run down of the wedding  more detail about the ceremony, the festivities, the procession to the Louvre, and the banquet there on the site below. 

http://scotlandsmary.com/the-dauphin/mary-queen-of-scots-and-francois-wedding-ceremony-and-festivities/

[thephantomofthelibrary]

24 April 1558

Mary Queen of Scots marries her first husband the French Crown Prince. Francois. For a short time she would be queen consort of France. However, in December 1560 when Francois died plan were made for her to return back to Scotland.

[cassandravision]

“I can boast of having begun, if I had not been interrupted, the greatest service a mother has ever given to her children.”

- Catherine de’ Medici, 1576

It’s a legitimate shame that Catherine is constantly villainized by the media and some historians. She came up with many great compromises to keep Catholics and Huguenots from fighting, but someone always had to go and ruin the peace she worked so hard to maintain. 

Seriously, everyone should have listened to Mama Bear.

How many wars had to start and lives lost in France because people didn’t take Catherine’s advice?

[historygoodies]

King Francis II of France badge

Team Francis II of France 6 Cm Round Badge

by CreativeHistory

[scandtbloveda]

Adelaide Kane as Mary Stuart.(Mary, Queen of Scot), and Toby Regbo, as Francois II, in “Reign.”

[thephantomofthelibrary]

The new king, Catherine de Medici's eldest son, Francois II, was a sickly teenager, susceptible to influence. But Catherine's was not the only voice in his ear and in the first days of her son's reign she could take a seat at the table of power only by allying herself with the new Queen Mary's Guise family. As the Guises moved swiftly to take possession of the fifteen-year-old king, Catherine abandoned her husband's body to join them. Her presence lent them legitimacy; others who might have hoped to seize a measure of power, notably the Guises' great rival, the Constable of France, Montmorency, were left lamenting.

Sarah Gristwood, Game of Queens: The Women Who Made Sixteenth-Century Europe, (2017) p.245

[thephantomofthelibrary]

From the first, care was taken to foster the idea of love in the dauphin and his future bride or, in the slightly older and infinitely stronger Mary, of protectiveness. Care was taken, too, to pay due tribute to Mary's rank. Henri II was enchanted with his future daughter-in-law, and wrote that 'she should take precedence over my daughters. For the marriage between her and my son is decided and settled; and apart from that, she is a crowned Queen'.

Sarah Gristwood, Game of Queens: The Women Who Made Sixteenth-Century Europe, (2017) p.211