Isabel de Valois
(Fontainebleau, France, 1546-Madrid, 1568) Queen consort of Spain by virtue of her marriage to the Spanish monarch Felipe II, of whom she was the third wife.She was the daughter of Henry II of France and Catherine de Medici, of the Valois dynasty, the former ruling house of France.Although in her childhood she was promised to the future Edward VI of England, when he died, Isabel de Valois entered into the previous negotiations of the Cateau-Cambrésis treaty, by which her wedding with Prince Charles of Spain was agreed in 1559.
Isabel de Valois
That same year, the death of María Tudor, second wife of Felipe II, and the influence of Cardinal Granvela and his councilors of the The Netherlands, determined that Isabel de Valois became the third wife of Felipe II, and as such, queen of Spain.The union of the Spanish and French crowns was enthusiastically welcomed in France.Thanks to his marriage and the intervention of Isabel in favor of the signing of the Bayonne agreements with France (1565), Felipe II strengthened the alliance against Protestantism.
The French queen, of a sensitive nature and exiled in the Spanish court, maintained throughout her life an inexhaustible nostalgia for her country.From her union with the Spanish sovereign, two daughters were born, Isabel Clara Eugenia, born in 1566, and Catalina Micaela, in 1567.
Isabel de Valois died the following year when giving birth to her third child.His mortal remains rest in the monastery of El Escorial.Felipe II tried, in 1593, to claim the throne of France for his eldest daughter based on the maternal ancestry of Isabel Clara Eugenia, but the intention failed due to the division of the Catholic League and the conversion to Catholicism of Enrique IV de Borbón.
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