Wonder Woman of the Week: Marie de' Medici

This week's heroine comes from Renaissance Europe where she provided the Kingdom of France with financial security, supported the arts, and saved the Bourbon Monarchy. During the reign of French Bourbon King Henry IV, the kingdom was in unprecedented debt. In addition to debt, the king himself was married to a woman who could not bear children- thus threatening his ability to maintain his family's rule of the nation. To solve his problem, the king annulled his marriage and married the daughter of a man he was heavily indebted to in order to pay off the debt.

King Henry had no intention of establishing a solid foundation for his new marriage- in fact, the king didn't even attend his own wedding. His bride was a Tuscan duke's daughter named Maria whom the king married strictly for breeding purposes. After the ceremony in Italy, Maria (dubbed Marie in French) moved to France and met her new husband. There, the two produced an heir and Marie produced several enemies. First, the king had promised to marry his main mistress after his annulment, but kept her around during his marriage to Marie- creating a conflict between the two women that littered the French history books. The French People as well hated her, disgusted by the idea of a "fat banker's daughter" ruling their kingdom. This hatred led to several prominent critics of their new queen assassinating the king. In response, Marie had her husband's conspirators banished or executed and his supporters proclaim her regent until her infant son could rule the kingdom.

The foundations for the French Revolution began under Marie's regency. During her rule, Marie reversed several political alliances by siding with her Habsburg family members in Spain and Austria- the the anger of her kingdom's aristocrats. In response, the lords revolted and forced the queen to pay them money (which helped alleviate France's debt), and forced her to establish the Estates General which would later remise nearly two hundred years later to spark the French Revolution.

As a result of the establishment of the Estates General, a prominent cardinal rose to power in the form of the famous Cardinal Richelieu who helped convince the young King Louis XIII to resist his mother's rule and federalize France's authority into an absolute monarchy. The result was a family civil war between Marie and her son that turned ugly for Marie. The king assumed power and banished his mother into exile and went down in the history books as a villain of France. But in post-revolution France, Marie is remembered as a heroine of the nation. A foreign-born woman who sacrificed her own finances to save the failing economy of a husband that didn't even come to their wedding, Marie made the best of her arranged marriage, strengthened France's economy and invested in the arts.