Marie de Medicis had showed little sign of political acumen or ability before the assassination in 1610 of her husband, Henry IV of France.
Confirmed as Regent by the Parlement of Paris just hours after Henry's assassination in 1610, she has proven not very bright and extremely stubborn.
Growing obese, she has for some years now been entirely under the influence of her maid Leonora "Galigai" and the latter's unscrupulous Italian husband, Concino Concini, Count della Penna, a Florentine native who had arrived France in the Queen’s train, had combined his court connections with wit and boldness to make his fortune.
He had in 1610 purchased the marquisate of Ancre and the position of first gentleman-in-waiting.
He had then obtained successively the governments of Amiens and of Normandy, governor of Péronne, Roye and Montdidier and in 1613 the baton of marshal of France, despite never having fought a battle.
The Queen had become Regent of France when the nine-year old Louis ascended the throne; although her son had reached the legal age of majority in 1614, she remains the effective ruler of the realm.
Under the Regent's lax and capricious rule, the princes of the blood and the great nobles of the kingdom had revolted, and the queen, too weak to assert her authority, had consented on May 15, 1614) to buy off the discontented princes.
The opposition is led by Henry II de Bourbon-Condé, Duc d'Enghien, the third Prince of Condé, who has pressured Marie into convoking the Estates General. (This will turn out to be the last time they are to meet in France until the opening events of the French Revolution.)
Through Concini and the Regent, Italian representatives of the Roman Catholic Church hope to force the suppression of Protestantism in France.
Half Habsburg herself, Marie has abandoned the traditional anti-Habsburg French policy.
Throwing her support to Habsburg Spain, she arranges the marriage of her 13-year-old daughter, Elisabeth, to the future Philip IV of Spain.
The construction and furnishing of the Palais du Luxembourg in Paris, which the queen refers to as her Palais Médicis, forms her major artistic project.
The site had been purchased in 1612 and construction begins in 1615, to designs of Salomon de Brosse.
