The assassination of her husband in 1610, which occurred the day after her coronation, caused her to act as regent for her son, Louis XIII, until 1614, when he officially attained his legal majority, but as the head of the Conseil du Roi, she retained the power.

[1] Noted for her ceaseless political intrigues at the French court, her extensive artistic patronage[1] and her favourites (the most famous being Concino Concini and Leonora Dori), she ended up being banished from the country by her son and dying in the city of Cologne, in the Holy Roman Empire.

Born at the Palazzo Pitti of Florence, Italy on 26 April 1575,[2] Maria was the sixth daughter of Francesco I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, and Archduchess Joanna of Austria.

A few months later, Grand Duke Francesco I married his longtime mistress Bianca Cappello; the marriage was officially revealed one year later, on 12 June 1579.

Maria and her only surviving sister, Eleonora (with whom she had a close relationship) spent their childhood at the Palazzo Pitti in Florence, placed under the care of a governess along with their paternal first-cousin Virginio Orsini (son of Isabella de' Medici, Duchess of Bracciano).

[6] After her sister's marriage in 1584 with Vincenzo Gonzaga, heir of the Duchy of Mantua, and her departure to her husband's homeland, Maria's only playmate was her first cousin Virginio Orsini, to whom she deferred all her affection.

In addition, her stepmother brought a female companion to the Palazzo Pitti for Maria, a young girl named Dianora Dori, who would be renamed Leonora.

Close to the artists of her native Florence, Maria was trained in drawing by Jacopo Ligozzi, and she was reportedly very talented; she also played music (singing and practicing the guitar and the lute) and enjoyed theater, dance, and comedy.

The wealth of the Medici family attracted many suitors, in particular the younger brother of her aunt Grand Duchess Christina, François, Count of Vaudémont and heir of the Duchy of Lorraine.

After having obtained the annulment of his union to Margaret of Valois in December 1599,[4] Henry IV officially started negotiations for his new marriage with Maria de' Medici.

The celebrations were attended by 4,000 guests with lavish entertainment, including examples of the newly invented musical genre of opera, such as Jacopo Peri's Euridice.Maria (now known by the French usage of her name, Marie de Médicis) left Florence for Livorno on 23 October, accompanied by 2,000 people who made up her suite, and set off for Marseille, which she reached on 3 November.

On 17 December, the Papal legate finally arrived, and gave his blessing to the religious wedding ceremony at the Cathedral of Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Lyon.

Marie, in turn, showed great sympathy and support to her husband's banished ex-wife Marguerite de Valois, prompting Henry IV to allow her back to Paris.

Another bone of contention concerned the proper maintenance of Marie's household as Queen of France: despite the enormous dowry she brought to the marriage, her husband often refused her the money necessary to pay all the expenses that she intended to carry out to show everyone her royal rank.

At this time Henry IV was about to depart to fight in the War of Succession over the United Duchies of Jülich-Cleves-Berg; the coronation aimed to confer greater legitimacy on the Queen from the perspective of a possible regency which she would be called upon to provide in the absence of the King.

[15] Within hours after Henry IV's assassination, Marie was confirmed as Regent by the Parliament of Paris on behalf of her son and new King, eight-year-old Louis XIII.

[17] At first, she kept the closest advisers of Henry IV in the key court positions and took for herself (1611) the title of Governess of the Bastille, although she entrusted the physical custody of this important Parisian fortress to Joachim de Chateauvieux, her knight of honor, who took direct command as a lieutenant of the Queen-Regent.

[19] The Concinis had Henry IV's able minister, the Duke of Sully, dismissed, and Italian representatives of the Roman Catholic Church hoped to force the suppression of Protestantism in France by means of their influence.

As one of her first acts, Marie reconfirmed Henri IV's Edict of Nantes, which ordered religious tolerance for Protestants in France while asserting the supremacy of the Roman Catholic Church.

The Regency was officially ended following the Lit de justice of 2 October 1614, which declared that Louis XIII had attained his legal majority of age, but Marie then became head of the Conseil du Roi and retained all her control over the government.

One year after the end of the Estates General, a new rebellion of the Prince of Condé allowed his entry into the Conseil du Roi by the Treaty of Loudun (3 May 1616), which also granted him the sum of 1,500,000 livres and the government of Guyenne.

Nevertheless, Marie's rule was strengthened by the appointment of Armand Jean du Plessis (later Cardinal Richelieu)—who had come to prominence at the meetings of the Estates General—as Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs on 5 November 1616.

Richelieu played an important role in her reconciliation with the king and even managed to bring the queen mother back to the Conseil du Roi.

In particular, she tried to attract several large-scale artists to Paris: she brought in The Annunciation by Guido Reni, was offered a suite of Muses painted by Giovanni Baglione, invited the painter Orazio Gentileschi (who stayed in Paris during two years, during 1623–1625), and especially the Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens, who was commissioned by her to create a 21-piece series glorifying her life and reign to be part of her art collection in the Luxembourg Palace.

The Queen-Mother's attempts to convince Pietro da Cortona and Guercino to travel to Paris ended in failure, but during the 1620s the Luxembourg Palace became one of the most active decorative projects in Europe: sculptors such as Guillaume Berthelot and Christophe Cochet, painters like Jean Monier or the young Philippe de Champaigne, and even Simon Vouet on his return to Paris, participated in the decoration of the apartments of the Queen-Mother.

During her last years, Marie travelled to various European courts, in the Spanish Netherlands (the ruler of which, Isabella Clara Eugenia, and the ambassador Balthazar Gerbier tried to reconcile her with Richelieu), in England at the court of her daughter Queen Henrietta Maria for three years (staying en route to London in Gidea Hall) and then in Germany; with her daughters and sons-in-law where she tried again to form a "league of sons-in-law" against France, without ever being able to return, and her supporters were imprisoned, banished or condemned to death.

Marie de' Medici wasted the wealth amassed by Henry IV; she never purged herself of the charge of having known of the king's assassination; her intimate was d'Épernon, who did not ward off Ravaillac's blow, and who was proved to have known the murderer personally for a long time.