page_title: Maria Theresa of Spain
section_title: Early life
hierarchical_section_title: Maria Theresa of Spain / Early life
context_page_description: Maria Theresa of Spain, was by birth Infanta of Spain and Portugal and Archduchess of Austria as member of the Spanish branch of the House of Habsburg and by marriage Queen of France.
  Her marriage in 1660 to King Louis XIV, her cousin, was made with the purpose of ending the lengthy war between France and Spain. Famed for her virtue and piety, she saw five of her six children die in early childhood, and is frequently viewed as an object of pity in historical accounts of her husband's reign, since she was often neglected by the court.
  Without any political influence in the French court or government, she died at the early age of 44 from complications from an abscess on her arm.
  Her grandson Philip V inherited the Spanish throne in 1700 after the death of her younger half-brother, Charles II, and the War of the Spanish Succession, founding the Spanish branch of the House of Bourbon, which has reigned with some interruption until present time.
context_section_description: Born an Infanta of Spain and Portugal at the Royal Monastery of El Escorial, she was the daughter of Philip IV & III, and his wife Elisabeth of France, who died when Maria Theresa was six years old. As a member of the House of Austria, Maria Theresa was entitled to use the title Archduchess of Austria. She was known in Spain as María Teresa de Austria and in France as Marie-Thérèse d'Autriche.
  
  Unlike France, the kingdom of Spain had no Salic Law, so it was possible for a female to assume the throne. When Maria Theresa's brother Balthasar Charles died in 1646, she became heir presumptive to the vast Spanish Empire and remained such until the birth of her brother Philip Prospero, in 1657.  She was briefly heir presumptive once more between 1–6 November 1661, following the death of Prince Philip and until the birth of Prince Charles, who would later inherit the thrones of Spain as Charles II.
  In 1658, as war with France began to wind down, a union between the royal families of Spain and France was proposed as a means to secure peace. Maria Theresa and the French king were double first cousins: Louis XIV's father was Louis XIII of France, who was the brother of Maria Theresa's mother, while her father was brother to Anne of Austria, Louis XIV's mother. Spanish procrastination led to a scheme in which France's prime minister, Cardinal Mazarin, pretended to seek a marriage for his master with Margaret Yolande of Savoy. When Philip IV of Spain heard of a meeting at Lyon between the Houses of France and Savoy in November 1658, he reputedly exclaimed of the Franco-Savoyard union that "it cannot be, and will not be". Philip then sent a special envoy to the French court to open negotiations for peace and a royal marriage.
caption: 1651–54
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