However: the tendency of his siblings to die young, and the failure of his brother Charles to produce a legitimate heir, had made James the only hope for continuance of his mother's bloodline. While Mother had been living a good life in France, her sister-in-law, the Winter Queen, had been kicked around Europe like a stuffed pig's bladder at a county fair. Yet Elizabeth had pumped out babies with inhuman efficiency and Europe was bestrewn with her offspring. Many had come to naught, but her daughter Sophie seemed to have bred true, and was carrying on the tradition with seven surviving children. So, in the royal propagation sweepstakes, Henrietta Maria of France, the mother of James and Charles, seemed to be losing, in the long run, to the miserable Winter Queen. James was her only hope. And consequently, during James's various adventures she had used all of her wiles and connexions to keep him out of danger – leaving James with a simmering feeling of never having destroyed as many armies or sunk as many fleets as he could have.