Françoise d'Aubigné, Marquise de Maintenon was a mistress and second wife of Louis XIV.
Background
Françoise d'Aubigné was born on November 27, 1635, but her place of birth is under speculation. A plaque suggests her birthplace was at the Hotel du Chaumont in Niort, in western France. Some sources indicate she may have been born in or just outside the prison at Niort because her father, the Huguenot Constant d'Aubigné, was incarcerated there for conspiring against Cardinal Richelieu.
On his release, the family moved to Martinique (1639) but returned to France after the death of her father in 1645. A granddaughter of Théodore Agrippa d'Aubigné, the Protestant poet and friend of Henry IV, Françoise was raised in the Protestant faith, but later was put by a relative in a Catholic convent in Paris, where she was finally converted to Catholicism.
Career
she frequented the literary circles of Paris and eventually was placed in charge of the education of the illegitimate children of Louis XIV.
She exerted great influence on Louis XIV, and the religious intolerance of his later years is attributed especially to her reactionary mentality.
A school that she had founded for poor girls of noble families was transformed in 1686 into the institution of St. Cyr, which eventually became a convent (1694). For this institution Jean Racine wrote his Esther (1689) and his Athalie (1691).
After the death of the king (1715) the marquise retired to St. Cyr, where she died. She left many documents relating to St. Cyr and a great bulk of letters, which were translated and published in England in 1754.
Achievements
She was very influential at court. She founded the Maison royale de Saint-Louis, a school for girls from poorer noble families, in 1684.
Personality
She had reactionary mentality.
Connections
Left penniless after the death of her mother (1650), she was taken care of by the comic poet Paul Scarron, a cripple, whom she married in 1652.
Queen Marie Thérèse died in 1683, and the marquise (ennobled in 1678) was privately wed to the king Louis XIV less than two years later.
