After Henry II and Catherine de' Medici were married, several years passed without the birth of any children. Though various remedies were tried, none proved to be effective. According to court sources, the royal couple then turned to the court physician Fernel for help in conceiving.
Louis was born on 3 February 1549 at the Palace of Fontainebleau, the couple's second son and fourth child. From birth he was second in line to the throne and endowed with the duchy of
Diane de Poitiers
Diane de Poitiers (9 January 1500 – 25 April 1566) was a French noblewoman and prominent courtier. She wielded much power and influence as King Henry II's royal mistress and adviser until his death. Her position increased her wealth and famil ...
,Frieda, Leonie, "Catherine de Medici", Orion Books, London, 2005 and reportedly shared the same nursery with his brother and sister Francis and Elisabeth, and later with his brother Charles. Louis was present when five-year-old
Mary, Queen of Scots
Mary, Queen of Scots (8 December 1542 – 8 February 1587), also known as Mary Stuart or Mary I of Scotland, was Queen of Scotland from 14 December 1542 until her forced abdication in 1567.
The only surviving legitimate child of James V of S ...
arrived at Henry II's court to be raised as the intended bride and queen of Francis, the future king of France and king consort of Scots. There are reports that Henry II and Catherine planned for Louis to one day become the
Duke of Urbino
The Duchy of Urbino was an independent duchy in early modern central Italy, corresponding to the northern half of the modern region of Marche. It was directly annexed by the Papal States in 1625.
It was bordered by the Adriatic Sea in the east ...
, a title which belonged exclusively to the
Medici
The House of Medici ( , ) was an Italian banking family and political dynasty that first began to gather prominence under Cosimo de' Medici, in the Republic of Florence during the first half of the 15th century. The family originated in the Mu ...
family.
Death
Freer's account
Martha Walker Freer gives the year of Louis's death as 1549.
According to Freer, the infant Duke of Orléans was given a christening of "extraordinary splendour" in
St. Germain-en-Laye
Saint-Germain-en-Laye () is a commune in the Yvelines department in the Île-de-France in north-central France. It is located in the western suburbs of Paris, from the centre of Paris.
Inhabitants are called ''Saint-Germanois'' or ''Saint-Ge ...
in 1549. However, a few days after the ceremony, Louis died from the effects of a chill caught while being handed from one state functionary to another.Freer, p. 4
He is briefly mentioned in the novel ''Madame Serpent'' and ''The Captive Queen'', both by
Jean Plaidy
Eleanor Alice Hibbert (née Burford; 1 September 1906 – 18 January 1993) was an English writer of historical romances. She was a prolific writer who published several books a year in different literary genres, each genre under a different pen ...
.
Ancestors
Sources
*Livre d’Heures de Catherine de Medicis 1556. Reproduced by kind permission of Bibliothèque Nationale Paris, Département de Manuscrits, B.N. n.a.l. 82) (nouvelles acquisitions latines).
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