Anne Gonzaga

Anna Gonzaga (Anna Marie; 1616 – 6 July 1684) was an Italian French noblewoman and salonist. The youngest daughter of Charles Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua and Montferrat, and Catherine de Mayenne (herself daughter of Charles, Duke of Mayenne), Anna was "Princess Palatine" as the wife of Edward of the Palatinate, a grandson of King James I of England and uncle to King George I of Great Britain. She bore Edward three children, all daughters. Had Anna not converted Edward to Catholicism, the English throne might have passed to their descendants. Family and early life Anna Marie de Gonzague was born in Paris into a cadet French branch of the ducal House of Gonzaga, which ruled Mantua in northern Italy. The Nevers branch later came to rule Mantua again after the War of the Mantuan Succession, triggered in part by her Parisian-born father's claim to the duchies of Mantua and Montferrat. With the promised support of the French crown, which naturally preferred a French peer to rule Mantua, Charles arrived there in January 1628 and proclaimed himself its sovereign. Although her name and patriline was Mantuan (Italian), Anna de Gonzague (sometimes "Anna Gonzague de Clèves-Nevers", as the granddaughter of Henriette of Cleves, Duchess of Nevers) was born and lived mainly in France. She probably remained in France even after her father's reclamation of the ancestral city of Mantua, considering the town was in ruin by 1630 (marred by war, plague and a brutal sacking by the Imperial army). Anna was the youngest of the Duke and Duchess of Mantua's six children. She had three brothers, including Charles II Gonzaga, and two sisters, the elder of whom became Queen Marie Louise Gonzaga of Poland. Her French mother, Catherine de Mayenne (who belonged to a junior branch of the royal House of Lorraine), died in 1618, when Anna was only about two years old. Originally her family planned for her to become a nun, but her father's death in 1637 relieved her of this obligation and thereafter Anna carried out an adventurous life.