Mary Tudor, Queen of France

For not quite three months at the turn of 1514 and 1515, Mary Tudor was queen of France. The youngest surviving daughter of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York, she was born in March 1496 and grew up to be regarded as one of the handsomest princesses in Europe. She was long betrothed to Charles of Castile, the future Emperor Charles V, but that arrangement was abandoned in 1514 when her brother Henry VIII realigned England with France. In its place she was married to Louis XII of France, of the house of Valois, at Abbeville on 9 October 1514; she was eighteen, the king fifty-two.

Louis died on 1 January 1515, leaving Mary a childless dowager. Before the marriage she is reported to have extracted a promise from her brother that, having wed once for policy, she might choose her second husband herself. She acted on it swiftly: in Paris, within weeks of Louis's death, she secretly married Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, Henry VIII's close companion, who had been sent to escort her home. The unauthorised match angered the king, but the couple were pardoned after agreeing to a heavy financial settlement, and were publicly married again in England in May 1515.

In England Mary was known for the rest of her life as "the French Queen," taking precedence from her brief consortship. She and Suffolk divided their time between the court and their estates in Suffolk. Three of their children survived infancy: Henry, who died young, and two daughters, Frances and Eleanor. In her later years Mary was conspicuously cool toward Anne Boleyn and largely withdrew from court as her brother's first marriage dissolved. She died at Westhorpe Hall in Suffolk on 25 June 1533 and was buried at Bury St Edmunds.

Her line carried unexpected dynastic weight. Henry VIII's will placed the descendants of his younger sister ahead of those of his elder sister Margaret in the succession. Mary's daughter Frances Brandon married Henry Grey, and their daughter, Lady Jane Grey, was briefly proclaimed queen in 1553 on the strength of that descent — a fatal inheritance from the French Queen's second marriage.