Elisabeth of Valois

Born Elisabeth of Valois on 2 April 1546, she was a daughter of France in an age when royal children were treaty instruments. At fourteen she was married to Philip II of Spain as his third wife, a union that ended decades of Habsburg-Valois wars and bound two Catholic powers at the height of their reach. She lived as Queen of Spain in a court of formality and distance, far from the country of her birth. She died on 3 October 1568, twenty-two years old, having spent most of her brief adult life as a piece on Europe's chessboard.