Françoise d'Aubigné, Marquise de Maintenon

Born into a ruined noble family in 1635, Françoise d'Aubigné married the poet Paul Scarron at sixteen, a union that opened the doors of Parisian society but left her widowed and uncertain by 1660. Her friendship with Madame de Montespan, the king's mistress, brought her into Louis XIV's orbit as governess to his illegitimate children; when he legitimised them she became royal governess, and in 1675 he made her Marquise de Maintenon. By the late 1670s she had displaced Montespan in the king's affections. After Queen Maria Theresa died in 1683, Louis married her in secret - a union that gave her no crown but made her the second most powerful figure in France. Her piety reshaped the king's faith and ended his public philandering; in 1686 she founded the Maison royale de Saint-Louis, a school for impoverished noblewomen that reshaped female education under the Ancien Régime. When Louis died in 1715, she withdrew to Saint-Cyr and lived there until her own death four years later at eighty-three.