Henry III of France (French: Henri III, né Alexandre Édouard; 19 September 1551 – 2 August 1589) was King of France from 1574 until his assassination in 1589 and, as Henry of Valois (Polish: Henryk Walezy; Lithuanian: Henrikas Valua), King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania from 1573 to 1575. Before he came to these thrones, he was known as the Duke of Angoulême and Duke of Orléans from 1560, then as Duke of Anjou from 1566.
As the fourth son of King Henry II of France and Queen Catherine de' Medici, he was not expected to inherit the French throne and thus was a good candidate for the vacant throne of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, where he was elected monarch in 1573. During his brief rule, he refused to sign the Henrician Articles into law, which would recognise the szlachta's right to freely elect their monarch. The Henrician Articles became, nonetheless, deeply rooted in Poland's politics as all his successors accepted them. Aged 22, Henry abandoned Poland–Lithuania upon inheriting the French throne when his brother, Charles IX of France, died without issue.
France was at the time plagued by the Wars of Religion, and Henry's authority was undermined by violent political factions funded by foreign powers: the Catholic League (supported by Spain and the Pope), the Protestant Huguenots (supported by England and the Dutch) and the Malcontents (led by Henry's own brother Francis, Duke of Anjou and Alençon, a party of Catholic and Protestant aristocrats who jointly opposed the absolutist ambitions of the king). Henry III was himself a politique, arguing that only a strong and centralised yet religiously tolerant monarchy would save France from collapse.
After the death of Henry's younger brother Francis, Duke of Anjou, and when it became apparent that Henry would not father an heir, the Wars of Religion developed into a dynastic war known as the War of the Three Henrys. Under Salic Law, Henry III's heir presumptive was his distant cousin, King Henry III of Navarre, a Protestant. The Catholic League, led by Henry I, Duke of Guise, demanded the exclusion of all Protestant heirs from the line of succession. They instead championed the Catholic Charles, Cardinal of Bourbon, as Henry III's heir presumptive.
Henry had the Duke of Guise murdered in 1588 and was in turn assassinated by Jacques Clément, a Catholic League fanatic, in 1589. He was succeeded by Henry of Navarre.
Henry was born at the royal Château de Fontainebleau, as Alexandre Édouard, duc de Angoulême, the fourth son of King Henry II and Catherine de' Medici. He was a grandson of Francis I of France and Claude of France. His older brothers were Francis II of France, Charles IX of France, and Louis of Valois. He was made Duke of Angoulême and Duke of Orléans in 1560, then Duke of Anjou in 1566.
He was his mother's favourite; she called him chers yeux ("precious eyes") and lavished fondness and affection upon him for most of his life. His elder brother, Charles, grew to detest him, partially because he resented his better health.
The royal children were raised under the supervision of Diane de Poitiers, his father's mistress.
Although he was skilled and fond of fencing, he preferred to indulge his tastes for the arts and reading. These predilections were attributed to his Italian mother. Henry's favourite interests were hunting and riding.
At one point in his youth, Henry showed a tendency towards Protestantism as a means of rebelling. At the age of nine, he called himself "a little Huguenot", attended Mass only to please his mother, sang Protestant psalms to his sister Margaret (exhorting her all the while to change her religion and cast her Book of Hours into the fire), and even bit the nose off a statue of Saint Paul. His mother firmly cautioned him against such behaviour, and he would never again show any Protestant tendencies. Instead, he became staunchly Catholic.
In the factional dispute that engulfed France in the wake of Henry II's death in 1559, Henry was solicited by Henry, son of Francis, Duke of Guise, at the behest of Jacques, Duke of Nemours, to run away from court to be a figurehead for the ultra-Catholics. However, the plot was uncovered before any action could be taken.
Henry was known as a flâneur, who relished leisurely strolls through Paris and partook in the sociability in the busiest of neighbourhoods. He revelled in fairs, music, bilboquet and court masques. His extravagance in court entertainments cut him off from the common people. He was also a devout Catholic who introduced pious reforms into the city and he encouraged the French church to follow the edicts of the Council of Trent.
Reports that Henry engaged in same-sex relations with his court favourites, known as the mignons, date back to his own time. He was known to have enjoyed intense relationships with them. The scholar Louis Crompton maintains that all of the contemporary rumours about Henry were true. However, some modern historians have disputed this: Jean-Francois Solnon, Nicolas Le Roux, and Jacqueline Boucher have noted that Henry had many famous mistresses, that he was well known for his taste in beautiful women, and that no male sex partners have been identified. They concluded that the idea he was homosexual was promoted by his political opponents (both Protestant and Catholic) who used his dislike of war to depict him as effeminate and undermine his reputation with the French people. The portrait of a self-indulgent homosexual incapable of fathering an heir to the throne proved useful in efforts by the Catholic League to secure the succession for Cardinal Charles de Bourbon after 1585. Robert Knecht maintained that the mignons themselves were "not homosexuals" either, "as is often assumed. Far from being effeminate, they were skilful swordsmen, who risked their lives in duels."
However, French Renaissance scholar Gary Ferguson considers such interpretations to be unconvincing: "It is difficult to reconcile the king whose use of favourites is so logically strategic with the man who goes to pieces when one of them dies." Katherine Crawford, by contrast, emphasises the problems Henry's reputation encountered because of his failure to produce an heir and the presence of his powerful mother at court, combined with his enemies' insistence on conflating patronage with favouritism and luxury with decadence.
Additionally, Robert Knecht remarks that Henry's "mignons" came from ancient and noble families from the French provinces who had served the French crown since the late XVth century - "Their elevation was part of a royal strategy aimed at strengthening the networks of fidélité over which their parents presided". The mignons were military commanders and were expected to raise troops in their provinces for the king if requested. Henry used his pool of minions to quickly fill newly opened important posts as they became available and thus reduce the influence of the Guises and their faction at the court. Marguerite de Navarre wrote in her memoirs that Henry poached several members of the household of his brother, duc d'Alençon, targeting those who came from the most important families. Henry attempted to further consolidate these networks by arranging marriages for his mignons. For example, one of his earliest mignons, Henri de Saint-Sulpice, belonged to an important family of Upper-Quercy, in the southwestern France. In 1576, he married Catherine de Carmaing, a wealthy heiress whose family controlled neighboring Languedoc and Lauragais, following arrangements by the king. The minions were thus a critical component in Henry's attempts to create "a nobility tied exclusively to his person and capable of serving him far beyond the court". The concept of mignon only acquired pejorative connotations in mid-sixteenth century when the Valois were replaced by the Bourbon dynasty.
In 1570, discussions commenced arranging for Henry to court Queen Elizabeth I of England. Elizabeth, almost 37, was expected by many parties in her country to marry and produce an heir. However, nothing came of these discussions. In initiating them, Elizabeth is viewed by historians as having intended only to arouse the concern of Spain, rather than contemplate marriage seriously. Henry's mother felt the chance of marriage despite differing religious views (Henry was Catholic, Elizabeth Protestant) simply required personal sacrifice. Henry tactlessly referred to Elizabeth as a putain publique ("public whore") and made ridiculous remarks about their difference in age (he was 18 years younger at a time when such large age differences between spouses were not at all uncommon).