Henrietta Maria, also Henriette Marie (1609–1669), queen of England, Scotland and Ireland, consort of Charles I and mother to Charles II and James II/VII, was the youngest child of Henri IV, king of France and Navarre, and Marie de’ Medici. As a French Catholic Bourbon princess, Henrietta Maria’s marriage to a Protestant king was one of the first royal cross-confessional marriages in post-Reformation Europe, introducing into the English court the hopes of religious toleration for English Catholics and ultimately the conversion of England to Catholicism. She played a key role in shaping the theatrical patronage of drama at her courts in England and in France, as well as in her cultural display of royal power. Henrietta Maria’s reputation during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms and their aftermath as a malignant Catholic advisor, first to her husband, Charles I, and then to her son, Charles II, has obscured the important role that she played in British and continental politics from the time of her marriage in 1625 until her death in 1669.