Anne of Austria (16 August 1573 – 10 February 1598) was Queen of Poland and Sweden and a Grand Duchess of Lithuania as the first consort of King Sigismund III Vasa.
Biography
Anne was a daughter of Charles II of Austria and Maria Anna of Bavaria. She was the grandchild of Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor and Anna of Bohemia and Hungary (1503–1547).
Her mother was an important supporter of the Counter-Reformation in Inner Austria who gave her children an upbringing focused on Catholicism. The siblings were made to attend church from the age of one, their first words were to be Jesus and Mary, they were tutored by Catholic priests, and Latin was to be a priority before their native German language. As a child, Anna was called "Andle", and she was taught to translate Pedro de Ribadeneira's Vita Ignatii Loyolæ from Latin to German. Outside of Latin and Catholicism, she was mainly tutored in household tasks such as sewing and cooking.
Marriage
In 1577, the Papal envoy to Sweden, Antonio Possevino, suggested that the children of King John III of Sweden be married to children of the Habsburg dynasty. This was in a period when Sweden was close to a Counter-Reformation under John III and his Polish queen and Lithuanian duchess Catherine Jagiellon. The Pope gave his approval to the idea of a marriage alliance between the Habsburgs and Sweden in the persons of Anna and Sigismund, as did the Polish king and queen, and when visiting Graz in 1578, Possevino acquired a portrait of Anna to bring with him on his next visit to the Swedish court. Sigismund III then married her sister Constance Habsburg.
Issue
Anna had five children, but only Władysław lived to become an adult:
- Anna Maria (23 May 1593 – 9 February 1600)
- Catherine (19 April 1594 – 16 May 1594)
- Władysław (9 June 1595 – 20 May 1648), (reigned 1632-1648 as Władysław IV of Poland and Lithuania)
- Catherine (27 September 1596 – 2 June 1597)
- Christopher (10 February 1598 – 10 February 1598), born posthumously