Almost 23 years after the double wedding of the two brothers with two sisters, the first child was born to Louis XIII and Anne of Austria.* He was named Louis, like his father. Five days later, Philip IV of Spain and his wife Elisabeth of France had a daughter they named Marie-Thérèse.
Twenty one years later the two cousins married. Neither of the French siblings lived to see their children wed.
Louis XIII died before his son’s fifth birthday. His sister Elisabeth died the following year. Anne of Austria never remarried. Her brother Philip followed in the footsteps of his grandfather and married his niece.
It appeared that Marie-Thérèse was going to have more luck than her mother and mother-in-law when she gave birth to a healthy baby boy the year after the wedding. He was named Louis after his father. Five more children did not survive.
*It appears that Anne had several early stage miscarriages. She gave birth to her first child Louis at the age of 37, followed two years later by another son Philip. Both sons lived to a ripe old age. Anne’s sister-in-law Elisabeth gave birth to eight children, and had a number of miscarriages. She died giving birth to a stillborn ninth child. Elisabeth was survived by only two children—Marie-Thérèse and her brother Baltasar, who died at seventeen.
