Anna, Queen of Spain, passed away on 26 October 1580. She was the daughter of Emperor Maximilian II and Maria of Spain. As first cousins, her parents’ marriage had been intended to strengthen the ties between the Austrian and Spanish Habsburgs.
So was Anna’s own marriage when she wed her maternal uncle, King Philip II of Spain, twenty-two years her senior. For Philip, his youthful niece was his fourth wife, who finally gave him the long-desired heir and successor, the future Philip III of Spain. True, four of their other children died in infancy, most likely affected by their parents’ close kinship. However, Anna was said to have been a loving stepmother to the two young Infantas, the daughters from her husband’s third marriage to Elisabeth of Valois.
In October 1580, Philip fell ill with influenza, and Anna, in the early stage of her fifth pregnancy, cared for him devotedly. Unfortunately, she contracted the illness herself. The court physicians attempted to cure her with repeated bloodletting — the universal treatment for most diseases in those times. As a result of this ignorant butchery, the poor Queen miscarried and, exhausted, died a week before her thirty-first birthday.
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