Mariana of Austria

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Mariana or Marie-Anne of Austria (Vienna, 23 December 1634 - Madrid, 16 may 1696), daughter of Habsburg Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand III and Infanta Maria Ana of Spain, was the second wife of her maternal uncle Philip IV of Spain.

Mariana was born on 23 December 1634 in Vienna at the court of her paternal grandfather Ferdinand II. Her father, who would become Emperor in 1637, was as yet only the King of Hungary and Bohemia, and was away for most of his wife's pregnancy campaigning in the Thirty Years' War.

Mariana was a younger sister of Ferdinand IV of Hungary and an older sister of Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor

As a child, she was engaged to her Spanish Habsburg first cousin Baltasar Carlos, Prince of Asturias, but when he died at 16 in 1646, Philip IV was left without a male heir and Marie-Anne without a fiancé. In 1649 he married his 14 year old niece himself.

Philip and Mariana had two children who survived to adulthood:

Margaret of Spain (12 July, 1651 - 12 March, 1673). Married her maternal uncle Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor.
Charles II of Spain (6 November, 1661 - 1 November, 1700). Nicknamed the Bewitched, the last Spanish Habsburg king.

When Philip died on 17 September 1665, their only surviving son, Charles II of Spain, was only 3 years old, and Mariana served as Regent until 1675 and remained, except for a brief period, in charge of the Spanish government until her death in 1696. In 1668, a voyage led by Jesuit missionary San Vitores named the Mariana Islands in the North Pacific after the queen regent.

Charles, at most times unable to walk or speak, needed a regent more than most child kings, and was carried as an infant in arms until he was 10. Mariana served as his regent for much of his life, except when she was successfully driven from Madrid by John of Austria the Younger, an illegitimate son of Philip IV, in 1678 in a palace revolution, due to widespread court dissatisfaction with her support of favorite Fernando de Valenzuela. She returned upon John's death in 1679, not technically regent due to Charles' age, but retaining power over the government until her death in Madrid in 1696.

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