Francis II Dies, Catherine Becomes Regent

December 5, 1560

The sickly young Francis II of France died of an ear infection, leaving his widow, Mary Queen of Scots, a childless dowager queen and his mother, Catherine de Medici, regent for her ten-year-old brother Charles IX. Catherine would steer France through decades of civil war with relentless cunning. Catherine's emergence as France's dominant political figure made her perhaps sixteenth-century Europe's most powerful woman.