MASTERPIECE #2863

/// Marie tried, but can’t move from this spot
in her massive gown, heavy and hot.
But because it’s so wide
she’s secreted inside
a plush chair and her own chamber pot.

/// For a royal so tasteful and gracious,
full-sized crowns just seemed too ostentatious.
She preferred understated.
(True, her gown is inflated;
Marie’s hips required clothing that’s spacious).

/// You may think that her outfit is silly.
Twelve score fleur-de-lis, placed willy-nilly,
and embroidered with gold.
Silk and ermine enfold
this exemplar of gilding the lily.

/// In this portrait Marie’s overdressed.
Due to that, very few might have guessed
Europe’s most wealthy heiress.
when wed, living in Paris,
lost control of what she once possessed.

/// Marie to the French King, Henry, married.
(In great part to end debts Henry carried.)
She gave birth to his heir,
so she thought it not fair
that her goal to be crowned, Henry parried.

/// 1610. The political scene
changed for France, and Marie was crowned Queen
on the thirteenth of May.
But the very next day
Her King Henry was killed! (Unforeseen?)

/// Now son Louis is King, but he’s eight.
So Marie became Regent of state.
Seven years Marie ruled
(in her gowns all bejeweled),
’til a coup by her son. Such is fate!

/// Some in leadership ban all dissent.
“Be on my team, one hundred percent.”
But Marie’s garb implies
she might brook compromise.
She endorsed, it is clear, the Big Tent.

/// And so how was Marie’s life adjudged?
By the French, any praise was begrudged.
She would earn no medallion,
she was foreign, (Italian),
and King Henry’s death might have been “nudged.”