Anne of Austria (16 August 1573 – 10 February 1598) was Queen of Poland and Sweden as the first consort of King Sigismund III Vasa. Biography Anne was a daughter of Charles II of Austria and Maria Anna of Bavaria. She was the grandchild of Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor and Anne of Bohemia and Hungary (1503–1547). Her mother was an important supporter of the Counter-Reformation in Inner Austria, who gave her children an upbringing focused on Catholicism. The siblings were made to attend church from the age of one, their first words were to be Jesus and Mary, they were tutored by Catholic priests, and Latin was to be a priority before their native German language. As a child, Anna was called "Andle", and she was taught to translate Ribadeneyra's Vita Ignatii Loyolæ from Latin to German. Outside of Latin and Catholicism, she was mainly tutored in household tasks such as sewing and cooking. Marriage In 1577, the Papal envoy to Sweden, Possevino, suggested that the children of King John III of Sweden be married to children of the Habsburg dynasty. This was in a period when Sweden was close to a Counter-Reformation under John III and his Polish queen Catherine Jagiellon. The Pope gave his approval to the idea of a marriage alliance between Habsburg and Sweden in the persons of Anna and Sigismund, as did the Polish king and queen, and when visiting Graz in 1578, Possevino acquired a portrait of Anna to bring with him on his next visit to the Swedish court. Soon after, however, a new proposal was made to arrange a marriage between Anna and Henry of Lorraine to prevent French expansion in Lorraine, and for a while, these plans were given priority. In 1585, Anna accompanied her parents to the Imperial court in Vienna and Prague, unofficially to investigate a possible marriage to her cousin the Emperor, but those plans did not come to fruition either. In 1586-1587, when Prince Sigismund of Sweden was elected king of Poland, his maternal aunt, Queen Anna Jagiellon, resummed the old plans of a marriage between Sigismund and Anna. Anna's parents, however, still preferred the match with Henry of Lorraine, especially because of the political instability in Poland, the opposition of chancellor Jan Zamoisky and Archbishop Maximilian's desire for the Polish crown. In 1589, the Polish court opted for Maria Anna of Bavaria instead. In 1591,