Louise de La Fayette

Louise Angélique Motier de la Fayette (8 November 1618 – 11 January 1665) was a French courtier and close friend and confidant of King Louis XIII. She later left the court and entered a convent. She was known for her influence upon the monarch both before and after she left the court.

Louise was one of the fourteen children of Jean comte de La Fayette, and Marguerite de Bourbon-Busset. She was born in Amathay-Vésigneux. Her mother was a member of House Bourbon-Busset an illegitimate branch of the royal House of Bourbon. Her sister-in-law was Madame de La Fayette (1634–1693) the author of La Princesse de Clèves, France's first historical novel and one of the earliest novels in literature.

Through her grandmother, Louise de Bourbon-Busset, she came to the French court to Paris, and became maid-of-honor to Anne of Austria. In 1635 Cardinal Richelieu sought to attract the attention of Louis XIII to her in the hope that she might counterbalance the influence exercised over him by Marie de Hautefort.

However,

[t]he hedonism and promiscuity of many courtiers repelled [Louis XIII] and attempts to provide him with a mistress failed lamentably.

The affair did not turn out as the minister wished. The King was attracted to Louise because of her innocence and purity, and he did indeed make her the confidante of his affairs. But when he divulged to her his resentment for the Cardinal, she, far from repeating Louis's confidences to the minister, set herself to encourage the King in his resistance to Richelieu's dominion.

She refused, nevertheless, to become Louis's mistress, and after taking leave of the King in Anne of Austria's presence, retired to the convent of the Order of the Visitation of Holy Mary in 1637.

...
Wikipedia