Wow, now I'm beginning to feel like the only person in the world to actually LIKE Henrietta Maria. I really don't think she was as horrible as her enemies paint her to be. She didn't combine the worst qualities of Anne Boleyn and Marie Antoinette- she was no "flaunting extravagant quean." She had enough smarts to keep her head on her shoulders- she was tough, fiesty, fiercely loyal, and of course stylish. Of course, she was a difficult, flawed individual, but I feel that she's used as a convenient scapegoat for her husband's foolishness. (Charles, I think, didn't need any help digging his own grave- and as Alison Plowden points out, Henrietta's influence ocer her husband was often grossly overrated.) I still haven't found a satisfactory bio about her- the Plowden book was all right but hardly as satisfying as the Gristwood bio about Arbella Stuart and John Guy's "My Heart is My Own: the life of Mary Queen of Scots."