As the fourth son of King Henry II of France , he was not expected to inherit the French throne and thus was a good candidate for the vacant throne of the Polish—Lithuanian Commonwealth , where he was elected monarch in During his brief rule, he signed the Henrician Articles into law, recognizing the szlachta 's right to freely elect their monarch.
Henry III was himself a politique , arguing that only a strong and centralised yet religiously tolerant monarchy would save France from collapse. After the death of Henry's younger brother Francis, Duke of Anjou , and when it became apparent that Henry would not father an heir, the Wars of Religion developed into a dynastic war known as the War of the Three Henrys. He was succeeded by the King of Navarre who, as Henry IV , assumed the throne of France as the first king of the House of Bourbon and eventually converted to Catholicism.
He was his mother's favourite; she called him chers yeux "precious eyes" and lavished fondness and affection upon him for most of his life. The royal children were raised under the supervision of Diane de Poitiers , his father's mistress. Although he was skilled and fond of fencing, he preferred to indulge his tastes for the arts and reading. These predilections were attributed to his Italian mother. Henry's favourite interests were hunting and riding.
At one point in his youth Henry showed a tendency towards Protestantism as a means of rebelling. At the age of nine, he called himself "a little Huguenot", [ 4 ] attended Mass only to please his mother, [ 5 ] sang Protestant psalms to his sister Margaret exhorting her all the while to change her religion and cast her Book of Hours into the fire , [ 6 ] and even bit the nose off a statue of Saint Paul.
His mother firmly cautioned him against such behaviour, and he would never again show any Protestant tendencies. Instead, he became staunchly Catholic. In the factional dispute that engulfed France in the wake of Henry II's death in , Henry was solicited by Henry, son of Francis, Duke of Guise , at the behest of Jacques, Duke of Nemours , to run away from court to be a figurehead for the ultra-Catholics.
