Louis XII (27 June 1462 – 1 January 1515), called "the Father of the People" (French: Le Père du Peuple), was king of France and the sole monarch from the Valois-Orléans branch of the House of Valois. He reigned from 1498 to 1515 and pursued a very active foreign policy.

Louis was born on 27 June 1462, in the Château de Blois, Blois, Touraine (in the contemporary Loir-et-Cher département). The son of Charles, duc d'Orléans and Marie of Cleves, he succeeded his father as Duke of Orléans in the year 1465.

In the 1480s Louis was involved in the so-called Mad War against royal authority. Allied with Francis II, Duke of Brittany he confronted the royal army at the Battle of Saint-Aubin-du-Cormier, but was defeated and captured. Pardoned three years later, Louis joined his cousin King Charles VIII in campaigns in Italy.

All four of Charles VIII's children died in infancy. The French interpretation of the Salic Law permitted claims to the French throne only by male agnatic descendants of French kings. This made Louis, the great-grandson of King Charles V, the most senior claimant as heir of Charles VIII. Louis thus succeeded to the throne on the king's death.

France (English ⁱ/ˈfræns/ FRANSS or /ˈfrɑːns/ FRAHNSS; French: [fʁɑ̃s] ( listen)), officially the French Republic (French: République française [ʁepyblik fʁɑ̃sɛz]), is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean. It is often referred to as l’Hexagone ("The Hexagon") because of the geometric shape of its territory. It is the largest western European country and it possesses the second-largest exclusive economic zone in the world, covering 11,035,000 km² (4,260,000 sq mi), just behind that of the United States (11,351,000 km² / 4,383,000 sq mi).

Over the past 500 years, France has been a major power with strong cultural, economic, military and political influence in Europe and around the world. During the 17th and 18th centuries, France colonised great parts of North America and Southeast Asia; during the 19th and early 20th centuries, France built the second largest colonial empire of the time, including large portions of North, West and Central Africa, Southeast Asia, and many Caribbean and Pacific Islands.

Mary Tudor (18 March 1496 - 25 June 1533) was the younger sister of King Henry VIII of England and queen consort of France through her marriage to Louis XII. The latter was more than 30 years her senior. Following his death, which occurred less than two months after her coronation as his third wife, she married Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk. The marriage, which was performed secretly in France, took place without her brother Henry's consent. This necessitated the intervention of Thomas Wolsey and the couple were eventually pardoned by King Henry, although they were forced to pay a large fine.

Mary's second marriage produced four children; and through her eldest daughter Frances, Mary was the maternal grandmother of Lady Jane Grey, who was the de facto monarch of England for a little over a week in July 1553.

Mary was the fifth child of Henry VII of England and Elizabeth of York, and the youngest to survive infancy. She was born at Richmond Palace. She and her brother, Henry, were close as children—he named his daughter, the future Queen Mary I, after her.

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (Italian pronunciation: [leoˈnardo da ˈvintʃi]  pronunciation (help·info); April 15, 1452 – May 2, 1519, Old Style) was an Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist, and writer whose genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal. Leonardo has often been described as the archetype of the Renaissance Man, a man of "unquenchable curiosity" and "feverishly inventive imagination". He is widely considered to be one of the greatest painters of all time and perhaps the most diversely talented person ever to have lived. According to art historian Helen Gardner, the scope and depth of his interests were without precedent and "his mind and personality seem to us superhuman, the man himself mysterious and remote". Marco Rosci points out, however, that while there is much speculation about Leonardo, his vision of the world is essentially logical rather than mysterious, and that the empirical methods he employed were unusual for his time.

Johannes Ghiselin (Verbonnet) (fl. 1491–1507) was a Flemish composer of the Renaissance, active in France, Italy and in the Low Countries. He was a contemporary of Josquin des Prez, and a significant composer of masses, motets, and secular music. His reputation was considerable, as shown by music printer Ottaviano Petrucci's decision to print a complete book of his masses immediately after his similar publication of masses by Josquin – only the second such publication in music history.

Little is known about his early life, but it can be inferred that he was from the south Netherlands, from archival mentions of him as being "da Piccardia" and "fiamengo". He may have been associated with the Burgundian chapel in the 1470s during the time of Charles the Bold, since he composed Je lay empris for him; however, no documentary record of his having been there has yet been found.

The first direct record of Ghiselin is in 1491, when he was in Ferrara. Isabella d'Este sent him to France to get some singers for the Este chapel that same year. In 1492 and 1493 he was a singer in Florence, and it is possible that he went to France and/or the Low Countries immediately after that. Since he is listed in Jean Crétin's poem (1497) on the death of Ockeghem along with other students of that famous composer, it has been inferred that he may have studied with Ockeghem, although if so, it is not known if this occurred before coming to Italy or during the mid-1490s.