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| 16TH-CENTURY QUEENSHISTORY84 February 2017Margaret of Austria
(1480 – 1530)The child of Mary of Burgundy (ruling duchess of what
would later be known as the Netherlands) and future
Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian, Margaret was,
while still a toddler, contracted to the French king-to-be
Charles VIII. When that alliance fell through, she married
Juan, heir of Isabella and Ferdinand, and then, after
his early death, the Duke of Savoy. After he died she
returned to the Netherlands where, for many years she
ruled as regent on behalf of her nephew, the future
emperor Charles V. She raised four of his sisters, all
of whom became queens consort – of France, Portugal,
Denmark and Hungary. Mary of Hungary succeeded
her aunt as regent of the Netherlands and raised another
generation of influential nieces. Though Margaret of
Austria never bore a living child, she has been called
the Grand Mère – ‘Great Mother’ – of Europe.DAUGHTER-IN-LAWMary I (1516 – 58)
Catherine of Aragon inculcated in her daughter Mary
her own belief in the validity of her marriage to Henry
VIII, and her own resolute Catholicism. “We never come
unto the kingdom of Heaven but by troubles,” she
assured her daughter. Mary’s determined resistance
to her father’s religious reforms was attributed to her
“unbridled Spanish blood.” She endured years of real
hardship before, in 1553, the death of her younger
brother Edward (and a passage of armed resistance
reminiscent of her female forebears) brought her to
the throne. Once on it, as observers noted, she always
favoured Spain and promoted her mother’s religion.
She married Philip of Spain and her efforts to restore
the Catholic faith, involving the persecution of
Protestants, earned her the sobriquet ‘Bloody Mary’.The power grid
A web of family and influence linked top noblewomen
Catherine of Aragon
(1485 – 1536)Catherine was defined by Spanish heritage. Henry VII of
England sought the valuable Spanish alliance by
wedding her to his eldest son, Arthur; after Arthur’s early
death, she married his younger brother, Henry VIII.
As regent in 1513, “in imitation of her mother Isabella”,
she rallied English troops to resist a Scottish assault. But,
as daughter to a successful queen regnant, she was
poorly placed to understand her husband’s
obsessive desire for a son. When her marriage
was rent by Henry’s infatuation with her former
protégé Anne Boleyn, Catherine still, after
almost 30 years in England, described herself
as a stranger in the land, appealing for help to
her former sister-in-law Margaret of Austria.Isabella I of Castile (1451 – 1504)
Before she even took the throne, Isabella broke with
tradition by arranging her own marriage to Ferdinand of
Aragon, uniting the two main Spanish kingdoms. They
ruled together as the mighty Catholic Monarchs,
famous for their expulsion of the Moors and Jews, for
establishing the Inquisition in Spain, and for their
sponsorship of Christopher Columbus. Ferdinand
and Isabella produced only one short-lived son but
several influential daughters – among them
Catherine of Aragon who, in 1509, married
England’s king Henry VIII.Anne Boleyn (c1501 – 36)
In 1513, Anne came to the court of Margaret of Austria as one of
her maids, before spending seven years at the French court.
This continental education gave her a glamour that made
her a star when she returned to England. But it also
gave her the opportunity to witness the religious
reforms promoted by Marguerite of Navarre, and to
see women exercising power in a way still unfamiliar
in England. Before her marriage to Henry, Anne – as
an active promoter of French interests – was seen as
a useful alternative to the Habsburg Catherine.
But, a few years later, when a Habsburg
alliance was desirable, that French
identification contributed to her fall.HALF-SISTERSDAUGHTERDAUGHTERDAUGHTER
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