Margaret of Austria - Unlucky in Love
Margaret of Austria
Margaret was the only daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor, Archduke Maximilian of Austria. Her mother died when she was two.
In a deal struck between her father and Louis XI, when she was three, Margaret married the Dauphin Charles in the Chapel Royal in Château Amboise. During this very grand royal occasion, Charles, eleven, placed a wedding ring upon her tiny finger.
They delighted in each other’s company. Margaret, who hero worshipped Charles, had an idyllic childhood in the royal nursery. She was treated as a queen with all the honours due to her rank. She played with dolls, performed official duties, was dressed appropriately. Taught drawing, painting, singing, the lute, dancing and embroidery, she was engulfed in love and affection until the day the Court stopped treating her as their future queen. Unable to meet her eyes, she was inexplicably snubbed.
She was told that Charles had married Anne of Brittany in secret. Anne was, politically speaking, a better deal. The union brought Brittany into the fold of France.
Overnight Margaret’s whole world collapsed. She lost her high status and childhood sweetheart. She never forgave Charles. Margaret loved Amboise. It was her home. The only one she had ever known. Confused and hurt, the thirteen-year old had a hatred of France to her dying day.
Had she married Charles she would have been a widow at nineteen. He died when he was twenty-eight. What were Margaret’s feelings when she heard the news? Glad? Sad? Indifferent?
Margaret went back to her father. He too had been dumped. He was engaged to marry Anne. Because neither union had been consummated they were not valid. Both were publicly humiliated. To get his own back, Maximilian formed a strong alliance with Ferdinand of Aragon against France. Margaret’s brother married Ferdinand’s daughter. Margaret married his son and heir, Prince Juan.
Margaret headed for Santander to meet her new husband. It was love at first sight. They became devoted to each other. Two years later, on their way to attend the wedding of his sister in Portugal, Juan became unwell. Margaret sent for his father.
Juan died of tuberculosis. He was not yet nineteen.
Two months later, Margaret, a widow at seventeen, gave birth to a stillborn girl, the only child Margaret would ever bear.
Once again she returned to live with her father who started the hunt for a new husband*. In the end he chose Duke Philibert of Savoy nicknamed ‘the Handsome'.
For the third time in her life, Margaret, now twenty-one, left home to travel through France to meet an unknown husband. They liked each other on sight but once again disaster struck. In 1504 Philibert died of pleurisy.
For the third time in her life Margaret was overcome with grief. Widowed again at twenty-four, suicidal, she jumped from a window, but survived. After six days she was finally persuaded to bury her husband. She had his heart embalmed and kept it until she died. She wore widows weeds the rest of her life.
No more marriages for Margaret. Instead was a glittering career. Her father, needing a Regent for the Netherlands appointed her Governor General. She was born for the role. A gifted diplomat, Margaret’s natural aptitude for business made the Netherlands prosperous. She established a fabulous Court from where she governed for the next twenty three years until she died.
Did Margaret get her own back on the House of Valois? She did. Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, nor Hell a fury like a woman scorned**.
The most sought after title in Europe was that of Holy Roman Emperor. Margaret played a decisive part in the election of her nephew Charles V and in the humiliating defeat of Francis I. He was, to use modern parlance, gutted.
Margaret also provided unlimited funds for the ensuing wars between the two men in which France usually came off worst.
On 15 November 1530, Margaret stepped on a splinter of broken glass. Gangrene set in. The leg would have to be amputated. On the 30th doctors gave her opium to lessen the pain but the dose was so strong she died. She was fifty.
* Margaret would not have been any luckier in love had her father chosen any of the other candidates. Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, who murdered his nephew, died in Loches prison. James IV of Scotland died in the Battle of Flodden. Arthur Tudor, Prince of Wales, was a psychopath who beheaded two wives and divorced two others.
** The Mourning Bride William Congrève 1697.
Read more about The Ladies of Royal Château Amboise in Out of the Shadows by Pamela Shields.
Post by Pamela (BA History of Art). Artwork by Mark.
Out of the Shadows
The Ladies of Royal Château Amboise
