Today's Princess: Maria Caterina Farnese

By Matteo Loves via Wikimedia Commons

Maria Caterina Farnese (1615-1646) was an Italian noblewoman who married the powerful Duke of Modena.

The first daughter of the Duke of Parma, she married Francesco I d'Este of Modena when she was just 16 years old. Her new territory had recently been ravaged by a pestilence that killed 70% of the population. This tragedy did not dampen her husband's ambitions; in the Thirty Years War, he cast his lot with Spain, and invaded his wife's homeland of Parma.

Meanwhile, Maria Caterina was busy doing her wifely duty. In 15 years, she delivered nine children, the last of which killed her. A year and a half later, her widower married her younger sister, Vittoria.

Today's Princess: Blanche of Artois

Marie Henri d'Arbois de Jubainville via Wikimedia Commons

History has often overlooked the key role that women have played in politics. Blanche of Artois (1248-1302) is a great example. Her very existence was a statement about the intermingling political atmosphere of the day. She was a descendant of the great kingdoms: France, Castile, England, the Holy Roman Empire and even the Byzantine Empire. Although her father, the French Prince Robert Count of Artois died on Crusade when she was a toddler, her familial ties made her an ideal bride for King Henry I of Navarre, whose territory was wedged between the Spanish kingdoms and France.

The couple had two children together, a son probably named Theobald and a daughter named Jeanne. Their son died tragically when his nurse dropped him from the battlements of the family's castle at Estella. Baby Jeanne was about a year old when King Henry died, which left her as Queen and Blanche as her regent. That did not stop her from remarrying two years later into one of the most powerful houses of the day, when she married Edmund Earl of Lancaster, the second son of King Henry III of England and his Queen Eleanor of Provence (read about her in Cinderella Sisters Part 2).

From there, she negotiated the marriage of her daughter to her cousin Philip IV of France, starting an on-and-off personal union between France and Navarre that would continue until Navarre finally became part of France a few centuries later.

With Edmund, she had four children and started the House of Lancaster that would eventually fight their cousins the Yorks in the Wars of the Roses. Within a few generations, her descendants would sit on the thrones of France, England, Portugal, Aragon, and Scotland.

For more about Blanche:
Blanche of Artois, Queen of Navarre on Edward II

An Imperial Lady Among the Dutch

By Jean-Baptiste Van der Hulst via Wikimedia Commons

A Russian imperial grand duchess does not always make a perfect foreign consort. Like other Russian highnesses, her high rank and preference for rigid court ceremony and classism made it difficult for Grand Duchess Anna Pavlovna (1795-1865) to adjust to life in her husband's far more democratic nation.

A granddaughter of Catherine the Great, Anna was not forced into marriage. Earlier proposals from the new self-proclaimed Emperor Napoleon and the Catholic Bourbon Prince Charles Ferdinand Duke of Berry were rejected for her, but when the ongoing Napoleonic wars made allies out of Russia and Holland, her brother, Emperor Alexander, let her choose whether to marry the heir of his new friend in The Netherlands. Prince William of Orange came to Russia and Anna agreed to the match. It might have been better for her if they had met on his territory. She might have made a different decision since the more liberal society and less-ornate court life of her husband's country caused her to suffer from culture shock. Likewise, her new subjects did not exactly warm up to her snobby manner, despite her extensive support of charity projects.

At home, life with William was also turbulent. A serial cheater and a terrible gambler, William was hardly an ideal partner. In fact, when her jewels went missing, she suspected he might have taken them to pay his debts. Nevertheless, they had four sons and a daughter together.

William's relatively early death left her a debt-ridden dowager at age 54. To make matters worse, she did not get along with her eldest son, the new King William III and his wife. To get by, she was forced to sell off some of her Russian property and to sell much of her husband's art collection of Dutch masters to her brother Emperor Nicholas I. Those Rembrandts are still in The Hermitage in St. Petersburg.

Nevertheless, Anna left a lasting impression on The Netherlands where the municipality of Anna Paulowna is named for her and a genus of trees (Empress Tree, Princess Tree and Foxglove Tree) was named Paulownia tomentosa in her honor. She is also the great-great grandmother of today's Dutch King Willem Alexander.

For more about Anna:
The Hot-Tempered Anna Pavlovna of Russia on A Covent Garden Gilflurt's Guide to Life
Grand Duchess Anna Pavlovna of Russia, Queen of the Netherlands on Arrayed in Gold