My Trastamara’s Girl - Part FourAs her mother, Juanna had 4 daughters, all queens! Eleonor

My Trastamara’s Girl - Part Four

As her mother, Juanna had 4 daughters, all queens!

Eleonor of Austria

Eleanor was the eldest child of Philip of Austria and Juanna of Castile, and was an Archduchess of Austria and Infanta of Castile from the House of Habsburg, and subsequently became Queen consort of Portugal as the wife of Manuel I of Portugal (1518–1521) and of France as the wife of Francis I of France (1530–1547). She had only one daughter, Maria of Portugal, Duchess of Viseu. Maria was born on 1521 in Lisbon. In the same year, her father died and her step-brother John III became king. Shortly afterwards, Maria’s mother, the dowager queen Eleanor, returned to her brother’s court in Vienna, taking Maria with her.

In 1530, Eleanor married King Francis I of France and moved to France. Maria would not see her mother for nearly 28 years. Meanwhile, in 1525, Eleanor’s younger sister (Maria’s aunt) Catherine had married Maria’s step-brother John III of Portugal. At some point, Maria moved from Vienna to Lisbon. She was to live in Portugal, at the court of her step-brother and his family, for the rest of her life.

Maria died unmarried and childless.

Eleonor’s portrait was painted by Joos von Cleve when she already was queen of France, in 1530.

Isabella of Austria

Isabella of Austria was an archduchess of Austria and infanta of Castile and Aragon, was Queen of Denmark, Sweden and Norway as the wife of King Christian II, she also served as regent of Denmark in 1520.

Isabella had 2 daughters, Dorothea and Christina.

Dorothea of Denmark and Norway, electress of the Palatinate as the wife of Elector Frederick II of the Palatinate. 

As the eldest surviving child of the abdicated Christian II, Dorothea had a claim to the Danish, Norwegian and Swedish throne. The Habsburg family selected Frederick of the Palatinate to be her consort as they believed that he could successfully claim the Danish throne through marriage. She married Frederick in 1535 in Heidelberg. They had no children.

Christina of Denmark, Duchess-consort of Milan, then Duchess-consort of Lorraine.

She was also the Regent of Lorraine in the years 1545–1552 during the minority of her son and a claimant to the thrones of Denmark, Norway and Sweden.

After Jane Seymour, the third wife of Henry VIII, died in 1537, Christina was considered as a possible bride for the English king. The German painter Hans Holbein was commissioned to paint portraits of noblewomen eligible to become the English queen.Christina, then only sixteen years old, made no secret of her opposition to marrying the English king, who by this time had a reputation around Europe for his mistreatment of wives. She supposedly said, “If I had two heads, one should be at the King of England’s disposal.”

Isabella’s painting is from c. 1520