We can credit three of history’s most influential monarchs—Queen Isabella of Castile, Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, and Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom—for helping to shape today’s world. These extraordinary women also gave birth to three prominent women: Catherine of Aragon, Queen of England; Marie Antoinette, Queen of France; and Vicky, Germany’s Empress Frederick, respectively. The daughters’ lives dramatically changed the course of European events too, albeit with much less auspicious outcomes. Though the pages of history resonate with these six women’s legacies, no written work has yet grouped them together, or examined the very special bond that united them and unites so many—that of mother and daughter.
With this in mind, I set out to illuminate the relationships between Isabella and Catherine, between Maria Theresa and Marie Antoinette, and between Victoria and Vicky. What makes their familial bonds most poignant, and places the pairings uniquely in the annals of history, is that the mothers were successful, even remarkable rulers, while their daughters, all consorts of reigning European monarchs, suffered the opposite fate. For none of the three daughters—Catherine, Marie Antoinette, and Vicky—came to match the reputations of Queen Isabella, Empress Maria Theresa, and Queen Victoria. The daughters, with their bittersweet fates, were in essence left in the triumphant wakes of their unsurpassable mothers, whose legacies continue to be felt today.
Most interesting is the fact that these three pairs lived through different eras. Isabella and Catherine were medieval and Renaissance queens, whereas Maria Theresa and Marie Antoinette lived in the Age of Enlightenment. Victoria and Vicky, meanwhile, lived when the Industrial Revolution quickened the
pace of life. Moreover, they witnessed the huge expansion of the British Empire—the mother giving her name to the age known as the Victorian era.
Equally fascinating is charting the Habsburg fortunes from Isabella of Castile’s time down through the centuries, especially in the lives of Maria Theresa and Marie Antoinette. As we read about Maria Theresa, we encounter an emboldened Prussia, which will have an impact on the next set of royals, Queen Victoria and her daughter, the Empress Frederick. During the Victorian era, Prussia and its dynastic family, the Hohenzollerns, dominated the European political scene at the Habsburgs’ expense.
Rarely does one encounter such a unique set of women in history. Theirs is a tale of colossal achievement and monumental failure. The daughters’ misfortunes are made more poignant by the fact that they were married off strategically to achieve specific political goals. The potential good that the future reigning consorts could bring to their adopted countries and, by extension, to Europe was incalculable. The failure of that potential to be fulfilled constitutes the tales of tragedy in the following pages.
Far from being mere footnotes in history, the daughters’ unfulfilled destinies had far-reaching effects, the repercussions of which can still be felt today. Because of his doomed marriage to Catherine of Aragon, King Henry VIII broke away from the Roman Catholic Church, triggering the English Reformation and the violent religious conflicts that accompanied it. Marie Antoinette’s legacy is inextricably linked to the French Revolution and the ensuing modern revolutions that emulated it, setting the world aflame. Vicky envisioned a liberal Germany that would take its place on the world stage, but this aspiration for a vibrant democracy vanished with the untimely death of her husband, Emperor Frederick III. Frederick’s brief reign proved insufficient to get Germany to rise to political maturity. Under the reign of Vicky’s son the infamous Kaiser Wilhelm II, Germany plunged, along with other European powers, into the conflagration that became World War I.
Each of the royal mothers left an indelible mark. Some six hundred years later, it is easy to forget the extent of Queen Isabella’s mark on history. Yet such was the power she possessed and such were her achievements that contemporaries and historians of a later age have ascribed astounding superlatives to her. One of the queen’s contemporaries, the Italian historian of Spain, Peter Martyr, gave one such glowing opinion. Here, he said, was “among the Queens and the powerful … one who does not lack either the valor to undertake great endeavors, or the constancy to carry them through.” Isabella of Castile was “stronger than a strong man, more constant than any human soul, a marvelous example of
honesty and virtue; Nature has made no other woman like her.”1 Hundreds of years later, the noted historian Antonia Fraser described Queen Isabella in a similar vein, writing of her as “the wonder of Europe,”2 one who “showed herself from the first a remarkable character as well as a redoubtable one.”3
Empress Maria Theresa was no less accomplished a monarch. In his biography of her, Edward Crankshaw summarized Maria Theresa’s achievements: “She had loosened the prison bars of feudal Austria and made it possible for all her peoples to move into the nineteenth century without revolutionary violence. In her remarkable person, empirical, practical, and kind, she had achieved the most that can be expected anywhere of any sort of government at any time—and more than is achieved by most. She had held her society together, encouraged its individual talents, and left it better than it was before.”4
Queen Victoria has been portrayed in equally glowing terms. The queen’s eminent biographer Elizabeth Longford rightly described Victoria as “a legend” who left “the impression of greatness” among her subjects and “the world.”5 The historian Sir Sidney Lee has noted of the queen: “She had become an institution, an enduring symbol of the majesty of her people, and an emblem of the unity of an empire which comprised more than one-fifth … of the habitable globe.”6
Whereas the mothers’ prestige remains largely untarnished today, history has been unkind to their daughters—these ill-fated women who were unable to live up to their early promise. Catherine of Aragon is pitied, Marie Antoinette maligned, and Vicky largely forgotten. Their reputations continue to be completely overshadowed by their mothers’. The time has come to bring to light the stories of these daughters alongside those of their mothers. Even though the mothers’ accomplishments dwarf those of their daughters, readers will find vestiges of greatness in the daughters as well. When tormenting struggles in foreign lands came the daughters’ way, their reactions illustrated that they were indeed the worthy offspring of such notable women.
This book by no means offers a full biography of each woman. Instead, it paints three comparative portraits, highlighting the similarities and differences between these royal mothers and daughters. By placing these women together and viewing them through the prism of the distinct times in which their dramas played out, we can more fully appreciate their contrasting and often moving fates. It is my hope that this book will whet the reader’s appetite to delve more deeply into the fascinating lives of these royal women.