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Mariana of Austria
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Mariana of Austria (24 December 1634 – 16 May 1696) was Queen consort of Spain as the second wife of King Philip IV, who was also her maternal uncle. She was the daughter of Habsburg Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand III and Infanta Maria Anna of Spain, Philip's sister.
ana (or Maria-Anna) was born on December 24 1634 in Vienna at the court of her paternal grandfather Ferdinand II. Her father, who would become Emperor in 1637, was as yet only the King of Hungary and Bohemia, and was away for most of his wife's pregnancy campaigning in the Thirty Years' War.
Mariana was also a younger sister of Ferdinand IV of Hungary and an older sister of Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor.
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Encyclopedia
Mariana of Austria (24 December 1634 – 16 May 1696) was Queen consort of Spain as the second wife of King Philip IV, who was also her maternal uncle. She was the daughter of Habsburg Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand III and Infanta Maria Anna of Spain, Philip's sister.
Life
Mariana (or Maria-Anna) was born on December 24 1634 in Vienna at the court of her paternal grandfather Ferdinand II. Her father, who would become Emperor in 1637, was as yet only the King of Hungary and Bohemia, and was away for most of his wife's pregnancy campaigning in the Thirty Years' War.
Mariana was also a younger sister of Ferdinand IV of Hungary and an older sister of Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor. As a child, she was engaged to her Spanish Habsburg first cousin Baltasar Carlos, Prince of Asturias, but when he died at 16 in 1646, Philip IV was left without a male heir and Maria-Anna without a fiancé. In 1649 the king married his 14-year-old niece himself. Although known for being cheerful as a young girl, after her wedding to her uncle she became cold and bad-tempered.
Children
Philip IV and Mariana had five children, two of which survived infancy:
When Philip IV died on September 17 1665, their only surviving son, Charles II of Spain, was only 3 years old, and Mariana served as Regent until 1675. Charles, at most times unable to walk or speak, needed a regent more than most child kings, and was carried as an infant in arms until he was 10. Mariana served as his regent for much of his life, except when she was successfully driven from Madrid by John of Austria the Younger, an illegitimate son of Philip IV, in 1677 in a palace revolution, due to widespread dissatisfaction at court because of her support for her advisor Fernando de Valenzuela. However, she returned to Madrid upon John's death in 1679.
Daughters-in-Law
That same year, her son Charles II married the French princess Marie Louise of Orléans. Although he was madly in love with her, their marriage remained childless. Ten years later, in 1689, Marie Louise died under mysterious circumstances and Charles married again, this time a German princess: Maria Anna of Neuburg. However, this second marriage was also childless.
Realizing that her son would never have children of his own, Mariana wanted her great-grandson, Joseph Ferdinand of Bavaria, to become the next King of Spain. This made her to argue frequently with her second-daughter-in-law, Maria Anna of Neuburg, who wanted her nephew, Archduke Charles of Austria, to become the next King of Spain. After a lot of unpleasant arguments, the Queen Mother stated: "Two suns cannot live in the same sky". Once during an argument between the two royal ladies, the Queen Mother told her: "Learn to live, lady, and know once and for all that people far higher than you have humbled themselves before me, people over whom you have only one advantage, that you are the wife of my son, an honour which you owe to me alone." The hysterical Maria Anna of Neuburg replied: "That is why I hate you so much!"
Death
Mariana died of breast cancer on the night of May 16, 1696 in Madrid, Spain, at the moment when a total eclipse of the moon reached its maximum and the Spanish capital was completely covered in darkness. Soon after her funeral, some miracles begun to be reported. When her coffin was taken out so the crowds could say farewell, a white dove was seen flying around it and finally disappeared into the heavens. Everyone thought it was an omen. A nun who had attended the Queen Mother at the palace begged a garment for remembrance; she slept in it and next morning awoke cured of a life-long paralysis. The British ambassador in Madrid, Lord Alexander Stanhope, wrote about this subject:
The infamous Countess of Berlips, a German lady living at the Spanish court, wrote the following lines on the subject:
In 1668, a voyage led by Jesuit missionary San Vitores named the Mariana Islands in the North Pacific after the queen regent.
Portraits
Ancestors
Bibliography
- CALVO POYATO, José, La vida y epoca de Carlos II el Hechizado (Barcelona: Editorial Planeta, 1998).
- CALVO POYATO, José, Reinas viudas de España (Barcelona: Península, 2002).
- FISAS, Carlos, Historias de las reinas de España: la Casa de Austria (Barcelona: Editorial Planeta, 1999).
- GONZÁLEZ-DORIA, Fernando, Las reinas de España (Madrid: Bitácora, 1990).
- MAURA GAMAZO, Gabriel, Vida y reinado de Carlos II (Madrid: Espasa Calve, 1942).
- PFANDL, Ludwig, Carlos II (Madrid: Afrodisio Aguado, 1947).
Links
- A biography of Charles II of Spain in Joan's Mad Monarchs Series
Titles
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