Maria II of Hungary

For other people with the same name, see Maria of Hungary (disambiguation)

For the Hapsburg Queen of Louis II of Hungary, later Regent of the Netherlands, see Mary of Austria (1505-1558)

Mary of Hungary

Mary of Hungary (c. 1371 – 17 May 1395, Buda, Hungary) (in Hungarian and Slovakian: Mária, in Croatian Marija Anžuvinska), Queen of Hungary, Croatia, Rascia, etc., 1382–1395, was the third of four, but the eldest surviving daughter of Louis I the Great of Hungary and his second wife Elisabeth of Bosnia.

Life

She was intended to inherit both of her father's kingdoms, Hungary and Poland, or at least the hereditary kingdom of Poland. Her father king Louis had arranged marriages for her and her younger sister Jadwiga. Ultimately Sigismund of Luxemburg (1368–1437), a heir of the Polish Kujavian dynasty and a member of Bohemian royal family, married Mary in 1385 in Zvolen Castle. William of Habsburg then was to marry her younger sister, who however, after Sigismund was expelled by Poles, where he had been living in Cracow since 1381, unexpectedly became Queen Jadwiga of Poland, William married Mary's relative Joan II of Naples instead, and Jadwiga became married to Jogaila of Lithuania. Mary became Queen regnant of Hungary as a ten-year-old child after her father's death in 1382 (her elder sister Catherine having died four years earlier, and the eldest, Elisabeth, years earlier). The country was ruled by her mother, the Dowager Queen Elisabeth, Elizabeta Kotromanic of Bosnia, and by Palatine Miklós Garai, Nikola I Gorjanski Stariji. Sigismund, his powerful brother Emperor Wenceslaus and many noblemen of Hungary were opposed to them; some noblemen helped Mary's relative Charles of Durazzo, King of Naples to become briefly the King of Hungary in 1385. Queen Elizabeth and Garai had Charles II assassinated in 1386. Charles's heir was his underage son Ladislas of Naples (d. 1414) who attempted all his life to conquer Hungary, but despite some support in the country, did not succeed. Magnates of Lesser Poland had been deeply unsatisfied with personal union (1370–82) with Hungary, and despite of decreed succession order, chose the nine-year-old Jadwiga as the Queen of Poland in 1384. After a couple of years, Jadwiga was compelled to leave Hungary for Poland. Mary and her guardians never managed in governing nor obtaining Poland. Halych, the Ruthenian province recently (1340–66) annexed by Poland, however was taken by Hungary, and only after several years, Poland recovered it.

Capture and rescue

Elisabeth and Mary were captured in 1386 by the powerful Horvat brothers, Paul Bishop of Machva and Ladislaus, but probably on the orders of Mary's smart but wicked seventeen-year-old husband and King-consort Sigismund. On the first anniversary of the death of Charles II, January 1387, Elizabeth was strangled before Mary's eyes. Mary bitterly accused her husband, King-consort Sigismund for arranging the kidnapping and murder of her mother Elisabeth. Mary did not want to live with Sigismund, due to the matricide of his Mother-in-Law, therefore keeping a separate household. She accused Sigismund of squandering her patrimony on cheap women, and short-sighted politics. She reconciled with the Horvats and granted them estates in Slavonia and Northern Bosnia. In July 1387 Mary was rescued from captivity by troops of Trvtko I of Bosnia (cousin and adoptive brother of queen Elisabeth) and the Croatian noble family later known as the Frangipani (who were relatives of the Garay (Gorjanskih) clan), main support of the Bosnian faction. It has been claimed that Sigismund took revenge on the murderers of Elizabeth.

Succession

Mary might have designated her uncle Stephen Tvrtko I, also a descendant of the Árpád dynasty through Catherine (a daughter of Stephen V of Hungary), as her heir in Hungary as early as 1386. However, Trvtko died, being probably murdered in 1391. From 1387, Mary and Sigismund were officially joint rulers of Hungary but in fact the estranged husband Sigismund ruled alone. Mary died on May 17, 1395, the same day as the Battle of Rovine, under suspicious circumstances, while heavily pregnant, but leaving no surviving children. In 1405, probably on Christmas Day, somewhat secretly, Sigismund remarried, or was compelled to marry, Barbara of Celje, Mary's kinswoman. In 1410, Sigismund was elected Holy Roman Emperor.

Legacy

Mary was the last scion of the Angevin dynasty on the throne of Hungary. Mary's closest heir was her youngest sister, Jadwiga of Poland who, however, also died in 1399 of childbirth complications leaving no surviving children. Mary's widower Sigismund kept her kingdom, and was eventually succeeded by his daughter from his second marriage with Mary's cousin Barbara of Celje, whose grandmother Katarina Kotromanic was Mary's maternal aunt. After the death of Jadwiga, the heir of Mary's line was their distant cousin Ladislas of Naples, the rival claimant. His line went extinct in 1435, after which the succession of these lines went, in principle, to king Charles VII of France, heir-general to the eldest daughter of Charles II of Naples and Maria of Hungary.

Other sources

• (French) Coat of arms of the House of Anjou-Sicily on the French Wikipedia
• (French) House of Anjou-Sicily on the French Wikipedia