There were more of them than kings, and most of them are only mentioned in the history books. They stood in the shadow of their husbands, although they often had a great influence on their governments. After their death, they were quickly replaced by successive chosen ones of the ruler, because the king without a queen was losing both prestige and fortune. They walked away quietly, and their subjects seldom knew what the Polish queens were dying of. Meanwhile, if you take a closer look at (their) history, it will quickly turn out that the suffering of the rulers is nothing compared to the tragedies that befell their spouses.
- Perinatal complications dominated among the causes of death of Polish queens. For this reason, among others, Queen Jadwiga
- Venereal diseases did not spare royal families. For example, Marysieńka, wife of King Jan III Sobieski, suffered from syphilis
- A common way to get rid of an uncomfortable queen was to poison her
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The price of motherhood
One of the most important, if not the most important tasks of a queen in a monarchy was the birth of the heir to the throne. However, times were troubled, the royal families had to take into account the risk of an attack on the lives of their members, and as if that were not enough, the court was not spared by epidemics and diseases that took a deadly toll in every corner of the world, and which medicine still could not cope with. For this reason, it was expected that the king’s chosen one would give birth to not one or even two, but as many children as possible – so as to maximize the chance that the future king (or queen) would live to be crowned.
The pressure on the queen would be a burden for the woman who was physically and mentally prepared to face the hardships of childbirth. No wonder then that both queens and royal wives, recruited from among the teenage daughters of crowned heads and the great mighty of Europe, had trouble with his exultation. Young motherhood for many of them ended tragically.
A good example of this is the most famous Polish queen – Jadwiga Andegaweńska. The saint of the Catholic Church and the patron saint of Poland did not have a chance to enjoy the sight of her newborn child for too long. Her daughter, Elżbieta Bonifacja, died just three weeks after birth. Jadwiga herself passed away four days later. According to historians, during the dissolution the body was infected – the queen died of the so-called maternal fever.
The drama of losing a child (or rather children) also touched Cecylia Renata Habsburżanka, the wife of Władysław IV. She lived with the king for a total of seven years. These were years spent with the suffering of unhappy love and jealousy of the king’s favorite – Jadwiga Łuszkowska, whom the ruler kept close to him for years. Getting rid of a competitor (Cecylia forced her husband to agree to her wedding with a certain staroste) did not change the relationship between the royal couple, nor the queen’s happiness.
Three times pregnant, the Habsburgian woman had to watch her child die as many times. Her first son, Zygmunt Kazimierz, born after three years of marriage, died at the age of seven. Maria Anna Izabela, welcomed two years later, did not survive even a month, and after another two years Cecylia gave birth to a dead girl. She herself did not survive this birth – she died a day later as a result of an infection in the body, which today would probably be classified as sepsis.
Cecylia did not have the opportunity to meet her mother-in-law – Anna Habsburg, but fate connected them in a strange way. Władysław IV’s mother also died as a result of perinatal complications. As the first wife of Sigismund III Vasa, she gave birth to her first-born son, as did her daughter-in-law later – exactly three years after her marriage, in 1595. She did not have a second child, although she was pregnant four more times. She died in 1598, being heavily pregnant. According to historians, the cause of death was poisoning, which caused, among other things, severe swelling of the limbs and face of the queen. As a result of the posthumous cesarean section, Władysław IV’s brother, Krzysztof, was born, but the child died half an hour after giving birth.
One more Polish queen was not allowed to fully enjoy the birth of her second daughter. Barbara Zápolya, Sigismund the Old’s first wife, became pregnant for a second four years after the birth of her first child. After giving birth, the Grand Duchess of Lithuania did not rise again.
First, for nearly three months she suffered from severe convulsions, then called paroxysms. After this time, her condition improved for a while, but soon afterwards the queen probably suffered a stroke and died. Researchers who have studied the sad story of the young queen for centuries (Barbara did not live to see her 30th birthday) found that she died of complications following an infection that occurred during childbirth. Some presume that one of the infectious diseases that spread in Krakow at that time could also have had an impact.
Intimacy under the microscope
Infectious diseases are the second most common causes of death for Polish queens. Contrary to rumors, fueled by lovers of moral scandals, those of an intimate nature do not dominate this list. Death as a result of contracting syphilis is officially discussed only in the context of the fate of Jan Sobieski III’s wife, Maria Kazimiera de La Grange d’Arquien. Interestingly, however, the direct cause of death of the famous Marysieńka was not syphilis, although the queen was undoubtedly not only diagnosed with the disease, but also treated for many years.
Maria Kazimiera contracted syphilis from her first husband, Jan Sobiepan Zamoyski – a dissolute nobleman who did not shy away from alcohol and numerous contacts with women. The future queen felt the disease extremely acutely. In addition to the troublesome symptoms, she had to face the death of her four children due to the relationship with Zamoyski – one pregnancy was miscarried, another ended with the birth of a dead child, and in two more cases the babies died shortly after delivery. The children were probably infected with the bacterium in utero, and their chances of a healthy birth and life were slim.
This was confirmed later, during her marriage to Sobieski, with whom she was pregnant 17 times during the 13 years of her relationship. However, only four children lived to adulthood, born in the later years of marriage. This is important because – as indicated by prof. Isak Gath, analyzing the evidence that the royal couple suffered from venereal disease, suggests that Marysieńka’s disease was probably in a latent form then. Its greatest development took place in the years spent with Zamoyski and the first with Sobieski, when the risk of infecting the fetus reaches up to 95%. (later it decreases significantly, but does not disappear completely). Among the children born in the first years of their marriage to the king of Poland, only one (Adelaide Ludwika) survived the first year of life (the girl died at the age of five), the rest were born dead or lived for several or several weeks.
Marie Casimire de La Grange d’Arquien coped with the disease quite well. Despite the enormous physical burden (17 pregnancies!) And the ailments caused by syphilis, the queen lived to be 75 years old. The immediate cause of her death was a gastrointestinal disease, most likely gastric cancer. However, it was also probably the result of the disease’s progression (even if it was already asymptomatic then), gradually damaging the internal organs.
Fot. Zygmunt Gloger, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Syphilis was also to be – according to the findings of some historians – the cause of the death of another Polish queen – Barbara Radziwiłłówna. It was reportedly evidenced by the symptoms of the disease that the second wife of Sigismund II Augustus began to complain about two years before her death: ulcers in the intimate parts, bleeding from the genital tract, fever, diarrhea. The development of the disease was certainly accelerated by the aversion to the king’s chosen one, which the royal couple felt on the part of the nobility and magnates (when Barbara joined the royal family, she was already pregnant as a result of an affair with young Sigismund, and in addition, she did not come from a great dynasty). Other historians agree that the cause of Barbara Radziwiłłówna’s death was cervical cancer. It is known for sure that the queen died in great suffering, six months after her husband’s coronation. She was less than 30 years old.
Lethal diseases
The first wife of Zygmunt August, Elżbieta Habsburżanka, also died young. The favorite of her parents (Ferdinand I Habsburg and Anna Jagiellon) was married at the age of only 17. Her relationship with the king did not go well from the beginning, and one of the reasons was, among other things, the disease of the young queen – epilepsy.
The persistent attacks allegedly repelled the king, who was no longer hiding his love affair with Barbara Radziwiłłówna. Elżbieta could not count on the support of the court, neither in the case of relations with her husband, nor in coping with a persistent illness. She died two years after the wedding and coronation, not reaching her 20th birthday.
However, the king did not completely get rid of the disease from his bed – symptoms similar to epilepsy also appeared in the third and last wife of Sigismund Augustus – Katarzyna Habsburżanka. There is no evidence that the queen suffered from the same disease as the king’s first chosen one, much less that she died because of her, but she also lived a relatively short life, dying at the age of 39.
The royal families were also affected by other infectious diseases, which were a real plague at that time. An example is tuberculosis, from which Elżbieta Granowska née Pilcza, the third wife of Władysław Jagiełło, died. Polish queens, however, also died of diseases that are also a challenge for modern medicine and often lead to death. Among them was a stroke, which was not dealt with in the case of two queens.
The first one – Maria Józefa Habsburg, the chosen one of Augustus III of Saxony, died as a result of apoplexy, which may have been a consequence of the difficult experiences her family had experienced in Dresden, occupied by POur Country.
Photo. We saved the career, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
On the other hand, Zofia Holszańska, also the wife (fourth and last) of Władysław Jagiełło, fell seriously ill as a longtime widow and a mature mother of three sons. According to Jan Długosz, the source of the disease was the fever that the queen fell from consuming too much… melons. Sonka was convinced that the body would cope with the ailment on its own and refused to take medications. As the disease progressed, one side of her body was paralyzed, suggesting the Queen may have had a stroke.
An attempt on life
While the diseases of royal spouses were often a secret of the court and did not reach the people, deaths resulting from crimes echoed throughout the country. There were many cases of murder – both actual and alleged – in Polish royal families. The protagonist of the most famous was Bona Sforza, the wife of Sigismund the Old and the daughter of two more kings from the Jagiellonian dynasty – Zygmunt August and Anna Jagiellon. The queen was poisoned by her courtier, Jan Wawrzyniec Pappacoda. Apparently, the murder was ordered by the Habsburgs, who fawned on Bona’s will, and also wanted to kill two birds with one stone: get rid of the nosy queen and thus cancel their debt to her (the so-called Neapolitan sums).
Poisoning – as the cause of death – was also suspected in Helena Iwanowna, the wife of Alexander the Jagiellonian. The Radziwiłł family could have an interest in getting rid of the uncrowned queen of Poland.
The most tragic attempt on the queen’s life, however, took place in Novigrad, Croatia, in 1387. Elżbieta Bośniaczka, wife of Ludwik Węgierski, is – to use today’s nomenclature – a queen “on paper”, because the regent of the Kingdom of Hungary has never been to Poland and has not been crowned (although she used the title of the Queen of Poland).
Photo Jan Matejko, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons / Kazimierz Władysław Wójcicki «Jan Matejko’s Album», 1876
After her husband’s death, she took power in Hungary and fell into numerous conflicts on the international arena. As a result of one of them (the murder of the new king of Hungary, Charles III of Durazzo, commissioned by the Bosnian woman), Elizabeth – in front of her daughter – was strangled and then hanged on the tower.
The natural death “from old age” experienced by many other Polish queens sounds like a blessing in this context.
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