MAD MONARCHY – LIST OF MENTALLY ILL MONARCHS : Part 2

source :    wikipedia.com

Charles  VI  of  France

Charles VI (3 December 1368 – 21 October 1422), called the Beloved (French: le Bien-Aimé) and the Mad (French: le Fol or le Fou), was a monarch of the House of Valois who ruled as King of France from 1380 to his death.
He was only 11 when he inherited the throne in the midst of the Hundred Years’ War. The government was entrusted to his four uncles: Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy; John, Duke of Berry; Louis I, Duke of Anjou; and Louis II, Duke of Bourbon. Although the royal age of majority was fixed at 14 (the “age of accountability” under Roman Catholic canon law), the dukes maintained their grip on Charles until he took power at the age of 21.
During the rule of his uncles, the financial resources of the kingdom, painstakingly built up by his father Charles V, were squandered for the personal profit of the dukes, whose interests were frequently divergent or even opposing. As royal funds drained, new taxes had to be raised, which caused several revolts.

In 1388 Charles VI dismissed his uncles and brought back to power his father’s former advisers, who were known as the Marmousets. Political and economic conditions in the kingdom improved significantly as a result, and Charles earned the epithet “the Beloved”. But in August 1392 en route to Brittany with his army in the forest of Le Mans, Charles suddenly went mad and slew four knights and almost killed his brother, Louis of Orléans.
From then on, Charles’ bouts of insanity became more frequent and of longer duration. During these attacks, he had delusions, believing he was made of glass or denying he had a wife and children. He could also attack servants or ran until exhaustion, wailing that he was threatened by his enemies. Between crises, there were intervals of months during which Charles was relatively sane. However, unable to concentrate or make decisions, political power was taken away from him by the princes of the blood, which would cause much chaos and conflict in France.
A fierce struggle for power developed between Louis of Orléans, the king’s brother, and John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, the son of Philip the Bold. When John instigated the murder of Louis in November 1407, the conflict degenerated into a civil war between the Armagnacs (supporters of the House of Valois) and the Burgundians. John offered large parts of France to king Henry V of England, who was still at war with the Valois monarchy, in exchange for his support. After the assassination of John the Fearless, his son Philip the Good led Charles the Mad to sign the infamous Treaty of Troyes (1420), which recognized Henry V as his legitimate successor on the throne of France and disinherited his own offspring.

When Charles VI died, he was succeeded by his son Charles VII, who found the Valois cause in a desperate situation.

He was born in Paris, the son of King Charles V and Joan of Bourbon. In 1380, at the age of eleven, he was crowned King of France at Reims Cathedral. He married Isabeau of Bavaria in 1385. Until he took complete charge as king in 1388, France was ruled primarily by his uncle, Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy. During that time, the power of the royal administration was strengthened and the authority to tax was re-established. The latter policy represented a reversal of the deathbed decision of the king’s father Charles V to repeal taxes in response to a tax revolt known as the Harelle. Increased tax revenues were needed to support the self-serving policies of the king’s uncles, whose interests were frequently in conflict with those of the crown and with each other. The Battle of Roosebeke (1382), for example, brilliantly won by the royal troops, was prosecuted solely for the benefit of Philip of Burgundy. The treasury surplus carefully accumulated by Charles V was quickly squandered.
The dismissal of the king’s uncles from the royal administration in 1388 and the restoration to power of the highly-competent advisors of Charles V (known as the Marmousets) ushered in a new period of high esteem for the crown that resulted in Charles VI being widely referred to as Charles the Beloved by his subjects.

The early successes of the sole rule of Charles VI quickly dissipated as a result of the bouts of psychosis he experienced beginning in his mid-twenties. Once Charles the Beloved, he became known as Charles the Mad in his later reign.
Charles’s first known episode occurred in 1392 when his friend and advisor, Olivier de Clisson, was the victim of an attempted murder. Although Clisson survived, Charles was determined to punish the would-be assassin, Pierre de Craon, who had taken refuge in Brittany.
Contemporaries said Charles appeared to be in a “fever” to begin the campaign and appeared disconnected in his speech. Charles set off with an army on 1 July 1392. The progress of the army was slow, which nearly drove Charles into a frenzy of impatience.
As the king and his escort were travelling through a forest on a hot August morning, a barefoot leper dressed in rags rushed up to the King’s horse and grabbed his bridle. “Ride no further, noble King!” he yelled. “Turn back! You are betrayed!” The king’s escorts beat the man back, but did not arrest him, and he followed the procession for half an hour, repeating his cries.

The company emerged from the forest at noon. A page who was drowsy from the sun dropped the king’s lance, which clanged loudly against a steel helmet carried by another page. Charles shuddered, drew his sword and yelled “Forward against the traitors! They wish to deliver me to the enemy!” The king spurred his horse and began swinging his sword at his companions, fighting until one of his chamberlains and a group of soldiers were able to grab him from his mount and lay him on the ground. He lay still and did not react, but fell into a coma. The king had killed a knight called “The Bastard of Polignac” and several other men, the number of which varies among contemporary chronicles.
The king continued to suffer from periods of mental illness throughout his life. During one attack in 1393, Charles could not remember his name and did not know he was king. When his wife came to visit, he asked his servants who she was and ordered them to take care of what she required so that she would leave him alone. During an episode in 1395–96 he claimed he was Saint George and that his coat of arms was a lion with a sword thrust through it. At this time, he recognized all the officers of his household, but did not know his wife or children. Sometimes he ran wildly through the corridors of his Parisian residence, the Hôtel Saint-Pol, and to keep him inside, the entrances were walled up. In 1405, he refused to bathe or change his clothes for five months. His later psychotic episodes were not described in detail, perhaps because of the similarity of his behavior and delusions. Pope Pius II, who was born in the middle of the reign of Charles VI, wrote in his Commentaries that there were times when Charles thought that he was made of glass, and this caused him to protect himself in various ways so that he would not break. This condition has come to be known as glass delusion.

*   Charles VI died in 1422 in Paris and is interred with his wife Isabeau of Bavaria in Saint Denis Basilica. Both their grandson, the one-year-old Henry VI of England, and their son, Charles VII, were proclaimed King of France, but it was the latter who became the actual ruler with the support of Joan of Arc.

*   Charles VI appears to have passed on his mental illness to his grandson Henry VI of England, whose inability to govern led England to a civil strife of its own known as the Wars of the Roses.

 

 

Henry  VI  of  England

Henry VI (6 December 1421 – 21 May 1471) was King of England from 1422 to 1461 and again from 1470 to 1471, and disputed King of France from 1422 to 1453. Until 1437, his realm was governed by regents. Contemporaneous accounts described him as peaceful and pious, not suited for the dynastic wars, known as the Wars of the Roses, which commenced during his reign. His periods of insanity and his inherent benevolence eventually required his wife, Margaret of Anjou, to assume control of his kingdom, which contributed to his own downfall, the collapse of the House of Lancaster, and the rise of the House of York.
Henry was the only child and heir of King Henry V. He was born on 6 December 1421 at Windsor Castle, and succeeded to the throne at the age of nine months as King of England on 31 August 1422 when his father died, thus making him the youngest person ever to succeed to the English throne. Two months later, on 21 October 1422, he became King of France upon his grandfather Charles VI’s death in agreement with the Treaty of Troyes in 1420. His mother, Catherine of Valois, was then 20 years old and, as Charles VI’s daughter, was viewed with considerable suspicion by English nobles and prevented from having a full role in her son’s upbringing.
On 28 September 1423, the nobles swore loyalty to Henry VI. They summoned Parliament in the King’s name and established a regency council until the King should come of age. One of Henry V’s surviving brothers, John, Duke of Bedford, was appointed senior regent of the realm and was in charge of the ongoing war in France. During Bedford’s absence, the government of England was headed by Henry V’s other surviving brother, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, who was appointed Protector and Defender of the Realm. His duties were limited to keeping the peace and summoning Parliament. Henry V’s half-uncle Henry Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester (after 1426 also Cardinal), had an important place on the Council. After the Duke of Bedford died in 1435, the Duke of Gloucester claimed the Regency himself, but was contested in this by the other members of the council.

From 1428, Henry’s tutor was Richard de Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, whose father had been instrumental in the opposition to Richard II’s reign.
Henry’s half-brothers, Edmund and Jasper, the sons of his widowed mother’s relationship with Owen Tudor, were later given earldoms. Edmund Tudor was the father of Henry Tudor, later to gain the throne as Henry VII.
In reaction to Charles VII Valois’s coronation as French King in Reims Cathedral on 17 July 1429, Henry was soon crowned King of England at Westminster Abbey on 6 November 1429,followed by his own coronation as King of France at Notre Dame de Paris on 16 December 1431. Although it was not until a month before his sixteenth birthday on 13 November 1437 that he obtained some measure of independent authority, indications of a growing willingness to involve himself in administration was demonstrated in 1434 when writs temporarilly changed their dating from Westminster (where the Privy Council were) to Cirencester (where the king was). He finally assumed full royal powers when he came of age.

Henry was declared of age in 1437, the year in which his mother died, and he assumed the reins of government. Henry, shy and pious, averse to deceit and bloodshed, immediately allowed his court to be dominated by a few noble favourites who clashed on the matter of the French war.
After the death of Henry V, England had lost momentum in the Hundred Years’ War, while, beginning with Joan of Arc’s military victories, the Valois gained ground. The young king came to favour a policy of peace in France, and thus favoured the faction around Cardinal Beaufort and William de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk, who thought likewise, while Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, and Richard, Duke of York, who argued for a continuation of the war, were ignored.

Cardinal Beaufort and the Earl of Suffolk persuaded the king that the best way of pursuing peace with France was through a marriage with Margaret of Anjou, the niece of King Charles VII. Henry agreed, especially when he heard reports of Margaret’s stunning beauty, and sent Suffolk to negotiate with Charles, who agreed to the marriage on condition that he would not have to provide the customary dowry and instead would receive the lands of Maine and Anjou from the English. These conditions were agreed to in the Treaty of Tours, but the cession of Maine and Anjou was kept secret from parliament, as it was known that this would be hugely unpopular with the English populace. The marriage took place at Titchfield Abbey on 23 April 1445, one month after Margaret’s 15th birthday. She had arrived with an entire (‘ready-made’) household, composed primarilly, not of Angevins, but of members of Henry’s Royal servants; this increase in the size of the royal household (and a concomitant increase, on the birth of their son in 1453) led to proportionately greater expense but also to greater patronage opportunities at Court.
Henry had wavered in yielding Maine and Anjou to Charles, knowing that the move was unpopular and would be opposed by the Dukes of Gloucester and York. However, Margaret was determined to make him see it through. As the treaty became public knowledge in 1446, public anger focused on Suffolk, but Henry and Margaret were determined to protect him.

In 1447, the King and Queen summoned the Duke of Gloucester before parliament on the charge of treason. This move was instigated by Gloucester’s enemies, the Earl of Suffolk, the ageing Cardinal Beaufort and his nephew, Edmund Beaufort, Earl of Somerset. Gloucester was put in custody in Bury St Edmunds, where he died, probably of a heart attack, although there were contemporaneous rumours of poisoning, before he could be tried.

The Duke of York, now Henry’s heir presumptive, was excluded from the court circle and sent to govern Ireland, while his opponents, the Earls of Suffolk and Somerset were promoted to Dukes, a title at that time still normally reserved for immediate relatives of the monarch. The new Duke of Somerset was sent to France to lead the war.
In the later years of Henry’s reign, the monarchy became increasingly unpopular, due to a breakdown in law and order, corruption, the distribution of royal land to the king’s court favourites, the troubled state of the crown’s finances, and the steady loss of territories in France. In 1447, this unpopularity took the form of a Commons campaign against the Duke of Suffolk, who was the most unpopular of all the King’s entourage and widely seen as a traitor. He was impeached by Parliament to a background that has been called “the baying for Suffolk’s blood [by] a London mob”, to the extent that Suffolk admitted his alarm to the king. Ultimately, Henry was forced to send him into exile, but Suffolk’s ship was intercepted in the English Channel. His murdered body was found on the beach at Dover.
In 1449, the Duke of Somerset, leading the campaign in France, reopened hostilities in Normandy, but by the autumn had been pushed back to Caen. By 1450, the French had retaken the whole province, so hard won by Henry V. Returning troops, who had often not been paid, added to the lawlessness in the southern counties of England. Jack Cade led a rebellion in Kent in 1450, calling himself “John Mortimer”, apparently in sympathy with York, and setting up residence at the White Hart Inn in Southwark (the white hart had been the symbol of the deposed Richard II). Henry came to London with an army to crush the rebellion, but on finding that Cade had fled kept most of his troops behind while a small force followed the rebels and met them at Sevenoaks. The flight proved to have been tactical: Cade successfully ambushed the force in the Battle of Solefields and returned to occupy London. In the end, the rebellion achieved nothing, and London was retaken after a few days of disorder; but this was principally because of the efforts of its own residents rather than the army. At any rate the rebellion showed that feelings of discontent were running high.

In 1451, the Duchy of Guyenne, held since Henry II’s time, was also lost. In October 1452, an English advance in Guyenne retook Bordeaux and was having some success but by 1453, Bordeaux was lost again, leaving Calais as England’s only remaining territory on the continent.

In 1452, the Duke of York was persuaded to return from Ireland, claim his rightful place on the council and put an end to bad government. His cause was a popular one, and he soon raised an army at Shrewsbury. The court party, meanwhile, raised their own similar-sized force in London. A stand-off took place south of London, with York presenting a list of grievances and demands to the court circle, including the arrest of Edmund Beaufort, 2nd Duke of Somerset. The king initially agreed, but Margaret intervened to prevent the arrest of Beaufort. By 1453, his influence had been restored, and York was again isolated. The court party was also strengthened by the announcement that the Queen was pregnant.
However, on hearing of the final loss of Bordeaux in August 1453, Henry slipped into a mental breakdown and became completely unaware of everything that was going on around him. This was to last for more than a year, and Henry failed even to respond to the birth of his own son and heir, who was christened Edward. Henry possibly inherited his illness from Charles VI of France, his maternal grandfather, who was struck by intermittent periods of insanity over the last thirty years of his life.
The Duke of York, meanwhile, had gained a very important ally, Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, one of the most influential magnates and possibly richer than York himself. York was named regent as Protector of the Realm in 1454. The queen was excluded completely, and Edmund Beaufort was detained in the Tower of London, while many of York’s supporters spread rumours that the king’s child was not his, but Beaufort’s. Other than that, York’s months as regent were spent tackling the problem of government overspending.
On Christmas Day 1454, King Henry regained his senses. Disaffected nobles who had grown in power during Henry’s reign (most importantly the Earls of Warwick and Salisbury) took matters into their own hands by backing the claims of the rival House of York, first to the Regency, and then to the throne itself, due to York’s better descent from Edward III. It was agreed York would become Henry’s successor, despite York being older.

After a violent struggle between the houses of Lancaster and York, during which the Duke of York was killed by Margaret’s forces on 30 December 1460, Henry was deposed and imprisoned on 4 March 1461 by the Duke of York’s son, Edward of York, who became king, as Edward IV. By this point, Henry was suffering such a bout of madness that he was apparently laughing and singing while the Second Battle of St Albans raged, which secured his release. But Edward was still able to take the throne, though he failed to capture Henry and his queen, who fled to Scotland. During the first period of Edward IV’s reign, Lancastrian resistance continued mainly under the leadership of Queen Margaret and the few nobles still loyal to her in the northern counties of England and Wales. Henry, who had been safely hidden by Lancastrian allies in Scotland, Northumberland and Yorkshire was captured by King Edward in 1465 and subsequently held captive in the Tower of London.

Queen Margaret, exiled in Scotland and later in France, was determined to win back the throne on behalf of her husband and son. By herself, there was little she could do. However, eventually Edward IV had a falling-out with two of his main supporters: Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, and his own younger brother George, Duke of Clarence. At the urging of King Louis XI of France they formed a secret alliance with Margaret. After marrying his daughter to Henry and Margaret’s son, Edward of Westminster, Warwick returned to England, forced Edward IV into exile, and restored Henry VI to the throne on 30 October 1470. However, by this time, years in hiding followed by years in captivity had taken their toll on Henry. Warwick and Clarence effectively ruled in his name.
Henry’s return to the throne lasted less than six months. Warwick soon overreached himself by declaring war on Burgundy, whose ruler responded by giving Edward IV the assistance he needed to win back his throne by force. Edward IV returned to England in early 1471, after which he was reconciled with Clarence and killed Warwick at the Battle of Barnet. The Yorkists won a final decisive victory at the Battle of Tewkesbury on 4 May 1471, where Henry’s son Edward was killed.

Henry was imprisoned in the Tower of London, where he died during the night of 21/22 May 1471. In all likelihood, Henry’s opponents had kept him alive up to this point rather than leave the Lancasters with a far more formidable leader in Henry’s son Edward. According to the Historie of the arrivall of Edward IV, an official chronicle favourable to Edward, Henry died of melancholy on hearing news of the Battle of Tewkesbury and his son’s death. It is widely suspected, however, that Edward IV, who was re-crowned the morning following Henry’s death, had in fact ordered his murder.
Sir Thomas More’s History of Richard III explicitly states that Richard killed Henry, but is the only contemporary source that makes this claim. Another contemporary source, Wakefield’s Chronicle, gives the date of Henry’s death as 23 May, on which date Richard is known to have been away from London.

King Henry VI was originally buried in Chertsey Abbey; then, in 1485, his body was moved to St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, by Richard III.

 

 

Joanna  of  Castile

Joanna (6 November 1479 – 12 April 1555), known as Joanna the Mad ( Juana la Loca), was heiress of the Kingdoms of Castile and Aragon, a union which evolved into modern Spain. She married Philip the Handsome, initiating the rule of the Habsburgs in Spain. After her mother’s death, the couple briefly ruled Castille (1504-1506). After Philipp’s death in 1506, Joanna became mentally ill and was confined to a nunnery for the rest of her life. Though legally queen of Spain throughout this time, her father Ferdinand and later her son Charles ruled in her place.

Her father Charles ensured his domination and throne by having his mother confined for the rest of her life in the rooms of the Convent of Santa Clara in Tordesillas, Castile. Joanna’s condition degenerated further. She apparently became convinced that some of the nuns of the convent wanted to kill her, a fear which was never proved. Reportedly it was difficult for her to eat, sleep, bathe, or change her clothes. Charles wrote to the Convent of Santa Clara caretakers: “It seems to me that the best and most suitable thing for you to do is to make sure that no person speaks with Her Majesty, for no good could come from it”.
Joanna had her youngest daughter, Catherine of Austria, with her during Ferdinand II’s time as regent, 1507–1516. Her older daughter, Eleanor of Austria, had created a semblance of a household within the convent rooms. In her final years, Joanna’s physical state began to rapidly decline with mobility ever more difficult; she died on Good Friday, 12 April 1555 at the age of 75 in the Convent of Santa Clara at Tordesillas. She is entombed in the Royal Chapel of Granada (la Capilla Real) in Spain alongside her parents Isabella I and Ferdinand II, her husband Philip I and her nephew Miguel da Paz, Prince of Asturias. A statue of her stands in Tordesillas and the convent in which she was confined for fifty years can be visited.

Joanna was born in the city of Toledo, the capital of the Kingdom of Castile. She was the third child and second daughter of Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon of the royal House of Trastámara. Joanna was an intelligent child and student. In the Castilian court her main tutors were the Dominican priest Andrés de Miranda, the respected educator Beatriz Galindo who was a member of the queen’s court, and her mother the queen. She was accomplished in religious studies, court etiquette, the arts of dance and music, and equestrian skills. Joanna mastered all of the Iberian Romance languages: Castilian, Leonese, Galician-Portuguese and Catalan. She also was fluent in French and Latin. She was trained and educated for a significant marriage that, as a royal family alliance, would extend the kingdoms’ power and security as well as its influence and peaceful relations with other ruling powers. As an infanta she was not expected to be heiress to the throne of either Castile or Aragon, although through deaths she later inherited both.
Joanna was said to have been an extremely attractive woman during her youth. She had a fair complexion, blue eyes and her hair colour was between reddish-blonde and auburn, like her mother and sister Catherine. English ambassadors at Valencia on 23 June 1505 attempted to give a detailed description of her appearance according to fifteen criteria though her clothing hampered their estimation.

In 1496, Joanna, at the age of sixteen, was betrothed to Philip the Handsome, Duke of Burgundy (titular), in the region of Flanders in the Low Countries. Philip’s parents were Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor and his first wife, Duchess Mary of Burgundy. The marriage was one of a set of family alliances between the Habsburgs and the Trastámaras designed to strengthen both against growing French power. Joanna entered a proxy marriage at the Palacio de los Vivero in the city of Valladolid, Castile (her parents had secretly married there in 1469). In August 1496 Joanna left from the port of Laredo in northern Spain on the Atlantic’s Bay of Biscay. She would not see her siblings again except for her younger sister Catherine of Aragon in 1506, who was then the Princess Dowager of Wales. Joanna began her journey to Flanders in the Low Countries, which consisted of parts of the present day Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, and Germany, on 22 August 1496. The formal marriage took place on 20 October 1496 in Lier, north of present day Brussels. Between 1498 and 1507, she gave birth to six children: two emperors and four queens.
Joanna’s life with Philip was rendered extremely unhappy by his infidelity and her political insecurity. He consistently attempted to usurp her legal birthrights to power. This led in no small part to rumors of her insanity, stoked by reports of her depressive or neurotic acts while she was imprisoned or manipulated by her husband.

Most historians now agree that she had melancholia, severe clinical depression, a psychosis, or a case of inherited schizophrenia. There is debate about the diagnosis that she was mentally ill considering that her symptoms were aggravated by non-consensual confinement and control by others who had assumed her royal powers. To legitimize the claims of her husband, father, and son to the throne, Joanna was nominalized as Queen regnant of Castile, León, and Aragon until her death. It is possible that she inherited mental illness from her mother’s family: her maternal grandmother Isabella of Portugal, Queen of Castile suffered from it in widowhood after her stepson exiled her to the castle of Arévalo in Ávila, Castile.

 

 

Ivan  the  Terrible

Ivan IV Vasilyevich (25 August 1530 – 28 March [O.S. 18 March] 1584), known in English as Ivan the Terrible, Ivan Grozny; lit. Fearsome), was the Grand Prince of Moscow from 1533 to 1547 and Tsar of All the Russias from 1547 until his death. His long reign saw the conquest of the Khanates of Kazan, Astrakhan, and Siberia, transforming Russia into a multiethnic and multiconfessional state spanning almost one billion acres, approximately 4,046,856 km2 (1,562,500 sq mi). Ivan managed countless changes in the progression from a medieval state to an empire and emerging regional power, and became the first ruler to be crowned as Tsar of All the Russias.

Historic sources present disparate accounts of Ivan’s complex personality: he was described as intelligent and devout, yet given to rages and prone to episodic outbreaks of mental illness. On one such outburst he killed his groomed and chosen heir Ivan Ivanovich. This left the Tsardom to be passed to Ivan’s younger son, the weak and intellectually disabled Feodor Ivanovich. Ivan’s legacy is complex: he was an able diplomat, a patron of arts and trade, founder of Russia’s first Print Yard, but he is also remembered for his apparent paranoia and arguably harsh treatment of the nobility.

 

 

Feodor  I  of  Russia

Fyodor (Theodore) I Ivanovich (31 May 1557 – 16/17 January (NS) 1598) was the last Rurikid Tsar of Russia (1584–1598), son of Ivan IV (The Terrible) and Anastasia Romanovna. He was born in Moscow and crowned Tsar and Autocrat of all Russia at Assumption Cathedral, Moscow, on 31 May 1584.
Being unhealthy and, by some reports, intellectually disabled, Feodor was only the nominal ruler, having his duties handed over to his wife’s brother and trusted minister Boris Godunov, who would later succeed Feodor as tsar. Feodor’s childless death left the Rurikid dynasty extinct, and spurred Russia’s descent to the catastrophic Time of Troubles.
In English he is sometimes called Feodor the Bellringer in consequence of his strong faith and inclination to travel the land and ring the bells at churches. However, in Russian the name “Bellringer” is hardly ever used.
In Russian documents he is sometimes called blessed. He is also listed in the Great Synaxaristes of the Orthodox Church with his feast day on January 7 (OS).

Feodor was a simple minded man who took little interest in politics, and was never considered a candidate for the Russian throne until the death of his elder brother Ivan Ivanovich. He was of pious character and spent most of his time in prayers. In 1580, Feodor married Irina (Alexandra) Feodorovna Godunova (1557 – 26 October/23 November 1603), sister of Ivan’s minister Boris Godunov. Upon this marriage, Boris legitimized himself, after Ivan IV’s death, as a de facto regent for the weak and disabled tsar Feodor.
Unlike his father, Feodor had no enthusiasm in maintaining exclusive trading rights with the Kingdom of England. Feodor declared his kingdom open to all foreigners, and dismissed the English ambassador Sir Jerome Bowes, whose pomposity had been tolerated by Feodor’s father. Elizabeth I sent a new ambassador, Giles Fletcher, the Elder, to demand Boris Godunov to convince the tsar to reconsider. The negotiations failed, due to Fletcher addressing Feodor with two of his titles omitted. Elizabeth continued to appeal to Feodor in half appealing, half reproachful letters. She proposed an alliance, something which she had refused to do when offered one by Feodor’s father, but was turned down.
After almost twelve years of marriage, Tsaritsa Irina gave birth to a daughter, Feodosia, in 1592. Feodosia died in 1594 aged two. Feodor’s failure to sire other children brought an end to the centuries-old central branch of the Rurik dynasty (although many princes of later times are descendants of Rurik as well). Feodor was succeeded as tsar by Godunov, who had for many years ruled in Feodor’s name. The termination of the dynasty can also be considered to be one of the reasons for the Time of Troubles. He died in Moscow and was buried at Archangel Cathedral, Kremlin.

His troubled reign was dramatised by Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy in his verse drama Tsar Fiodor Ioannovich (1868).

 

 

Rudolf II,   Holy  Roman  Emperor

Rudolf II (July 18, 1552 – January 20, 1612) was Holy Roman Emperor (1576–1612), King of Hungary and Croatia (as Rudolf I, 1572–1608), King of Bohemia (1575–1608/1611) and Archduke of Austria (1576–1608). He was a member of the House of Habsburg.
Rudolf’s legacy has traditionally been viewed in three ways: an ineffectual ruler whose mistakes led directly to the Thirty Years’ War; a great and influential patron of Northern Mannerist art; and a devotee of occult arts and learning which helped seed the scientific revolution.

Rudolf was born in Vienna on 18 July 1552. He was the eldest son and successor of Maximilian II, Holy Roman Emperor, King of Bohemia, and King of Hungary and Croatia; his mother was Maria of Spain, a daughter of Charles V and Isabella of Portugal.
He spent eight formative years, from age 11 to 19 (1563–1571), in Spain, at the court of his maternal uncle Phillip II. After his return to Vienna, his father was concerned about Rudolf’s aloof and stiff manner, typical of the more conservative Spanish court, rather than the more relaxed and open Austrian court; but his Spanish mother saw in him courtliness and refinement. Rudolf would remain for the rest of his life reserved, secretive, and largely a homebody who did not like to travel or even partake in the daily affairs of state. He was more intrigued by occult learning such as astrology and alchemy, which was mainstream in the Renaissance period, and had a wide variety of personal hobbies such as horses, clocks, collecting rarities, and being a patron of the arts. He suffered from periodic bouts of “melancholy” (depression), which was common in the Habsburg line. These became worse with age, and were manifested by a withdrawal from the world and its affairs into his private interests.
Like his contemporary, Elizabeth I of England, Rudolf dangled himself as a prize in a string of diplomatic negotiations for marriages, but never in fact married. It has been proposed by A. L. Rowse that he was homosexual. During his periods of self-imposed isolation, Rudolf reportedly had affairs with his court chamberlain, Wolfgang von Rumpf, and a series of valets. One of these, Philip Lang, ruled him for years and was hated by those seeking favour with the emperor. Rudolf was known, in addition, to have had a succession of affairs with women, some of whom claimed to have been impregnated by him. He had several illegitimate children with his mistress Catherina Strada. Their eldest son, don Julius Caesar d´Austria, was likely born between 1584 and 1586 and received an education and opportunities for political and social prominence from his father. In 1607, Rudolf sent Julius to live at the Bohemian Ceský Krumlov (in the modern-day Czech Republic) castle, which Rudolf purchased from the last of the House of Rosenberg (Peter Vok/Wok von Rosenberg) after he fell into financial ruin. Julius lived at Ceský Krumlov when in 1608 he reportedly abused and murdered a local barber’s daughter, who had been living in the castle, and then disfigured her body. Rudolf condemned his son’s act and suggested that he should be imprisoned for the rest of his life. However, Julius died in 1609 after showing signs of schizophrenia, refusing to bathe, and living in squalor; his death was apparently caused by an ulcer that ruptured.

Many artworks commissioned by Rudolf are unusually erotic. The emperor was the subject of a whispering campaign by his enemies in his family and the Church in the years before he was deposed. Sexual allegations may well have formed a part of the campaign against him.
Historians have traditionally blamed Rudolf’s preoccupation with the arts, occult sciences, and other personal interests as the reason for the political disasters of his reign. More recently historians have re-evaluated this view and see his patronage of the arts and occult sciences as a triumph and key part of the Renaissance, while his political failures are seen as a legitimate attempt to create a unified Christian empire, which was undermined by the realities of religious, political and intellectual disintegrations of the time.

Although raised in his uncle’s Catholic court in Spain, Rudolf was tolerant of Protestantism and other religions including Judaism. He largely withdrew from Catholic observances, even in death denying last sacramental rites. He had little attachment to Protestants either, except as counter-weight to repressive Papal policies. He put his primary support behind conciliarists, irenicists and humanists. When the papacy instigated the Counter-Reformation, using agents sent to his court, Rudolf backed those who he thought were the most neutral in the debate, not taking a side or trying to effect restraint, thus leading to political chaos and threatening to provoke civil war.
His conflict with the Ottoman Turks was the final cause of his undoing. Unwilling to compromise with the Turks, and stubbornly determined that he could unify all of Christendom with a new Crusade, he started a long and indecisive war with the Turks in 1593. This war lasted till 1606, and was known as “The Long War”. By 1604 his Hungarian subjects were exhausted by the war and revolted, led by Stephen Bocskay. In 1605 Rudolf was forced by his other family members to cede control of Hungarian affairs to his younger brother Archduke Matthias. Matthias by 1606 forged a difficult peace with the Hungarian rebels (Peace of Vienna) and the Turks (Peace of Zsitvatorok). Rudolf was angry with his brother’s concessions, which he saw as giving away too much in order to further Matthias’ hold on power. So Rudolf prepared to start a new war with the Turks. But Matthias rallied support from the disaffected Hungarians and forced Rudolf to give up the crowns of Hungary, Austria, and Moravia to him. Matthias imprisoned Georg Keglevic who was the Commander-in-chief, General, Vice-Ban of Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia and since 1602 Baron in Transylvania, but soon left him free again. At that time the Principality of Transylvania was a fully autonomous, but only semi-independent state under the nominal suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire, where it was the time of the Sultanate of Women. At the same time, seeing a moment of royal weakness, Bohemian Protestants demanded greater religious liberty, which Rudolf granted in the Letter of Majesty in 1609. However the Bohemians continued to press for further freedoms and Rudolf used his army to repress them. The Bohemian Protestants appealed to Matthias for help, whose army then held Rudolf prisoner in his castle in Prague, until 1611, when Rudolf was forced to cede the crown of Bohemia to his brother.

Rudolf died in 1612, nine months after he had been stripped of all effective power by his younger brother, except the empty title of Holy Roman Emperor, to which Matthias was elected five months later. He died unmarried. In May 1618 with the event known as the Defenestration of Prague, the Protestant Bohemians, in defence of the rights granted them in the Letter of Majesty, began the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648).

Rudolf moved the Habsburg capital from Vienna to Prague in 1583,he loved collecting paintings, and was often reported to sit and stare in rapture at a new work for hours on end. He spared no expense in acquiring great past masterworks, such as those of Dürer and Brueghel. He was also patron to some of the best contemporary artists, who mainly produced new works in the Northern Mannerist style, such as Bartholomeus Spranger, Hans von Aachen, Giambologna, Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Aegidius Sadeler, Roelant Savery, and Adrian de Vries, as well as commissioning works from Italians like Veronese. Rudolf’s collections were the most impressive in the Europe of his day, and the greatest collection of Northern Mannerist art ever assembled.
Rudolf’s love of collecting went far beyond paintings and sculptures. He commissioned decorative objects of all kinds and in particular mechanical moving devices. Ceremonial swords and musical instruments, clocks, water works, astrolabes, compasses, telescopes and other scientific instruments, were all produced for him by some of the best craftsmen in Europe.
He patronized natural philosophers such as the botanist Charles de l’Ecluse, and the astronomers Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler both attended his court. Tycho Brahe developed the Rudolfine tables (finished by Kepler, after Brahe’s death), the first comprehensive table of data of the movements of the planets. As mentioned before, Rudolf also attracted some of the best scientific instrument makers of the time, such as Jost Buergi, Erasmus Habermel and Hans Christoph Schissler. They had direct contact with the court astronomers and, through the financial support of the court, they were economically independent to develop scientific instruments and manufacturing techniques.

The poetess Elizabeth Jane Weston, a writer of neo-Latin poetry, was also part of his court and wrote numerous odes to him.
Rudolf kept a menagerie of exotic animals, botanical gardens, and Europe’s most extensive “cabinet of curiosities” (Kunstkammer) incorporating “the three kingdoms of nature and the works of man”. It was housed at Prague Castle, where between 1587 and 1605 he built the northern wing to house his growing collections.
He was even alleged by one person to have owned the Voynich manuscript, a codex whose author and purpose, as well as the language and script and posited cipher remain unidentified to this day. According to hearsay passed on in a letter written by Johannes Marcus Marci in 1665, Rudolf was said to have acquired the manuscript at some unspecified time for 600 gold ducats. No evidence in support of this single piece of hearsay has ever been discovered.
By 1597, the collection occupied three rooms of the incomplete northern wing. When building was completed in 1605, the collection was moved to the dedicated Kunstkammer. Naturalia (minerals and gemstones) were arranged in a 37 cabinet display that had three vaulted chambers in front, each about 5.5 metres wide by 3 metres high and 60 metres long, connected to a main chamber 33 metres long. Large uncut gemstones were held in strong boxes.
Rudolf’s Kunstkammer was not a typical “cabinet of curiosities” – a haphazard collection of unrelated specimens. Rather, the Rudolfine Kunstkammer was systematically arranged in an encyclopaedic fashion. In addition, Rudolf II employed his polyglot court physician, Anselmus Boetius de Boodt (c. 1550–1632), to curate the collection. De Boodt was an avid mineral collector. He travelled widely on collecting trips to the mining regions of Germany, Bohemia and Silesia, often accompanied by his Bohemian naturalist friend, Thaddaeus Hagecius. Between 1607 and 1611, de Boodt catalogued the Kunstkammer, and in 1609 he published Gemmarum et Lapidum, one of the finest mineralogical treatises of the 17th century.

As was customary at the time, the collection was private, but friends of the Emperor, artists, and professional scholars were allowed to study it. The collection became an invaluable research tool during the flowering of 17th-century European philosophy, the “Age of Reason”.
Rudolf’s successors did not appreciate the collection and the Kunstkammer gradually fell into disarray. Some 50 years after its establishment, most of the collection was packed into wooden crates and moved to Vienna. The collection remaining at Prague was looted during the last year of the Thirty Years War, by Swedish troops who sacked Prague Castle on 26 July 1648, also taking the best of the paintings, many of which later passed to the Orléans Collection after the death of Christina of Sweden. In 1782, the remainder of the collection was sold piecemeal to private parties by Joseph II. One of the surviving items from the Kunstkammer is a “fine chair” looted by the Swedes in 1648 and now owned by the Earl of Radnor at Longford Castle, United Kingdom; others survive in museums.

Astrology and alchemy were mainstream science in Renaissance Prague, and Rudolf was a firm devotee of both. His lifelong quest was to find the Philosopher’s Stone and Rudolf spared no expense in bringing Europe’s best alchemists to court, such as Edward Kelley and John Dee. Rudolf even performed his own experiments in a private alchemy laboratory. When Rudolf was a prince, Nostradamus prepared a horoscope which was dedicated to him as ‘Prince and King’.
Rudolf gave Prague a mystical reputation that persists in part to this day, with Alchemists’ Alley on the grounds of Prague Castle a popular visiting place,he is also the ruler in many of the legends of the Golem of Prague, either because of or simply adding to his occult reputation.

 

 

Charles  II  of  Spain

Charles II (Spanish: Carlos II) (6 November 1661 – 1 November 1700) was the last Habsburg ruler of Spain. His realm included Southern Netherlands and Spain’s overseas empire, stretching from the Americas to the Spanish East Indies. He is noted for his extensive physical, intellectual, and emotional disabilities—along with his consequent ineffectual rule.
He died in 1700 childless and heirless, and all potential Habsburg successors had predeceased him. In his will, Charles named as his successor his 16-year old grand-nephew, Philip, Duke of Anjou grandson of Charles’ half-sister Maria Theresa of Spain, the first wife of Louis XIV (and thus grandson of the reigning French king Louis XIV). Because the other European powers viewed the prospective dynastic relationship between France and Spain as disturbing the balance of power in Europe, they went to war in the War of the Spanish Succession.

Charles was born in the Spanish capital, Madrid, the son of Philip IV of Spain with Philip’s second wife, Mariana of Austria (also known as Maria Anna). As the only surviving male heir of his father’s two marriages, Charles was named Prince of Asturias, the title given to the person first in line to the Spanish throne.
Charles did not learn to speak until the age of four nor to walk until eight, and was treated as virtually an infant until he was ten years old. Fearing the frail child would be overtaxed, his caretakers did not force Charles to attend school. The indolence of the young Charles was indulged to such an extent that at times he was not expected to be clean. When his illegitimate half-brother John of Austria, a natural son of Philip IV, obtained power by exiling the queen mother from court, he covered his nose and insisted that the king at least brush his hair.
The only vigorous activity in which Charles is known to have participated was shooting. He occasionally indulged in the sport in the preserves of El Escorial.

The years of Charles’s reign were difficult for Spain. The economy was stagnant, there was hunger in the land, and the power of the monarchy over the various Spanish provinces was extremely weak. Spain’s finances were perpetually in crisis. Charles’ unfitness for rule meant he was often ignored, and power during his reign became the subject of court intrigues and foreign, particularly French and Austrian, influence.
Charles was four years old when his father, Philip IV, died on 17 September 1665. The Council of Castile (as the Regency Council) appointed Philip’s second wife and Charles’ mother, Mariana of Austria, regent for the minor king. At the time, the size of the Spanish Empire was a then-unheard-of 12.2 million square kilometres (4.7×106 sq mi), but in other respects it was in decline, a process to which Philip’s inability to achieve successful domestic and military reform is felt to have contributed.
As regent, Mariana managed the country’s affairs through a series of favourites (“validos”), whose merits usually amounted to no more than meeting her fancy. Her validos included her confessor, Juan Everardo Nithard, whom she made Grand Inquisitor in 1666, and which gave him access to the Regency Council, from where he became the most important person of the Spanish Court. From then on he was the de facto prime minister or valido of Spain. The sheer size of the kingdom at that time made this kind of government increasingly damaging to the realm’s affairs. By 1668, Nithard was desperate to reduce Spain’s military commitments, at almost any price, and to end the Portuguese Restoration War accepted the loss of the Crown of Portugal and formally recognized the sovereignty of the House of Braganza by signing the Treaty of Lisbon. The treaty ceded the North African enclave of Ceuta to Spain, but marked the loss of Portugal and the Portuguese colonies. After he signed the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1668) with France ending the War of Devolution in Spanish Netherlands the members of the Councils and in particular Charles’ illegitimate half-brother, John of Austria, started plotting to overthrow him. In 1669, Nithard was dismissed by a military pronunciamiento (a coup) led by John.

From 1671, the queen-regent’s then favourite was Fernando de Valenzuela. In 1675, a court intrigue conducted by Valenzuela’s rivals and supported by John succeeded in driving Valenzuela from court. Also in 1675, Charles reached the age of 14, the age when he was legally entitled to rule without a regent. However, on the basis of Charles’ illnesses and disabilities, Mariana decided to continue the regency. Valenzuela returned to court and in 1677 the queen-regent openly appointed him prime minister, and conferred a grandeeship on him, to the profound indignation of the other grandees.
In January 1678 a palace coup broke out against the queen-regent, and John established himself as prime minister. Mariana was driven from Madrid, and Valenzuela was exiled. The nobility came to dominate Spain once again. By the Treaties of Nijmegen (1678), which brought to an end the Franco-Dutch War (1672-78), Spain gave up to France the Imperial County of Burgundy (Franche-Comté), and further territories of the Spanish Netherlands, including the town of Saint-Omer with the remaining northwestern part of the former Imperial County of Artois, the lands of Cassel, Aire and Ypres in southwestern Flanders, the Bishopric of Cambrai, as well as the towns of Valenciennes and Maubeuge in the southern County of Hainaut. Great hopes were entertained for his administration, but it proved disappointing and short. Most nobles were incompetent and self-serving, but there were a few good men such as the Count of Oropesa, who managed (despite ruinous deflation) to stabilize the currency. Others tried to weaken the power of the Inquisition (which however was not abolished until 1808) and encourage economic development.

It was imperative for Charles to produce an heir as early as possible, and John arranged to find a suitable wife for him in the person of Marie Louise of Orléans. A proxy marriage ceremony took place in Paris on 30 August 1679. John died on 17 September 1679, and the queen-regent returned to court. On 19 November 1679, at the age of 18, Charles married 16-year-old Marie Louise in person in Spain.
In November 1683, Louis XIV of France again attacked the Spansh Netherlands in the War of the Reunions (1683–84). Though brief, the war was devastating on Spanish forces and ended in August 1684 in the Truce of Ratisbon, to enable the Holy Roman Emperor to concentrate on the attacks from the Ottoman Empire in the east in the Great Turkish War. France attacked the Spansh Netherlands again in 1688 at the start of the Nine Years’ War which ended with the Treaty of Ryswick in 1697.
After Mariana died on 16 May 1696, Charles ruled without a regent until his death in 1700.
In 1680, Charles presided over the greatest auto-da-fé in the history of the Spanish Inquisition, in which 120 prisoners were forced to participate, of whom 21 were later burned at the stake. A large, richly adorned book was published celebrating the event. The last public auto-da-fé took place in 1691. Toward the end of his life, August 1700, in one of his few independent acts as king, Charles created a Junta Magna (Great Council) to examine and investigate the Spanish Inquisition. The council’s report was so damning of the Inquisition that the Inquisitor General convinced the decrepit monarch to “consign the ‘terrible indictment’ to the flames”. When Philip V took the throne, he called for the report, but no copy could be found.

Toward the end of his life Charles’ fragile health deteriorated and he became increasingly hypersensitive and strange, at one point demanding that the bodies of his family be exhumed so he could look upon the corpses. He officially retired when he had a nervous breakdown caused by the amount of pressure put on him to try to pull Spain out of the economic trouble it was going through. He lived a simple life from then on, playing games and other activities. He died in Madrid on 1 November 1700, five days before his 39th birthday. According to the medical coroner, Charles’ body “contained not a single drop of blood, his heart looked like the size of a grain of pepper, his lungs were corroded, his intestines were putrid and gangrenous, he had a single testicle which was as black as carbon and his head was full of water.”
As the American historians Will and Ariel Durant put it, Charles II was “short, lame, epileptic, senile, and completely bald before 35, he was always on the verge of death, but repeatedly baffled Christendom by continuing to live.”

 

 

Ivan  V  of  Russia

Ivan V Alekseyevich ( 6 September [O.S. 27 August] 1666 – 8 February [O.S. 29 January] 1696) was a joint Tsar of Russia (with his younger half-brother Peter I) who co-reigned between 1682 and 1696. He was the youngest son of Alexis I of Russia and Maria Miloslavskaya. His reign was only formal, since he had serious physical and mental disabilities. He sat still for hours at a time and needed assistance in order to walk.
Ivan V was the 11th child of Tsar Alexis. As he was an eye-sore and infirm, his capacity for supreme power was challenged by the party of the Naryshkin family, who aspired to bring Natalia Naryshkina’s son, Peter I, to the throne. Upon the death of Feodor III of Russia in April 1682, their enemies insinuated that the Naryshkins had Ivan strangled, thus fomenting the Moscow Uprising of 1682, which was put to an end only after Ivan was demonstrated by his relatives to the furious crowd.

Ivan had a very close relationship with his stepmother and half-brother/co-Tsar Peter. He did not really want to become Tsar but was persuaded to.
On 25 June the same year, Ivan and Peter were crowned in the Cathedral of the Dormition as “dvoetsarstvenniki” (double tsars). A special throne with two seats was executed for the occasion (now on display in the Kremlin Armoury). Although Ivan was considered the “senior tsar”, actual power was wielded by his elder sister, Sophia Alekseyevna. In 1689, when she realized that power was slipping from her hands, she attempted to raise another riot, speculating that the Naryshkins had destroyed Ivan’s crown and were poised to set his room on fire. However, Ivan’s tutor, Prince Prozorovsky, persuaded him to change sides, whereupon Ivan declared his allegiance to his brother’s cause.
During the last decade of his life, Ivan was completely overshadowed by the more energetic Peter I. He spent his days with his wife, Praskovia Saltykova, caring about little but “praying and fasting day and night”. Ivan’s purported debility did not prevent him from producing robust offspring in the shape of five daughters, one of whom — Anna Ivanovna — would assume the throne in 1730. His granddaughter through another child, Anna Leopoldovna would become a non-crowned ruler of Russia. Her son and Ivan’s great-grandson, Ivan VI would be the last Russian emperor among the issue of Maria Miloslavskaya, the first wife of Tsar Alexis. The last surviving descendant of Ivan V, Catherine Antonovna of Brunswick, died in 1807 after being imprisoned for her entire life.

At the age of 27 he was described by foreign ambassadors as senile, paralytic and almost blind. He died two years later and was interred in the Archangel Cathedral.
For many years Ivan was treated like a puppet ruler of Muscovy. His largest ruling influence was his older sister Sophia. She vied for power along with Ivan and her half brother Peter, and is even blamed for the murders of Peter’s mother and immediate family. Due to this and other situations tension arose between the two groups of Tsar Alexis’ children. After Ivan’s death on 8 February 1696 his half brother Peter I was left to become supreme ruler and Tsar of all of Russia. The struggle for power between the family had finally come to an end, and Peter was left to bring Russia into a new age.

 

 

Maria  I  of  Portugal

Maria I  (17 December 1734 – 20 March 1816) was Queen of Portugal, Brazil, and the Algarves. Known as Maria the Pious (in Portugal), or Maria the Mad (in Brazil), she was the first undisputed Queen regnant of Portugal. Her reign would be a noteworthy one. With Napoleon’s European conquests, her court, then under the direction of Prince Dom João, the Prince Regent, moved to the then Portuguese colony of Brazil. Later on, Brazil would be elevated from the rank of a colony to that of a Kingdom, the Kingdom of Brazil, with the consequential formation of the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves.
Maria was born at the Ribeira Royal Palace in Lisbon. Maria was baptized Maria Francisca Isabel Josefa Antónia Gertrudes Rita Joana. On the day of her birth, her grandfather, King João V of Portugal, created her the Princess of Beira. She was the eldest of all her siblings.
When her father succeeded to the throne in 1750 as José I, Maria became his heiress presumptive and was given the traditional titles of Princess of Brazil and Duchess of Braganza.
Maria married her uncle, Infante Pedro of Braganza on 6 June 1760. At the time of their marriage, Maria was 25 and Pedro was 42. Despite the age gap, the couple had a happy marriage. Peter automatically became co-monarch (as Pedro III of Portugal) when Maria ascended the throne, as a child had already been born from their marriage. The couple had six children and a stillborn baby.

Maria would grow up in a time when her father’s government and country were dominated completely by the first Marquis of Pombal. Her father would often retire to the Queluz National Palace which was later given to Maria and her husband.
The Marquis took control of the government after the terrible 1755 Lisbon earthquake of 1 November 1755, in which around 100,000 people lost their lives; the palace of her birth was also destroyed in the disaster.
After the earthquake, her father was often uncomfortable at the thought of staying in enclosed spaces and later had claustrophobia. The king later had a palace built in Ajuda, away from the city centre. This palace became known as Real Barraca de Ajuda (Royal Complex at Ajuda) because it was made of wood. The family would spend much time at the large palace and it was the birthplace of Maria’s first child. In 1794 the palace burned to the ground and Ajuda National Palace was built in its place.
In 1760 Maria married her uncle Pedro, younger brother of her father Jose I. They had six children, of whom the eldest surviving son succeeded Maria as João VI on her death in 1816.

In 1777, she became the first undisputed queen regnant of Portugal and the Algarves. With Maria’s accession, her husband became king as Peter III. Despite Peter’s status as king and the nominal joint reign, the actual regal authority was vested solely in Maria as she was the lineal heir of the Crown; also, as Peter’s kingship was iure uxoris only, in the event of Maria’s death, his reign would cease, and the Crown would pass to Maria’s descendants. However, Peter would predecease his wife. Maria is considered as having been a good ruler in the period prior to her madness.
Her first act as queen was to dismiss the popular Secretary of State of the Kingdom, the Marquis of Pombal, who had broken the power of the reactionary aristocracy via the Tavora affair, partially because of Pombal’s Enlightenment, anti-Jesuit policies.
Noteworthy events of this period were Portugal’s membership of the League of Armed Neutrality (July 1782) and the 1781 cession of Delagoa Bay from Austria to Portugal.

Queen Maria suffered from religious mania and melancholia. This acute mental illness (perhaps due to porphyria, which also may have tainted George III of the United Kingdom) made her incapable of handling state affairs after 1792.

Her madness was first officially noticed in 1786 when Maria had to be carried back to her apartments in a state of delirium. The queen’s mental state became increasingly worse. In May 1786 her husband died; Maria was devastated and forbade any court entertainments.
According to a contemporary the state festivities resembled religious ceremonies. Her state worsened after the death of her eldest son (and heir-apparent), aged 27, from smallpox, and of her confessor, in 1791.
In February 1792, she was deemed as mentally insane and was treated by Francis Willis, the same physician who attended George III of the United Kingdom. Willis wanted to take her to England, but that was refused by the Portuguese court. Maria’s second son (eldest surviving) and new heir-apparent, John took over the government in her name, even though he only took the title of Prince Regent in 1799.
When the Real Barraca de Ajuda burnt down in 1794, the court was forced to move to Queluz where the ill queen would lie in her apartments all day and visitors would complain of terrible screams that would echo throughout the palace.

Incapacitated, Maria lived in Brazil for eight years, always in an unhappy state. In 1816, the Queen died at the Carmo Convent in Rio de Janeiro at the age of 81. After her death, Prince Regent João was acclaimed the King of Portugal, Brazil, and the Algarves and had her body was returned to Lisbon, and interned in a mausoleum in the Estrela Basilica (Portuguese: Basilica da Estrela), that she had helped found.
Maria is a greatly admired figure in both Brazil in Portugal, due to the tremendous changes and events that took place during her reign. In Portugal, she is celebrated as a strong female figure. Her legacy shines at Portugal’s Queluz National Palace, a baroque-roccoco masterpiece that she helped conceive. A large statue of her stands in front of the palace, and a pousada near the palace is named in her honour. A large marble statue of the Queen was erected at the Portuguese National Library in Lisbon, by the students of Joaquim Machado de Castro.
In Brazil, she is admired as a key figure in the eventual independence of Brazil. It is during her reign, though acted through her son’s regency, that many of the institutions and organizations in Brazil were created. These institutions were the precursors to their modern day equivalents and granted large degree of power to the Brazilian colonials. While she is often called A Louca (the Crazy) in Brazil, Brazilian and Portuguese historic scholars hold her in high esteem.