Anna of Bohemia and Hungary

1503 – 1547 · Generation IX · Consort

Anna (1503 – 1547). Consort. Married Ferdinand in 1521. Daughter of Vladislaus II; the 1515 Vienna double betrothal married her to Ferdinand I, bringing Bohemia and Hungary to the Habsburgs after Mohács. Born in Buda to Vladislaus and his third wife, Anne of Foix, she passed into the care of Emperor Maximilian I on her father’s death in 1516, and was brought up with her sister-in-law Mary, her brother’s wife, in Vienna and Innsbruck, where the girls were taught hunting and the handling of weapons alongside a humanist education. The wedding took place at Linz on 26 May 1521. When her brother Louis II died at Mohács in 1526, Ferdinand was elected King of Bohemia with Anna as queen, though his Hungarian crown was contested by John Zápolya. Ferdinand gave her real authority: she acted as regent during his stay in Brussels, co-chaired his court council and presided over diets. The couple had fifteen children. She died in Prague in 1547, days after the birth of her daughter Joanna; Ferdinand never remarried, and the Belvedere at Prague Castle was built for her.

Place in the family

• Anna of Bohemia and Hungary was a 4× great-grandmother of Maria Theresa.
• The archive records 45 of her descendants, across 15 generations.

Read more on Wikipedia

Partners

• Married Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor (1503 – 1564) in 1521 — 3 children together

Children

• Maximilian II, Holy Roman Emperor (1527 – 1576)
• Ferdinand II, Archduke of Austria (1529 – 1595)
• Charles II, Archduke of Austria (1540 – 1590)

Life

• 1503 — Born
• 1521 — Married Ferdinand
• 1547 — Died