Eleanor of Scotland

1433 – 1480 · Generation VI · Consort

Eleanor of Scotland was Archduchess of Austria by her marriage to Sigismund of Tyrol, twice regent of his lands and one of the first writers of prose fiction in German. Born in 1433 to James I of Scotland and Joan Beaufort, the sixth of their children, she inherited her father’s love of literature. From 1445 she lived at the French court of Charles VII, where a match with Frederick, King of the Romans, was proposed.

Instead, on 8 September 1449, she was married by proxy, at a church near Chinon, to Sigismund, Archduke of Further Austria and ruler of Tyrol. She governed as regent in his absence from 1455 to 1458 and again in 1467, raising money, buying guns, hiring mercenaries and running his estates.

She wrote in Latin, French, German and Scots, and she translated the French romance Pontus and Sidonia into German, reshaping it to favour the political role of women. It was widely printed, and a copy at Gotha is dated 1465. She and Elisabeth of Nassau-Saarbrücken are credited with bringing the prose novel into German literature, and in 1473 the humanist Heinrich Steinhöwel dedicated his German version of Boccaccio’s Famous Women to her. She died at Innsbruck on 20 November 1480 giving birth to a son, Wolfgang, and was buried at Stams Abbey.

Place in the family

• Eleanor of Scotland married Sigismund, Archduke of Austria, a first cousin 3 times removed of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor.

Read more on Wikipedia

Partners

• Married Sigismund, Archduke of Austria (1427 – 1496) in 1449

Life

• 1433 — Born
• 1449 — Married Sigismund
• 1480 — Died

Sources

1. Eleanor of Scotland · Wikipedia
2. Sigismund, Archduke of Austria · Wikipedia