Mary of Hungary
Mary of Hungary (c.
1371 –
1395) (in Hungarian and Slovakn:
Mária, in Croatian
Marija), 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 Elizabeta
Kotromanic of Bosnia.
She was intended to inherit her father's both 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
Jadviga. Ultimately
Sigismund of Luxemburg (1368-1437), a heir of the Polish
Kujavian dynasty and a member of
Bohemian royal family, married Mary.
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 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 the King of Poland in 1384. After a couple of years, Jadviga 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, but probably on the orders of Maria'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 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.The Horvats, as friends of his estranged wife Mary and her uncle Tvrtko I, participated in the
Battle of Kosovo in
1389. They were murdered by Sigismund's men near their stronghold of
Dobor.
Succession
Mary might have designated her uncle Stephen
Tvrtko I, also a descendant of the
Arpad 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 Christmass Day, somewhat secretly, Sigismund remarried, or was compelled to marry,
Barbara of Celje, Mary's kinswoman. In
1410, Sigismund was elected Holy Roman Emperor.
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
Mary of Hungary.
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Armorial of the House Anjou-Sicily*
House of Anjou-Sicily
