William I, Elector of Hesse

Amalie Elisabeth of Hanau-Münzenberg (28 January 1602– 18 August 1651) was Landgravine consort and Regent of Hesse-Kassel. She married the future William V, Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel in 1619 and became Landgravine upon his ascension to power in 1627. In 1637, military defeats forced her and William V into exile in East Frisia. Later that year, she became regent for their son William VI upon her husband’s death. Through skillful diplomacy and military successes in the Thirty Years’ War, she advanced the fortunes of Hesse-Kassel and influenced the Peace of Westphalia that brought the conflict to an end. She handed over an enlarged landgraviate to her son when she abdicated upon his majority in 1650.

. . .Amalie Elisabeth was remembered fondly among Calvinists for her efforts to preserve the Reformed faith in the Holy Roman Empire. When she visited Heidelberg in 1651, she was praised by the city’s inhabitants, who called her a second Deborah. In his 1901 book Women of the Reformed Church, James Isaac Good calls her both a “Reformed Deborah” and a “Reformed Joan of Arc.” Her first biography was likely written by Christian Gottfried Körner and appeared as an appendix to the Representation of the Thirty Years War by Friedrich Schiller. 

. . .Although Amalie Elisabeth’s reign was remembered for generations, modern scholarship on the Thirty Years’ War often pays little or no attention to her or her accomplishments. The foremost English-language biography on her is The Iron Princess: Amalia Elizabeth and the Thirty Years’ War, written by Dr. Tryntje Helfferich and published in 2013. In her book, Dr. Helfferich argues that Amalie Elisabeth’s role in the Thirty Years’ War has been marginalized in modern works “largely because she was a woman, for her role in the Thirty Years War rivaled that of Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar, Cardinal Mazarin, or even King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden.”

Madame Elizabeth Charlotte, Duchess of Orléans (born Princess Elizabeth Charlotte of the Palatinate, German: Elisabeth Charlotte; 27 May 1652 – 8 December 1722), also known as Liselotte von der Pfalz, was a German member of the House of Wittelsbach who married into the French royal family. She was the second wife of Monsieur Philippe I, Duke of Orléans (younger brother of Louis XIV). By Philippe, Liselotte was the mother of Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, and Élisabeth Charlotte, Duchess of Lorraine. Philippe II was France’s ruler during the Regency. Liselotte gained literary and historical importance primarily through preservation of her correspondence, which is of great cultural and historical value due to her sometimes very blunt descriptions of French court life and is today one of the best-known German-language texts of the Baroque period.

Liselotte not only became the ancestress of the House of Orléans, which came to the French throne with Louis Philippe I, the so-called “Citizen King” from 1830 to 1848, but also became the ancestress of numerous European royal families, so she was also called the “Grandmother of Europe”. Through her daughter she was the grandmother of Francis I, Holy Roman Emperor, the husband of Maria Theresa, and great-grandmother of Joseph II and Leopold II (both Holy Roman Emperors) and Marie Antoinette, the last Queen of France before the French Revolution.

. . .Liselotte became very close to her brother-in-law Louis XIV. He was “…enchanted by the fact that this was an extremely witty and lovely woman, that she danced well…”. He was often quite amused by her open, humorous and refreshingly uncomplicated nature. They often went hunting together—a rather unusual occupation for a noble lady of the time. Her habit of going for long walks was also noticed by the French court and was initially mocked (she even went for a walk in the park at night) but the King was delighted: “The King used to say: il n’y a que Vous qui jouissés des beautés de Versailles (you are the only one who enjoys the beauties of Versailles)”

. . .Louis XIV died on 1 September 1715 after a reign of 72 years and 110 days; one of the last people he summoned to his deathbed was Liselotte, saying goodbye to her with noble compliments. 

. . .Although she had not made it a habit to interfere in politics, only one month after the Louis XIV’s death, Liselotte successfully campaigned for the release of Huguenots who had been sent to the galleys for many years because of their beliefs. 184 people, including many preachers, were released; two years later she managed to release a further 30.

. . .Most of all, Liselotte was worried about the many intrigues and conspiracies against her son. She loathed the foreign minister and later prime minister, Father Guillaume Dubois (cardinal from 1721) and mistrusted the economist and chief financial controller John Law, who caused a currency devaluation and speculative bubble (the so-called Mississippi bubble):

I wanted this Law to come to Blockula with his art and system and never come to France.

— Liselotte von der Pfalz: Letter to her half-sister Raugräfin Luise from 11 July 1720.

. . .Liselotte was interested in opera and theatre and followed their development over decades, and was also able to recite long passages by heart. She was well read, as evidenced by many of her letters, and had a library of more than 3,000 volumes, including all the popular French and German novels and plays of her time (Voltaire dedicated his tragedy Oedipe to her), as well as most of the classical Greek and Latin authors (in German and French translation), Luther Bibles, maps with copperplate engravings, travelogues from all over the world as well as the tomes of natural history, medicine and mathematics. She amassed an extensive coin collection, primarily of antique gold coins (it was not her father who inherited the 12,000 copies her father had inherited in Kassel, but her mother), she owned 30 books on coin science and corresponded with Spanheim and other numismatists. She also bought three of the recently invented microscopes, with which she examined insects and other things. She spent her days at court gatherings, writing letters, reading and researching.

. . .Liselotte is said to have written an estimated 60,000 letters throughout her life, 2/3 in German and 1/3 in French, of which about 5,000 have survived, and about 850 of these are in French. With this, she surpasses the second great letter writer and contemporary witness of her epoch, Madame de Sévigné with her approximately 1,200 letters.

The letters deal with all aspects of life. They contain vivid and often satirical descriptions of court life, memories of her childhood and youth in Germany, the latest court gossip from all over Europe, reflections on literature and theatre, and thoughts about God and the world. Liselotte sought relief by writing long letters to her relatives in Germany, and the constant exchange became a cure for her inner melancholy and sadness.

Wikipedia:

Alexandra Feodorovna (Russian: Александра Фёдоровна, romanized: Aleksandra Fyodorovna; born Princess Alix of Hesse and by Rhine; 6 June 1872 – 17 July 1918) was the last empress of Russia as the consort of Nicholas II from their marriage on 26 November [O.S. 14 November] 1894 until his forced abdication on 15 March [O.S. 2 March] 1917.

Alexandra was deeply involved in the personal and political life of her husband, Tsar Nicholas II. Her reputation suffered due to her influence over Nicholas, particularly in her insistence on maintaining autocratic rule in the face of growing revolutionary pressures in Russia.[2] Her relationship with the Russian mystic Grigori Rasputin became a subject of controversy. Rasputin’s alleged ability to alleviate Alexei’s suffering from hemophilia increased Alexandra’s reliance on him, damaging the public perception of the Romanovs and fueling rumors about Rasputin’s power within the royal family. These associations with Rasputin and her opposition to political reform were seen as contributing factors to the collapse of the Romanov dynasty.

Following Nicholas II’s abdication, the imperial family were placed under house arrest by the Bolsheviks during the Russian Revolution. On 17 July 1918, they were murdered by Bolshevik forces in Yekaterinburg, marking the violent end of over three centuries of Romanov rule. Despite her unpopularity during her reign, Alexandra was canonized as Saint Alexandra the Passion Bearer by the Russian Orthodox Church in 2000.