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Empress Maria Theresa

Perhaps because the exercise of supreme authority by women has been so much the exception in the historical past, a certain fascination and glamour tends to attach itself to reigning queens. In the English-speaking world, the supreme instance is Gloriana, the Virgin Queen, Elizabeth I; a figure who shines all the more vividly by the set-piece contrast with her cousin, fellow-queen, and victim, Mary Queen of Scots. But other queens as well stand larger than life in popular memory, from Cleopatra to Catherine the Great of Russia. A dark allure surrounds even history's wicked queens, such as Catherine de Medici.

Of famous queens, the one most lacking in this allure is perhaps Queen Victoria. Though she came to the throne as a teen-age girl, her image is indelibly matronly and, well, Victorian. The very triumph of Britain in her reign perhaps robbed her of the chance for gallantry; no Armada approached Victorian England, so she had no occasion to deliver a counterpart to ElizabethÆs Tillbury speech.

But another great European queen of the previous century, the Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, has failed even more to capture the imagination, at least in the English-speaking world. Unlike her contemporary, Catherine of Russia, or her daughter, Marie Antoinette, even her name is likely to be unknown to the general public. Those who have heard of her are likely to have little more image of her than as a matronly woman (which she was, in later life), who was defeated by Frederick the Great of Prussia.

A complete biographical sketch of Maria Theresa, either in terms of her character or in terms of her 40-year reign, is impossible within the limits of this essay. It will therefore concentrate instead on the difficult conditions of her acces-sion, the manner in which she surmounted them, and the insights these events give to a woman and sovereign whom the English-speaking world has too easily forgotten.

Our image of her may...

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Empress Maria Theresa. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 01:20, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1691932.html