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Elisabeth of Austria (d. 1505)

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Archduchess Elisabeth of Austria (1435/36/possibly 1437 – 30 August 1505), (in Polish Elżbieta Rakuszanka, Hungarian: Erszebet), was a Polish-Lithuanian queen. In Polish, she is known as Elżbieta Rakuszanka and Elżbieta Austriaczka, both names meaning Elisabeth of Austria, or Elżbieta Habsburżanka, meaning Elisabeth of Habsburg.

She was the daughter of Albert II of Germany (1397-1439) and his wife Elisabeth (1409-42), heiress of Bohemia. She was a princess of Hungary, princess of Bohemia, and duchess of Austria. Austria had yet to be raised to an archduchy, although the Habsburgs had already begun styling themselves as archdukes.

She married on 10 March 1454 King Casimir (Kazimierz Jagellon, 1427-92), monarch of Poland and Lithuania. They had the following children:

After the 1457 childless death of Elisabeth's brother, king Ladislas Posthumous, she and her family started to advance their claims to the thrones of Bohemia and Hungary. Ultimately, her eldest son became elected to both monarchies.

Her younger sons, in turn, became monarchs of Poland and Lithuania.

Upon the death of her brother Ladislas, his remaining heiresses shared the inherited rights in a way which put all their mother's rights to Polish principalities to Elisabeth and her children. Elisabeth's said mother, also named Elisabeth, was the only child of late Emperor Sigismund, himself the eldest son and heir of her mother, yet one Elisabeth, a daughter of ducal Pomeranian dynasty and the ultimate heiress of her mother, Elisabeth of Poland, the eldest daughter of Casimir III of Poland who also had inherited the principality of Kujavia (the elder branch of Masovia-Sandomir) and some rights to successions in parts of Greater Poland and Silesian principalities (Wladyslaw the Short's wife was from Poznan branch and mother from Wroclaw and Legnica branch). Since 1431, no other legitimate descendants of Casimir III survived than Elisabeth of Pomerania's. This was the way some ancient Piast estate property passed to the Jagiellons.

In 1467 she renounced her right to the Duchy of Luxembourg, after which Philip III, Duke of Burgundy, took its full title, already having obtained the possessions as result of the 1451 childless death of Elisabeth, Duchess of Luxembourg.

Genetics

Elisabeth of Austria is a direct matrilineal ancestor of Nicholas II of Russia. Provided the genealogy is correct, this implies that she and all her matrilineal relatives are members of mitochondrial haplogroup Haplogroup T.

See also

 


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