Abstract

This chapter analyses how the Queen of Hungary and Bohemia, Beatrice d’Aragona (1457–1508), negotiated her shifting marital status and identity in central Europe and southern Italy. She was twice married—the first marriage resulting in widowhood, and the second in exile—with her entire adulthood spent as an outsider in Hungary, or on the edge of courtly Naples. A close analysis of Beatrice's exile shows that women could survive widowhood using natal networks, since, though their marital identities changed, their status as sister, daughter, and aunt did not. This chapter contributes to the literature on early modern European kinship networks by demonstrating that the presence of these networks protected women in difficult marital situations, and how their absence made widowhood without wealth a marginalised existence.

Keywords: Ippolito d’Este; letter-writing; exile; queenship; early modern Europe

We received a letter from your most Reverend Lordship and, despite its tardiness, we were extremely grateful to hear of your good health. But there was one thing that was very upsetting. Maybe it was the secretary’s fault, but the way you wrote treated us as if we were a foreigner and not your mother—which we always will be until the end of our days. It was as if your Lordship's letters were written with a stamp—they were nothing more than a “we are well, we hope the same for Your Majesty.” We ask you not to treat us as a foreigner and to not use that kind of tone because we promise Your Lordship that if you do, we will not reply because such behaviour does not merit a response.