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If there was ever a contest for figures from history who had the worst propaganda aimed at them, then Margarete Von Tirol would surely be one of the candidates. The warped image people have of her persists to this day and is a testimony the effectiveness of the tactics.
The Slandered Noble: Margarete Von Tirol
Margarete was born on 1318 AD as the only child of Henry, the Count of Tirol, a mountainous region straddling the current borders between Italy and Austria. Her father reached an agreement with the Holy Roman Emperor that made it possible for Margarete to succeed him, because he had no male heirs. At age 12 she was forced to marry an 8 year old boy called John Henry of Luxembourg. Of course this was no love match but just a political move to ally two powerful families. When Henry died in 1335, Margarete was still only 17 years old, and she was instantly forced to defend her succession claim against other ambitious houses and had to cede the lands of Carinthia, but was able to successfully succeed her claim as Countess of Tyrol. There was just one problem-her husband John Henry disrespected practically all of the Tyrolean nobility. So after a hunting trip John Henry returned to Tirol castle to find that he couldn’t get in. Margarete had locked him out and no one in Tyrol wanted to give him shelter because he had been so rude to everybody.
To protect herself from any vengeance that her former husband’s family might take, she expertly turned to their rivals, the Wittelsbach family. Solidifying her alliances with them she married her second husband Louis I of Brandenburg, but she was excommunicated by the Pope as she had never divorced her first husband, even though she stated that her former marriage had never been consummated. Because of the scandal over her divorce her former husband started a smear campaign against Margaret and she received nicknames like “Maultasch”, meaning bag mouth, which had the deeper meaning of a vicious woman. The nicknames also led to the notion that she was the ugliest women in Europe, which led to her appearing in art and literature over the centuries, possibly in Quentin Matsys’s 1513 painting "The Ugly Duchess", as a deformed woman.
People that actually lived in her lifetime, like the chronicler John of Winterthur, described her being beautiful, but the slanders stuck. Everything looked up when she made the match of marrying her only child, her son Meinhard III, to a member of the powerful Habsburg family, and with their help was able to have her excommunication absolved. In 1361 her husband, Louis I suddenly died and in 1363 her son also passed away, so she was ultimately forced to cede her lands to the Habsburgs and lived her last years in Vienna.
If there was ever a contest for figures from history who had the worst propaganda aimed at them, then Margarete Von Tirol would surely be one of the candidates. The warped image people have of her persists to this day and is a testimony the effectiveness of the tactics.
The Slandered Noble: Margarete Von Tirol
Margarete was born on 1318 AD as the only child of Henry, the Count of Tirol, a mountainous region straddling the current borders between Italy and Austria. Her father reached an agreement with the Holy Roman Emperor that made it possible for Margarete to succeed him, because he had no male heirs. At age 12 she was forced to marry an 8 year old boy called John Henry of Luxembourg. Of course this was no love match but just a political move to ally two powerful families. When Henry died in 1335, Margarete was still only 17 years old, and she was instantly forced to defend her succession claim against other ambitious houses and had to cede the lands of Carinthia, but was able to successfully succeed her claim as Countess of Tyrol. There was just one problem-her husband John Henry disrespected practically all of the Tyrolean nobility. So after a hunting trip John Henry returned to Tirol castle to find that he couldn’t get in. Margarete had locked him out and no one in Tyrol wanted to give him shelter because he had been so rude to everybody.
To protect herself from any vengeance that her former husband’s family might take, she expertly turned to their rivals, the Wittelsbach family. Solidifying her alliances with them she married her second husband Louis I of Brandenburg, but she was excommunicated by the Pope as she had never divorced her first husband, even though she stated that her former marriage had never been consummated. Because of the scandal over her divorce her former husband started a smear campaign against Margaret and she received nicknames like “Maultasch”, meaning bag mouth, which had the deeper meaning of a vicious woman. The nicknames also led to the notion that she was the ugliest women in Europe, which led to her appearing in art and literature over the centuries, possibly in Quentin Matsys’s 1513 painting "The Ugly Duchess", as a deformed woman.
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| An 18th century engraving of Margarete Von Tirol. |
People that actually lived in her lifetime, like the chronicler John of Winterthur, described her being beautiful, but the slanders stuck. Everything looked up when she made the match of marrying her only child, her son Meinhard III, to a member of the powerful Habsburg family, and with their help was able to have her excommunication absolved. In 1361 her husband, Louis I suddenly died and in 1363 her son also passed away, so she was ultimately forced to cede her lands to the Habsburgs and lived her last years in Vienna.
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