Anne of Bohemia Queen of England ¹

  General Notes:

Anne of Bohemia (11 May 1366 \endash 7 June 1394) was Queen of England as the first wife of King Richard II. A member of the House of Luxembourg, she was the eldest daughter of Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Bohemia, and Elizabeth of Pomerania.[1] She died at age of 28 after 12 years of marriage; she was childless, and greatly mourned by her husband.

The marriage was initially unpopular in England inasmuch as, even though Anne's father was perhaps the most powerful monarch in Europe, his relatively distant area of influence could give little trade or political advantage to England, and Anne brought no dowry; instead Richard had to pay her brother a sum. But Anne appears to have won many English people over with her personality, and her efforts to help obtain royal pardons.

Her father's court, based in Prague, was a centre of the International Gothic style, then at its height, and her arrival seems to coincide with, and probably caused, new influences on English art. The Crown of Princess Blanche, now in Munich, may have been made for Anne, either in Prague or Paris.[2]

She had four brothers, including Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor, and one younger sister, Margaret of Bohemia, Burgravine of Nuremberg. She also had five half-siblings from her father's previous marriages. Anne is buried in Westminster Abbey beside her husband.

Anne married Richard II, King of England, son of Edward "The Black Prince" of Woodstock, Prince of Wales and Joan "The Fair" Plantagenet Fourth Countess of Kent and fifth Baroness Wake of Liddell, in 1382. (Richard II, King of England was born on 6 Jan 1367 in Bordeaux, Duchy of Aquitaine, France and died on 14 Feb 1400 in Pontefract Castle, Yorkshire, England.)