Queens 'M' of Europe Trivia Quiz

Answer: Margaret, Maid of Norway

Margaret, Maid of Norway was the daughter of King Eric II of Norway and Margaret of Scotland - the only daughter of King Alexander III of Scotland. Margaret's mother died as a result of her birth in 1283 and both of Alexander's sons had also died by the following year. As the sole surviving descendant of Alexander, Margaret should have been considered his rightful heir and after his death in 1286 both her father and King Edward I of England promoted her claim to the throne. A plan to marry off Margaret to the future Edward II of England and therefore bring Scotland under England's control probably explains Edward's interest in the matter. Eventually Margaret was put on a ship and sent to Scotland, but unfortunately she never arrived - her ship stopped off in the Orkney Islands where she is believed to have died of the effects of severe sea-sickness. At the time the Orkney Islands were owned by Norway so Margaret never did set foot in her own kingdom.

Margaret's death meant there were no obvious successors to the Scottish crown and precipitated a competition for the position between various noblemen, including John Balliol (who reigned from 1292 to 1296) and Robert the Bruce, who finally claimed the throne definitively in 1306 and remained King of Scotland until his death in 1329.

Answer: Sicily

Queen Maria of Sicily was just 14 years old when she inherited her crown in 1377 on the death of her father, who was known as King Frederick the Simple. The appointed regent was initially forced to share power with other nobleman who became known as the 'vicars' of the kingdom and the young queen was then kidnapped and held in captivity to prevent the vicars from arranging a marriage for her. After a few years she was rescued by forces belonging to her maternal grandfather King Peter IV of Aragon (one of the Spanish kingdoms of the time) and she remained in Aragon until 1392. Following her marriage to her first cousin, Martin the Younger (whose father was the half-brother of Maria's mother, Constance of Aragon), the couple raised an army, seized control of Sicily from the vicars and ruled over the island jointly until Maria's death in 1401.

Since their only child had died in infancy, Martin continued to rule in his own right and was eventually succeeded by his father, also named Martin, on his death in 1409. This brought about the rare situation where a king with a regnal designation of "the first" was the son (rather than the father) of a king designated "the second".

Answer: Her mother arranged for Charles to be assassinated

Although Queen Mary was nominally the queen regnant of Hungary and Croatia from 1382 to 1395 (with the exception of the interruption caused by Charles III of Naples in 1385-86) she never actually wielded any political power. She was only 11 years old when she was proclaimed queen on the death of her father in 1382 and as a result her mother, Elizabeth of Bosnia, acted as her regent. In the medieval period, female monarchs were not popular and the local noblemen often looked for a male candidate to take the throne instead. By 1385, Hungary had been invaded by both Charles III of Naples (who the Croatian nobles in particular preferred as king) and Sigismund of Luxembourg. Elizabeth chose to side with Sigismund by arranging for his marriage to Mary - but it was Charles who was victorious and crowned king on New Year's Eve of that year. However, less than two months later Elizabeth organised Charles's assassination and successfully had her daughter reinstated on the throne - although this time it was as co-ruler alongside her husband.

Mother and daughter did not have a particularly happy ending though - Elizabeth was executed on the orders of Charles's widow in 1387 and Mary died in a riding accident in 1395. Sigismund, by contrast, went on to remarry and later became Holy Roman Emperor.

Answer: False

Mary, Queen of Scots was executed at Fotheringhay Castle on the orders of her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I of England, but this event actually took place twenty years after the end of her reign in 1567, following accusations that she was involved in a plot to overthrow Elizabeth.

Mary had inherited the throne at the age of just six days in 1542 when her father, King James V, died of some sort of illness during one of the many medieval wars between Scotland and England. She was swiftly betrothed to the future King Francis II of France and dispatched to live in France at the age of five, where she remained until her husband's death in 1560. As a result she had little knowledge of her Scottish homeland and was the subject of significant mistrust there because of her Roman Catholic upbringing.

Her second marriage, to her cousin Lord Darnley, also ended abruptly when he was murdered at Kirk o' Field in February 1567. Three months later she married the Earl of Bothwell - the man accused of Darnley's murder - and quickly lost the support of both the Scottish lords and the people. In July 1567 she was forced to abdicate in favour of her infant son, who became King James VI of Scotland and later King James I of England.

Answer: Naples

England's Queen Mary I was still unmarried when she came to the throne at the age of 37 in 1553, in no small part due to the fact that she had been declared illegitimate and disinherited by both her father, King Henry VIII, and younger half-brother, King Edward VI. The choice of husband for her was a political exercise rather than anything to do with romance and the final candidate that she settled on was Prince Philip of Spain, the eldest son and heir of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor who was 11 years younger than her. As the Holy Roman Emperor held a large number of royal titles, he ceded a couple of them (the Kingdom of Naples and a claim to the title of King of Jerusalem) to Philip ahead of the marriage in 1554 so that Philip could be a king when he married a queen. Mary also became Queen of Spain when Philip's father died in 1556.

Mary and Philip's marriage was childless and Mary suffered at least one false pregnancy prior to her death in 1558 at the age of 42. Her reign is probably best remembered for her attempt to restore the Catholic faith as England's religion and her brutal treatment of Protestants, which earned her the unfortunate nickname of "Bloody Mary".

The incorrect options were all republics during the Tudor period.

Answer: The Glorious Revolution

Queen Mary II co-ruled England with her Dutch husband King William III in a reign commonly referred to as that of 'William and Mary'. In addition to being Mary's husband, William was also her first cousin and was a grandson of King Charles I of England as well as a Prince of Orange. The couple were invited to invade England and claim the throne after the Glorious Revolution (otherwise known as the Revolution of 1688) ousted Mary's father, King James II, from the throne. James had inherited the throne from his brother King Charles II in 1685 and was deeply unpopular with Parliament as the Catholic monarch of a Protestant country. While James's direct heirs were his Protestant daughters (the future Queen Mary II and Queen Anne) the situation was tolerable for the government, however the birth of a son to James's second wife, Mary of Modena, in June 1688, suddenly meant that there would be a Catholic heir instead. The revolution swiftly got underway; William boarded his invasion fleet in October of the same year, landed in Devon in November and took control of the government in December. James fled to France, where he lived out the remainder of his life in exile. His daughter's and nephew's coronation took place in April 1689.

The Anarchy is the name given to the civil war that raged from 1135 to 1154 - the reign of King Stephen; the Peasants' Revolt was led by Wat Tyler in 1381; and the English Civil War began in 1642 and included the execution of King Charles I in 1649.

Answer: The War of the Austrian Succession

Maria Theresa inherited authority over a large chunk of territory in Central Europe on the death of her father, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI. He had paved the way for a daughter to succeed him by issuing an edict known as the Pragmatic Sanction in 1713 - four years before Maria Theresa was born. However, as the title of Holy Roman Emperor could only be held by a man, Maria Theresa instead became the Archduchess of Austria and Queen of Bohemia, Hungary and Croatia. This edict was quickly disregarded by Prussia who swiftly invaded the Austrian territory of Silesia soon after Maria Theresa's succession and the other major European countries soon waded in as well after sensing an opportunity to reduce the power of the Habsburg's empire. The conflict became known as the War of the Austrian Succession although in reality it was caused by a wider range of grievances and also encompassed the ongoing war between Britain and Spain over their colonies in the Americas.

In total the war lasted for nearly eight years and ended in 1748 with the Treaty of Aix-la-Chappelle. Maria Theresa retained her thrones and her husband was confirmed as Holy Roman Emperor, but the Habsburgs lost territory to both Prussia and Spain.

The incorrect option were all 18th century wars in Europe, but the War of the Spanish Succession (which also related to the Habsburg dynasty) took place between 1701 and 1714, the War of the Polish Succession lasted for five years in the 1730s and the Seven Years' War took place later in the 1750s and 1760s.

Answer: She was declared insane

Maria I became Portugal's first queen regnant when she inherited the throne from her father, Joseph I, in 1777 at the age of 43. However, her family had not allowed the heiress presumptive to marry into another of Europe's royal families and instead married her off to her uncle - her father's younger brother. Her uncle then became her co-monarch as Peter III thanks to the fact that Portuguese law allowed for a queen's husband to become king once the couple had a child to become their heir. Despite this, Maria was treated as a queen regnant and was an active ruler who played a key role in the government of the country.

Maria's mental health first came under question in 1786 when she began to exhibit symptoms such as excessive religious fervour and depression. The deaths of her husband and eldest son exacerbated her condition and she was formally declared insane in 1792. Her eldest surviving son, John, eventually became Prince Regent in 1799. The latter years of Maria's life were spent in Brazil after the entire royal family were forced to flee to their South American colony in 1807 following Napoleon's decision to invade Portugal at the beginning of the Peninsula War.

Answer: Her uncle, Miguel I

The line of succession to the Portuguese throne was not exactly clear cut in 1826 when King John VI died. Although he had two surviving sons, the elder - Pedro - had declared himself emperor of an independent Brazil in 1822 and there was little political appetite to reunite the two kingdoms under the same monarch. Rather than pass the Portuguese throne to his younger brother Miguel, Pedro instead abdicated his claim in favour of his eldest daughter, with the proviso that she should marry her uncle. As the new Queen Maria II was only seven years old, her aunt Isabel Maria was named regent and continued in that position until 1828 when Miguel decided he would rather be king in his own right and essentially deposed his fiancée.

In the end, Pedro also abdicated the Brazilian throne in order to help his daughter raise an army and reclaim her kingdom. The pair succeeded in this by 1834 when Miguel was deposed and sent into exile with the threat of execution should he dare return to Portugal. Maria never had to marry her uncle, instead she had a short-lived first marriage to a grandson of Napoleon's first wife, Joséphine de Beauharnais. After his death she married a prince of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (a first cousin of Britain's Queen Victoria and her husband Prince Albert) and had 11 children by him before dying in childbirth in 1853.

Answer: Denmark

When Frederick IX of Denmark became king in 1947 he had three daughters (of whom Margrethe was the eldest) but no sons. As Danish law had prevented a woman from inheriting the throne since the mid-1850s, his heir presumptive was therefore his younger brother Prince Knud. However, the increased awareness of women's rights in the 20th century and the popularity of the young princesses helped to persuade the government to change the law. After two votes in parliament and a referendum, the country instead adopted a system of male-preference primogeniture, which allows a woman to inherit but only if she has no brothers.

In 1972, Margrethe became the first queen to rule Denmark since her namesake Margrethe I (or Margaret I) who reigned from 1387 to 1412. As a constitutional monarch her role in 'ruling' the country was very different to that of her predecessor. Her key roles are to act as a representative of the nation, be the titular head of the government, distribute honours, support charities and open things (for example hospitals and other facilities). By contrast, Margrethe I founded the Kalmar Union, controlled the economy and set foreign policy.