Margaret of austria biography examples

In an age of politically powerful women, Margaret of Austria is among the most adept, experienced, and influential--though she remains surprisingly little known.* An accomplished ruler--she was regent of the Netherlands for some twenty years--she also nurtured and shaped a generation of younger women whom she trained at her court and for whom she herself was to provide a model of female sovereignty. 

Named after her step-grandmother, Margaret of York, duchess of Burgundy, the younger Margaret was born on 10 January 1480.

When her mother, Mary of Burgundy, died on 27 March 1482, at the age of just twenty-seven, her daughter was just two years old. Three days before her death, Mary had signed a will naming her children as her heirs and appointing her husband, Maximilian of Austria, as "guardian, governor, and regent" of Burgundy and of her two children: her son and heir, Philip, and