On february 7th 1748 he became the hereditary stadholder of all provinces of the Republic on march 8th his wife the Princess of Orange gave birth to a son and heir Willem Batavus who would in 1752 succeed his father as Willem V. When in 1814 the son of Willem V became the first King of the Netherlands the new constitution copied the laws of succession and requirement of Parliamentary consent for a Royal marriage from the 1748 stipulations. So Anne was not a queen but definitely pregnant when her husband assumed a hereditary role. Previous Message
I know that there have been plenty of queens in history, both consort and regnant, who gave birth after ascending thrones. I brought this up in an earlier thread, about reigning monarchs who became parents -- a common occurrence in earlier history, when medicine was not advanced and life expectancy was low.
What I was wondering about, however, were specific examples of queens (consort or regnant) who were expectant mothers at the times of their accessions. One can only imagine the difficulty of being in such a situation, having to make two major adjustments simultaneously -- the transition to an exalted public position, while expecting an addition to the family.
Off the top of my head, I can name only two: (1) Queen Marie of Bavaria, who evidently was six months pregnant when in March, 1848 her father-in-law (King Ludwig I) abdicated the throne and her husband ascended it as King Maximilian II. Her second child was a second son named Otto, born a month later but said to have been two months premature. So I did the math and figured that he wasn't due until June of that year. It was a miracle that he lived, since medicine at that time was not very advanced, and premature babies didn't stand much of a chance of surviving (this was a day when mortality rates were high even for infants born after full-term pregnancies).
(2) Queen Astrid of the Belgians was five months pregnant when in February, 1934 her father-in-law (King Albert I) unexpectedly died following a tragic mountain-climbing accident. I'm assuming that HER second son (the presently living but abdicated King Albert II), unlike King Otto of Bavaria, was born after a full-term pregnancy.
So it looks like both women, in addition to being young (under the age of 30) when becoming queens, were expecting babies in the month of June. Interestingly, Astrid was descended from both King Maximilian I of Bavaria and King George I of Great Britain -- making her a distant cousin to both King Maximilian II and Queen Marie.
Can anyone name other examples of women who were pregnant when newly becoming queens?
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