Beatrice of Poland

Beatrice of Poland (born 1258), was the only daughter of King Wladyslaw IV of Poland and his wife, Beatrice of Bohemia, the Dowager Holy Roman Empress, often called Beatrice Augusta or Beatrice the Beauty. 
In the wake of her father's invasion of the Holy Roman Empire, she married her cousin Rudolf of Hapsburg, Count Palatine of the Rhine and one of the seven Prince-Electors. Disaster overcame them in the form of the Hapsburg-Luxembourg feud, resulting in her husband's capture, her eldest son's death and the seizure of the Hapsburg patrimony by their Luxembourger foes. After several years as a Luxembourg prisoner, she was ransomed by her first cousin Wenceslaus II of Austria-Hungary. The two subsequently married and marched into her native Poland at the head of an army. A pretender presenting himself as her son, Albert of Hapsburg, hurriedly made terms with the invading Premyslids and married her elder step-daughter. Content with having brought Poland's anarchy to an end on favourable terms (which saw him acquired the rich duchy of Opole in Silesia), Wenceslaus renounced his Polish pretensions in favour of his new "son" and returned home. The new King's mother, real or feigned, remained behind to serve as his councillor and, so the Premyslids hoped, favourably-disposed co-regent, taking vows of chastity in order to permit Wenceslaus to contract a prompt remarriage elsewhere.
=== Children ===
* Rudolph of Hapsburg, starved to death, father of Ulrike of Hapsburg, the Electress Palatine.
* Albert of Hapsburg, a ward of her brother in Poland, presumed dead in the civil wars that followed but emerging in the form of the pretender Albert of Hapsburg, 
* Matilda of Hapsburg, betrothed first to the Archduke Frederick of Austria, later forced into a nunnery, ransomed by the Premyslids and betrothed secondly to Otto of Spanheim-Kraiburg, Prince of Bohemia.
* Two other daughters.
Category:Consorts