Princess Mathilde of Saxony, Duchess of Saxony (19 March 1863 – 27 March 1933) was the third child and third-eldest daughter of

George of Saxony en, Frederick Augustus George Louis William Maximilian Charles Maria Nepomuk Baptist Xavier Cyriacus Romanus , image =George of Saxony by Nicola Perscheid c1900.jpg , caption = Photograph by Nicola Perscheid c. 1900 , reign ...

and his wife,

Infanta ''Infante'' (, ; f. ''infanta''), also anglicised as Infant or translated as Prince, is the title and rank given in the Iberian kingdoms of Spain (including the predecessor kingdoms of Aragon, Castile, Navarre, and León) and Portugal to th ...

Maria Anna of Portugal Maria may refer to: People * Mary, mother of Jesus * Maria (given name), a popular given name in many languages Place names Extraterrestrial * 170 Maria, a Main belt S-type asteroid discovered in 1877 * Lunar maria (plural of ''mare''), large, ...

. She was an elder sister of the

Kingdom of Saxony The Kingdom of Saxony (german: Königreich Sachsen), lasting from 1806 to 1918, was an independent member of a number of historical confederacies in Napoleonic through post-Napoleonic Germany. The kingdom was formed from the Electorate of Saxon ...

's last king,

Frederick Augustus III of Saxony en, Frederick Augustus John Louis Charles Gustav Gregory Philip von Wettin , image = Friedrich August III van Saksen.jpg , caption = Frederick Augustus III (1914) , succession = King of Saxony , reign = 15 October 1904 – ...

Life

As a young girl, Mathilde was quiet and gentle, but she was not especially good-looking. Her father,

, had planned a marriage between Mathilde and Archduke Rudolf, Crown Prince of Austria, Hungary, and Bohemia, however Rudolf rejected this arrangement and instead married

Princess Stéphanie of Belgium Princess Stéphanie Clotilde Louise Herminie Marie Charlotte of Belgium (21 May 1864 – 23 August 1945) was a Belgian princess who became Crown Princess of Austria through marriage to Crown Prince Rudolf, heir to the throne of the Austro-Hu ...

. It was then agreed that Mathilde would marry a nephew of

Emperor Franz Joseph I Franz Joseph I or Francis Joseph I (german: Franz Joseph Karl, hu, Ferenc József Károly, 18 August 1830 – 21 November 1916) was Emperor of Austria, King of Hungary, and the other states of the Habsburg monarchy from 2 December 1848 until his ...

and the presumptive heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne,

Archduke Franz Ferdinand Archduke Franz Ferdinand Carl Ludwig Joseph Maria of Austria, (18 December 1863 – 28 June 1914) was the heir presumptive to the throne of Austria-Hungary. His assassination in Sarajevo was the most immediate cause of World War I. F ...

. However, Franz Ferdinand rejected this arrangement. Dynastic relations between the Saxon royal family and the

Habsburgs The House of Habsburg (), alternatively spelled Hapsburg in Englishgerman: Haus Habsburg, ; es, Casa de Habsburgo; hu, Habsburg család, it, Casa di Asburgo, nl, Huis van Habsburg, pl, dom Habsburgów, pt, Casa de Habsburgo, la, Domus Hab ...

were once again strained when Franz Ferdinand chose to marry (

morganatically Morganatic marriage, sometimes called a left-handed marriage, is a marriage between people of unequal social rank, which in the context of royalty or other inherited title prevents the principal's position or privileges being passed to the spou ...

) Sophie, Countess Chotek von Wognin. Relations between the two nations improved only when Mathilde's younger sister Maria Josepha married her

second cousin Most generally, in the lineal kinship system used in the English-speaking world, a cousin is a type of familial relationship in which two relatives are two or more familial generations away from their most recent common ancestor. Commonly, ...

Archduke Otto Franz of Austria Archduke (feminine: Archduchess; German: ''Erzherzog'', feminine form: ''Erzherzogin'') was the title borne from 1358 by the Habsburg rulers of the Archduchy of Austria, and later by all senior members of that dynasty. It denotes a rank within ...

. Mathilde became embittered by these rejections and turned critical and waspish; she also turned to alcohol to ease her unhappiness, acquiring the nickname "Schnapps-Mathilde" for obvious reasons. She made life difficult for other members of the royal family, and as a consequence was the least popular of the family by a wide margin among the people of Saxony. She was a talented painter and took lessons from the artist Alfred Diethe from 1890 to 1901. Some of her paintings, mainly landscapes and scenes of court life in Pillnitz, were made into prints. Others appeared on postcards, which were sold to raise money for charity. Mathilde died unmarried on 27 March 1933 at the age of 70. She was interred in the ''New Tomb'' of the

Katholische Hofkirche Dresden Cathedral, or the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity, Dresden, previously the Catholic Church of the Royal Court of Saxony, called in German Katholische Hofkirche and since 1980 also known as Kathedrale Sanctissimae Trinitatis, is the Catholi ...

in Dresden.

Ancestry

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mathilde Of Saxony, Princess 1863 births 1933 deaths House of Wettin Saxon princesses Dames of the Order of Saint Isabel Burials at Dresden Cathedral Nobility from Dresden German Roman Catholics Albertine branch Artists from Dresden Daughters of kings