Landgravine Marie Louise of Hesse-Kassel was a daughter of Charles I, Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel and Maria Amalia of Courland. By her marriage to John William Friso, Prince of Orange, she became Princess consort of Orange, a title last held...

Catherine I, the second wife of Peter I of Russia, reigned as Empress of Russia from 1725 until her death. The life of Catherine I was said by Voltaire to be nearly as extraordinary as that of Peter the Great himself. There are no documents...

Queen Anne became Queen of England, Scotland and Ireland on 8 March 1702, succeeding her brother-in-law, William III of England and II of Scotland. Her Catholic father, James II and VII, was deemed by the English Parliament to have abdicate...

Mary II, born in 1662, was the daughter of James II and Anne Hyde. She was married to William of Orange as a matter of Charles II's foreign policy; she and William had no children. Mary died of smallpox in 1694. William III (William of Oran...

Saint Kateri Tekakwitha, baptised as Catherine Tekakwitha and informally known as Lily of the Mohawks, is a Roman Catholic saint, and was an Algonquin-Mohawk virgin and religious laywoman. Born in present-day New York, she survived smallpox...

Maria Sibylla Merian was a German-born naturalist and scientific illustrator, a descendant of the Frankfurt branch of the Swiss Merian family. Merian was one of the first naturalists to observe insects directly. Merian received her artis...

Maria Theresa of Spain was the daughter of Philip IV, King of Spain and Elizabeth of France. Maria Theresa was Queen of France as wife of King Louis XIV and mother of the Grand Dauphin, an ancestor of the last four Bourbon kings of France....

Mary, Princess Royal was Princess of Orange and Countess of Nassau as the wife of Prince William II. She was the eldest daughter of King Charles I of England, Scotland, and Ireland and his wife, Henrietta Maria of France. Her only child lat...

Anna Maria van Schurman was a German-born Dutch painter, engraver, poet, and scholar, who is best known for her exceptional learning and her defense of female education. A highly educated woman by seventeenth century standards, she excelled...

Amalia of Solms-Braunfels was a regent of Orange. She was the wife of Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange. She was the daughter of count John Albert I of Solms-Braunfels and countess Agnes of Sayn-Wittgenstein. When Frederick Henry became...

Chiara Margarita Cozzolani was a Baroque music composer, singer and Benedictine nun. She spent her adult life cloistered in the convent of Santa Radegonda, Milan, where she became abbess and stopped composing. More than a dozen cloistered w...

Anne of Austria was queen consort of France and Navarre, regent for her son, Louis XIV of France, and a Spanish and Portuguese Infanta by birth. During her regency (1643–1651) Cardinal Mazarin served as France's chief minister. Accounts of...

Pocahontas was an Indian princess, the daughter of Powhatan, the powerful chief of the Algonquian Indians in the Tidewater region of Virginia. She was born around 1595 to one of Powhatan's many wives. They named her Matoaka, though she is b...

Marie de' Medici, was queen consort of France. She was the second wife of King Henry IV of France, of the Bourbon branch of the kings of France. Later she was the regent for her son King Louis XIII of France. Born in Florence, Italy, she...

Gabrielle d'Estrées, Duchess of Beaufort and Verneuil, Marchioness of Monceaux was a mistress, confidante and adviser of Henry IV of France. She persuaded Henry to renounce Protestantism in favour of Catholicism in 1593. Later she urged Fre...