Menarche and fertility of princesses: María Magdalena de Austria

I Procreation

The potential fertility of royal women was always a matter of great importance in the Early Modern period. But it was especially important when a particular dynasty was having succession problems, like the Habsburg family during the second half of the seventeenth century. Additionally, a succession crisis was not only linked to the need of a sovereign to have male heirs, but also to the possibility of relying on princesses to create convenient marriage alliances.  In this sense, the menarche was not only a milestone that indicated that a princess was already a full-grown adult, but also marked the possibility to negotiate a marriage with, or for, said princess that would be able to be consummated in a relatively short time. An example of this relevance is the case of archduchess Maria Magdalene of Austria-Tyrol, one of the daughters of archduke Ferdinand Charles and Anne of Médici, whose image we can see in this medal. The young archduchess died in 1669, when she was only twelve years old. Emperor Leopold I talked about her death in a letter he sent to his ambassador in Madrid, count Franz Eusebius von Pötting, dated on January 30th of that same year. In it, he remarked as a defining event of her life that, despite her young age, she had already experienced menarche. That was practically the only information that the emperor considered important enough about her to present it in writing. [Rocío Martínez]