Empress Eleanor of Portugal, wife of Emperor Frederick III, passed away on 3 September 1467. Raised in the vibrant and splendid Renaissance court of Portugal, she felt like an outcast amid the austere conditions of Wiener Neustadt, the Imperial residence, and alongside her phlegmatic, surly husband — nearly twenty years her senior. Little wonder, then, that she passed her ambitions for princely glory on to her children.
Curiously, this longing for world eminence was one of the few traits the Imperial couple shared — an aspiration deeply rooted in the politics of the age. The defining event of the time was the capture of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453. Frederick cherished the dream of leading a crusade against the infidels, an idea that never materialized due to lack of funds and support from other rulers. Nevertheless, both husband and wife hoped that one day their children would renew Christendom’s greatness.
In this almost mythical vision, they named their first-born son Christopher, after the saint whose name literally means ‘Christ-bearer,’ and in reference to a family legend about a saint-like ancestor whose story resembled that of St Christopher. Eleanor imagined herself as a new Helena, after the mother of Constantine the Great, the first Christian Roman Emperor, and even suggested giving that name to her second son. In the end, however, the boy was named Maximilian. As the couple’s only surviving son, he would one day become Emperor—and history would remember him as “the Last Knight,” fulfilling, at least in part, his parents’ lofty expectations.
Sadly, Eleanor did not live to see her son grow up. She died suddenly, just two weeks before her thirty-third birthday.
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