Marie Antoinette was the 15th of 16 children born to Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, and a more overbearing supermom would be hard to find.
Born to Empress Xiaokangzhang.
Around 1740, the German-born empress ordered the first of two imperial banqueting services made in China.
In her office, there's a framed portrait of Catherine the Great, the Prussian-born empress who led Russia during a golden age in the eighteenth century.
The portrait depicts Madame Brunet in a black coat over a white crinoline dress with bands of black lace, a detail that reflects the fashions of the Spanish-born empress of France, Eugénie.
Meghnad Desai, an Indian-born economist and a member of the British House of Lords, went as far as to compare her to Catherine the Great, the powerful German-born empress of Russia.
This is Hvidore, where the Danish-born Empress Dagmar of Russia, whose son Czar Nicholas II was murdered after the Russian Revolution, fled with her jewelry and her Cossack guards.
Impressed with the palace and its setting, the Prussian-born Empress commissioned from Karl Friedrich Schinkel, a Berlin-based architect, a design for a new residence.
The third son of the Shunzhi emperor, Xuanye was born to the empress Xiaokang, daughter of Tulai, a famous Qing general from the prestigious Tong clan.
The work concludes with an account of the subsequent life of the empress mother, born a Taira.
We discovered mutual interests -- in Ch'an, the Chinese version of Zen (Mr. Lee was born in Taiwan); in Empress Wu, the only woman to rule China; in the noblewomen who created the Japanese novel; and in family histories.
