Margaret of Parma (1522–1586)

Duchess of Parma (1547–86). She was appointed regent of the Netherlands in 1559 by her half-brother Philip II of Spain. Though widely seen as a capable and intelligent ruler, she could do nothing to stem the increasingly bitter opposition of the Netherlanders to Spanish rule. After the rejection of the Compromise of Breda in 1566, the revolt of the Netherlands began in earnest. Resigning her post to the duke of Alba in 1567, she retired to Italy where she spent the rest of her life.

The illegitimate daughter of Emperor Charles V by a Flemish woman, Margaret of Ghent, she was brought up in the Netherlands by her aunts Margaret of Austria and Mary of Hungary, who were successively regents there. In 1533 she married Duke Alessandro de' Medici of Florence, who was assassinated in 1537, and in 1542 she married Ottavio Farnese of Parma, by whom she became the mother of the general Alessandro Farnese.