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Archduchess Isabella of Austria, Archduke Philipp of Austria, Dorothea of Denmark and Norway, Duke of Burgundy, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, Kalmar Union, King Carlos I of Spain, King Christian II of Denmark and Norway, King Felipe I of Castile, King Henry VIII of England, Queen Joanna of Castile
Dorothea of Denmark and Norway (November 10, 1520 – May 31, 1580) was a Danish, Norwegian and Swedish Princress and an Princess-Electress of the Palatinate as the wife of Prince-Elector Friedrich II of the Palatinate. She was a claimant to the Danish, Norwegian and Swedish thrones and titular monarch in 1559–1561.
Princess Dorothea was born on November 10, 1520 to King Christian II of Denmark and Norway briefly King of Sweden from 1520 until 1521. From 1513 to 1523, he was concurrently Duke of Schleswig and Holstein in joint rule with his uncle Frederik, future King Frederik I of Denmark.
Princess Dorothea’s mother was Archduchess Isabella of Austria, was the daughter of King Felipe I (Archduke Philipp of Austria, Duke of Burgundy) and Queen Joanna of Castile and the sister of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (Carlos I of Spain).
Dorothea had an elder brother, Johann “Hans”, born February 21, 1518. Her elder twin brothers, Philip Ferdinand and Maximilian, born July 4, 1519, had both died before her birth, the latter in 1519 and the former in 1520. Her sister Christina was born two years later, in 1522, and was her only sibling to reach adulthood. Christina would marry twice, first to Francis II, Duke of Milan, and secondly to François I, Duke of Lorraine.
On January 20, 1523, disloyal nobles forced her father to abdicate and offered the throne to his uncle, Duke Frederik of Holstein. That month, her mother gave birth to a stillborn son. Three-year-old Dorothea and her sister and brother followed their exiled parents to Veere in Zeeland, the Netherlands, and were taken care of by the Dutch regents, their grandaunt and aunt, Archduchess Margaret of Austria and Archduchess Mary of Austria (known as Mary of Hungary, King Louis II of Hungary and Bohemia).
Her mother died when she was five years old, on January 19, 1526. The Dutch court was an officially Catholic environment, but influenced with a sympathy for Protestantism, and Dorothea herself acquired Protestant sympathies early on.
Dorothea was the object for marriage proposals very early. She has been described mostly in comparison with her sister, and referred to as beautiful, shorter and slighter than her sister. In 1527, Cardinal Wolsey proposed Henry, the Duke of Richmond as a match for either Dorothea or Christina, but this proposal was not accepted by the Habsburgs because Richmond was the illegitimate son of King Henry VIII of England.
Her brother Hans died in 1532 at about fourteen years old. As the eldest surviving child of the abdicated Christian II, Dorothea had a claim to the Danish, Norwegian and Swedish thrones. Because of this, King Frederik I of Denmark suggested that Dorothea marry his youngest son, Prince Johann, after which he would name Johann his heir and leave his eldest son and current heir Christian as heir to the Duchy of Schleswig-Holstein instead.
This was rejected by Emperor Charles V and Regent Mary because they did not wish to negotiate with King Frederick, whom they regarded as an usurper. The matter became moot when King Frederik I died in 1533. In 1532, she received a proposal from the Duke of Milan, but the Emperor chose her sister for that match instead.
Dorothea was long expected to marry King James V of Scotland, but the plan was never brought to fruition in fear of offending the French monarch, who wished for James to make a French match, compounded with the difficulty of finding a suitable dowry for her.