Maria of Serbia, Queen of Bosnia

Maria of Serbia , christened Helena , was the last Queen of Bosnia and Despoina of Serbia. As the eldest daughter of the deceased Despot of Serbia Lazar Brankovi, she was given in marriage at the age of twelve to the Bosnian prince Stephen Tomaevi, who obtained the title to Serbia through her. The country was lost to the Ottomans within a few months, and the couple fled to Bosnia. They became king and queen of Bosnia in 1461, but two years later the kingdom too fell to the Ottomans, with Maria becoming a widow upon her husbands execution. She avoided capture by fleeing to the coast. Having spent a few years in Venetian Dalmatia and possibly Hungary, Maria settled in Ottoman Greece at the court of her aunts Mara and Kantakouzene. Her string of conflicts and legal disputes with Kantakouzene, the Republic of Ragusa and Athonite monasteries earned her an ill reputation, with the monks describing her as an evil woman.

Maria was the eldest of three children born to Lazar Brankovi, son of the Despot of Serbia ura Brankovi, and his wife, Helena Palaiologina. Born probably in 1447, she was christened Helena. Two sisters followed her Milica and Irene. Lazar succeeded his father as despot onDecember 1456, but died onJanuary 1458. Despoina Helena and Lazars brother Stefan seized power and began negotiating a marriage between her eldest daughter and Stephen Tomaevi, the elder surviving son of King Thomas of Bosnia. The intent was to consollidate an alliance against the threat of the expanding Ottoman Empire, which had already reduced the Despotate of Serbia to a strip of land governed from the Smederevo Fortress. Stephen Tomaevi arrived to Smederevo during the Holy Week of 1459, taking over the fortress and the government onMarch. The marriage was celebrated onApril, the first Sunday following Easter, and the bride soon afterwards adopted the name Maria.

Source: Wikipedia