Carlota of Mexico

Born Charlotte of Belgium on 7 June 1840, she married Archduke Maximilian of Austria in 1857 and became Archduchess, glad to escape feuds with Empress Elisabeth in Vienna when Maximilian was posted as Viceroy of Lombardy-Venetia. When Napoleon III tapped Maximilian as figurehead for a French-backed empire in Mexico, she overcame her husband's doubts and they arrived in Mexico City in 1864, where she ruled as regent during his absences - the first woman to govern in the Americas. The reign lasted barely three years; when Napoleon III withdrew French military support, she sailed to Europe in August 1866 to plead with Paris and the Vatican, but both refused her. In Rome the failure shattered her mental health, and doctors confined her to Miramare Castle - still under house arrest when Maximilian was deposed and executed by Benito Juárez in June 1867. Brought back to Belgium unaware she was a widow, she was moved between the Pavilion of Tervuren, the Palace of Laeken, and finally Bouchout Castle in 1879, where she remained in a deteriorated mental state for 48 years until her death on 19 January 1927, aged 86.