Yolanda of Flanders

Yolanda of Hainault was born in 1175 into the tangled politics of the Low Countries. She governed Namur as ruling Margrave from 1212 to 1216, then married Peter, who was named emperor of the Latin Empire in Constantinople. He never made it: captured and imprisoned before he could reach the capital, Peter left Yolanda to rule the fragile crusader state by herself from 1217 onward. For two years she held the empire alone, navigating its crumbling frontiers and fractious nobility without the partner meant to share the throne. She died in September 1219, still empress, still waiting.