Blessed Elizabeth of Hungary, Queen of Serbia

Elizabeth of Hungary (Hungarian: Erzsébet, Serbian: Јелисавета/Jelisaveta; c. 1255 – c. 1322), also known as Blessed Elizabeth the Widow (Hungarian: Árpádházi Boldog Erzsébet), was a Hungarian princess member of the Árpád dynasty and (briefly and disputed) Queen consort of Serbia. Since childhood, she was veiled as a nun, but she was married twice, and both times she was kidnapped by her husbands, Bohemian magnate Záviš of Falkenstein and King Stefan Uroš II Milutin of Serbia. Both husbands were in an unacceptable degree of kinship with Elizabeth from a canonical point of view: the marriage with Záviš of Falkenstein was not recognized by the Hungarian Church, and the marriage with Stefan Uroš II Milutin was not recognized by the Serbian Church. Nevertless, Elizabeth was venerated by the Hungarian Church as Blessed, while her scandalous marriage history is almost never mentioned in the later accounts of her life. Elizabeth was the daughter of King Stephen V of Hungary and his Cuman wife, baptized as Elizabeth and probably in turn a daughter of Köten, a Cuman–Kipchak chieftain (khan) and military commander active in the mid-13th century. She had five known siblings: Catherine (wife of King Stefan Dragutin of Serbia), Mary (wife of King Charles II of Naples), Anna (wife of Byzantine Emperor Andronikos II Palaiologos), King Ladislaus IV of Hungary and Andrew, Duke of Slavonia. Her exact date of birth is unknown; however, according to a letter of Archbishop Lodomer of Esztergom to Pope Nicholas IV dated 8 May 1288 and recorded in 1308 in the Anonymi Descriptio Europae Orientalis, by 1288 Elizabeth was around 32–34 years old, 26 years of which she lived in a monastery.