Eleanor of Scotland was a daughter of James I of Scotland

James I of Scotland

James I, King of Scots , was the son of Robert III and Annabella Drummond. He was probably born in late July 1394 in Dunfermline as youngest of three sons...

 and Joan Beaufort

Joan Beaufort, Queen of Scotland

Joan Beaufort was the Queen Consort of Scotland from 1424 to 1437 as the spouse of King James I of Scotland. During part of the minority of her son James II , she served as the Regent of Scotland....

. She first married Sigismund

Sigismund, Archduke of Austria

Sigismund of Austria, Duke, then Archduke of Further Austria was a Habsburg archduke of Austria and ruler of Tirol from 1446 to 1490....

 (1427–1496), a Habsburg

Habsburg

The House of Habsburg , also found as Hapsburg, and also known as House of Austria is one of the most important royal houses of Europe and is best known for being an origin of all of the formally elected Holy Roman Emperors between 1438 and 1740, as well as rulers of the Austrian Empire and...

 Duke, then Archduke of Further Austria

Further Austria

Further Austria or Anterior Austria was the collective name for the old possessions of the House of Habsburg in the former Swabian stem duchy of south-western Germany, including territories in the Alsace region west of the Rhine and in Vorarlberg, after the focus of the Habsburgs had moved to the...

, and finally ruler of Tyrol

German Tyrol

German Tyrol is a historical region in the Alps now divided between Austria and Italy. It includes largely ethnic German areas of historical County of Tyrol: the Austrian state of Tyrol and the province of South Tyrol but not the largely Italian-speaking province of Trentino .-History:German...

 (from 1446 to 1490).
Eleanor, like her two eldest sisters, inherited their father's love of literature. Her husband not being remarkable for learning, and ignorant of the French language

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

, but fond of romances and works of fiction. The name of the archduchess is connected with the popular work entitled The History of the King's Son of Galicia, named Pontus, and the beautiful Sydonia (Pontus and Sidonia

Pontus and Sidonia

Pontus and Sidonia is a medieval prose roman, originally composed in French in ca. 1400, known as Ponthus et la belle Sidonie, possibly by Geoffroy IV de la Tour Landry or by another member of the La Tour family....

). Eleanor translated this work from French to German

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

. The French original passed through several editions between c. 1480 and 1550.' A copy of the German translation, preserved in the library of Gotha

Gotha (town)

Gotha is a town in Thuringia, within the central core of Germany. It is the capital of the district of Gotha.- History :The town has existed at least since the 8th century, when it was mentioned in a document signed by Charlemagne as Villa Gotaha . Its importance derives from having been chosen in...

, bears the date 1465. This books seems to have extensively circulated.

Death

Eleanor died in childbirth with her son Wolfgang on 20 November 1480 and was buried in Stams.

Ancestry