# Joan of Kent ( held title 1361 – 1376 ) — became dowager princess when her husband, Edward, the Black Prince, died as Prince of Wales.

# Catherine of Aragon ( 1501 – 1502 ) — became dowager princess when her first husband, Arthur, died as Prince.

The dowager princess demanded from the parlement of Paris fulfilment of the reformed law of arrest, which forbade imprisonment without trial.

Emperor Cheng decreed that Consort Fu ( now princess dowager of Dingtao ) and Consort Ding be required to remain in Dingtao and not be allowed to come to Chang ' an to visit Prince Xin.

Emperor Ai's cousin Liu Jizi ( 劉箕子 ), the Prince of Zhongshan ( Prince Xing's son ), had a congenital heart disorder, and his grandmother Feng Yuan, the princess dowager, cared for his treatment and often worshipped gods to pray for his healing.

In the fictional book series The Princess Diaries, the character Princess Clarisse Marie Grimaldi Renaldo is the dowager princess of the principality of Genovia.

The dowager princess Natalie deceased in 1957.

" From the beginning of the regency, conflicts arose between the king and the dowager princess: Frederick preferred a Reformist education for Leopold, but Gisela Agnes, a devout Lutheran, planned to raise her son in her own faith.

After Leopold's return in 1711, King Frederick I wanted to make him a commander of in the Prussian army, but the opposition of the dowager princess led him to withdraw this idea.

His mother, the dowager princess, moved to her estate in Nienburg.

The birth of her son elevated her status from Lady Bo to Consort Bo, and unlike many other concubines, was not confined to the palace, but accompanied her son to the remote Principality of Dai ( modern northern Shanxi and northwestern Hebei ) to be the princess dowager.

Consort Fu received the title of princess dowager.

Princess Dowager Fu continued to carry her title after her son's death ( as Han Dynasty did not appear to have a title such as " grand princess dowager "), and she maintained a strong grip on her grandson, the person now that she wants to eventually become emperor.

Emperor Ai's cousin Liu Jizi ( 劉箕子 ), the Prince of Zhongshan ( Prince Xing's son ), had a congenital heart disorder, and his grandmother Feng Yuan, the princess dowager, cared for his treatment and often worshipped gods to pray for his healing.

He had her title stripped, and further stripped her of her original title as princess dowager -- and had her referred merely as " the mother of Prince Gong of Dingtao " ( while her daughter-in-law suffered a similar posthumous demotion to " Consort Ding ").

Princess Dowager Feng continued to serve as princess dowager.

The leader of the all-powerful aristocratic class was John Kantakouzenos, who after the death of Emperor Andronikos III Palaiologos was the effective regent for the latter's infant son, John V. A faction in Constantinople, formed around the powerful megas doux Alexios Apokaukos, plotted against him, and managed to enlist the support of dowager empress Anna of Savoy and the Patriarch John Kalekas.

Some historians, such as Lauritz Weibull, have argued that Sweyn's wife described in the sagas – Swedish dowager queen Sigrid the Haughty – is purely fictional, whereas others have accepted her existence on the evidence of the Norse sagas.

Nimaethap of the third dynasty may have been the dowager of Khasekhemwy, but certainly acted as regent for her son, Djoser, and may have reigned as pharaoh in her own right.

Parliament passed a resolution in 1428 forbidding dowager queens to remarry without the king's permission, so the marriage of Catherine and Owen Tudor may not have been legally valid.

The King's mother, the dowager Queen Mary, was even told that Simpson might have held some sort of sexual control over Edward, as she had released him from an undefined sexual dysfunction through practices learnt in a Chinese brothel.

However, in 5 BC, after Empress Dowager Fu was more successful in her quest for titles — Emperor Ai removed the qualification " of Dingtao " from his father's posthumous title ( thus making him simply " Emperor Gong "), and then gave his grandmother a variation of the grand empress dowager title ( ditaitaihou ( 帝太太后 ), compared to Grand Empress Dowager Wang's title taihuangtaihou ( 太皇太后 )) and his mother a variation of the empress dowager title ( ditaihou ( 帝太后 ), compared to Empress Dowager Zhao's title huangtaihou ( 皇太后 )) -- the prime minister Zhu Bo ( 朱博 ) and vice prime minister Zhao Xuan ( 趙玄 ), at her behest, submitted a petition to have Wang demoted to commoner status for having opposed Grand Empress Fu previously.

In 1193, according to the chronicler Alberic of Trois-Fontaines, Theodore became the lover of the dowager empress Anna, then aged 22 ; they did not marry because in marrying a commoner she would have lost her dowry.

Had George VI, the last Emperor of India, died before the independence of India was proclaimed in 1947, his widow would have been known as the dowager empress of India.

Furthermore, Emperor Ai was highly controlled by his grandmother Consort Fu ( consort of his grandfather Emperor Yuan ), who improperly demanded the title of Grand Empress Dowager -- even though she had never been an empress previously and therefore did not properly have that title, and this led to the unprecedented and unrepeated situation of four women possessing empress dowager titles at the same time — Empress Wang ( Emperor Cheng's mother and Emperor Yuan's wife ), Empress Zhao Feiyan ( Emperor Cheng's wife ), Consort Fu, and Consort Ding ( Emperor Ai's mother ).

Despite suggestions by eunuchs to have her only buried as an imperial consort and not be honored as Emperor Huan's wife, Emperor Ling had her buried with honors due an empress dowager, with Emperor Huan.

The plans of marriage was, however, opposed and prevented by the queen dowager, who was the ruler de facto during her son's first years and who wished for him to have an arranged marriage of political convenience.

The repugnance of the empress dowager to Savary is said to have been one of the reasons of his recall, but it is more probable that Napoleon felt the need of his gifts for intrigue in the Spanish affairs which he undertook at the close of 1807.

As queen dowager, her position seem to have been higher than that of her daughter-in-law ; In a Kentish charter datable between 942 and 944, her daughter-in-law Ælfgifu of Shaftesbury subscribes herself as the king's concubine ( concubina regis ), with a place assigned to her between the bishops and ealdormen.

Sometimes he would have music performed and order Lao Ai to put his penis through a wheel of paulownia wood and walk about, making certain that the queen dowager would hear about it to entice her.

Queens dowager have their own Mistresses of the Robes, and in the 18th century Princesses of Wales had one too.

Empress Zhang, who was then made empress dowager, did not appear to have significant influence.

During Emperor Ai's reign, she exerted heavy influence on his reign and forcibly extracted empress dowager titles that she should not have properly possessed ( since she was never an empress -- and Emperor Cheng's wife, Grand Empress Dowager Wang Zhengjun was still alive ) -- which would bring her hatred from the Wang clan and the eventually desecration of her tomb after her death.

Though Prince Bei was designated heir apparent in 916, the empress dowager Yingtian did not consider him to be worthy and managed to have her second son Deguang succeed to the throne.

During this time the queen dowager, Baldwin III's widow Theodora, eloped with her cousin Andronicus to Damascus, and Acre, which had been in her possession, reverted back into the royal domain of Jerusalem.

Empress, the female equivalent, may indicate an emperor's wife ( empress consort ), mother ( empress dowager ), or a woman who rules in her own right ( empress regnant ).

However the emperor was often a minor, ruled over by a regent such as the empress dowager or one of her male relatives.

The dowager empresses, her aunt Wilhelmine Amalia of Brunswick-Lüneburg and grandmother Eleonor Magdalene of the Palatinate-Neuburg, were her godmothers.

From Edward's death in 1910 until her own death, she was the queen mother, being a dowager queen and the mother of the reigning monarch, George V, though she was more generally styled Her Majesty Queen Alexandra.

Wu officials claimed that her servants, unable to stand her temper, strangled her while she was asleep, while a number of historians, including Hu Sansheng, the commentator to Sima Guang's Zizhi Tongjian, believed that top Wu officials were complicit, as they feared that she would seize power as empress dowager after Sun Quan's death.

The Countess was reluctant to accept a lower status than the dowager queen Elizabeth or even her daughter-in-law, the queen consort.

In 1480, the next child of Mary and Maximilian was a girl: the Duke and Duchess named her Margaret, after the dowager Duchess.

The historians Tacitus and Cassius Dio depict an overweening, even domineering dowager, ready to interfere in Tiberius ’ decisions, the most notable instances being the case of Urgulania ( grandmother of Claudius's first wife Plautia Urgulanilla ), a woman who correctly assumed that her friendship with the empress placed her above the law, and Munatia Plancina, suspected of murdering Germanicus and saved at Livia's entreaty.

Sibylla was being raised by her great-aunt Ioveta in the convent of Bethany, while Isabella was at the court of her mother, the dowager queen Maria Comnena, in Nablus.

Lü Zhi, now declared the empress dowager when her son Liu Ying succeeded to the throne as Emperor Hui after Gaozu's death, commenced an inhumane plot against Qi and Liu Ruyi.

* Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon ( 1900 – 2002 ), queen consort, queen dowager and queen mother of the United Kingdom ( known from 1952 until her death as Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother )

" ( Thus, today Chinese people often refer to her as Wu Mei or Wu Meiniang ( 武媚娘 ) when they write about her youth, whereas they refer to her as Empress Wu ( 武后 ) when referring to her as empress and empress dowager and Wu Zetian ( 武則天 ) when referring to her reign as " emperor.