Queen Anne of Great Britain
Anne was the second daughter of James II and the last Stuart monarch, succeeding William III in 1702 and reigning until her death in 1714. Her reign's most enduring constitutional achievement was the Acts of Union of 1707, which merged the Kingdoms of England and Scotland into a single Kingdom of Great Britain — a union partly engineered through lavish bribery of Scottish parliamentarians. She presided over the War of the Spanish Succession and the brilliant campaigns of her favourite's husband, John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, at Blenheim (1704), Ramillies (1706), and Oudenarde (1708), before politics and personal feuds led to Marlborough's dismissal in 1711 and the controversial peace negotiations that produced the Treaty of Utrecht (1713). Her close relationship with Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough — which soured dramatically around 1710 — and then with Abigail Masham illuminated the intensely personal nature of early-eighteenth-century court politics. Anne suffered seventeen pregnancies, none of which produced a surviving heir, prompting the Act of Settlement (1701) that barred Catholics from the succession and pointed the crown toward the Protestant Hanoverian line.
- Lived: 1665 CE – 1714 CE
- Nationality: british
- Roles: queen, ruler
