Gertrude of Austria
Gertrude was born in 1226 and was the only child of Henry II, Duke of Mödling, by his wife Agnes, daughter of Hermann I, Landgrave of Thuringia.
Despite this negative turn of events, Gertrude inherited her father's Duchy of Mödling and was placed under the guardianship of her uncle, Frederick II, who, after two unhappy marriages, remained childless.
Though desirous of the union, Wenceslaus I of Bohemia voiced his concerns given a pre-existing agreement that Gertrude marry his eldest son and heir Vladislaus III of Moravia.
After sending an army to Austria in order to pressure Duke Frederick II into agreeing to the union of Gertrude and Vladislaus, the two parties came to terms early in June 1245 in Verona.
Per hoc Wladislaus habebat Austriae ducatum cheered Bohemia and, supported by the rights of his wife and the prospect of inheriting the Bohemian throne, Vladislaus was recognized as Duke by the Austrian aristocracy.
On 12 July 1252, having lost most of her support, Gertrude formed an alliance with Béla IV of Hungary and married his relative, Roman Danylovich, Prince of Halicz, a member of the Rurikid dynasty.
In 1267, as neither Gertrude nor her son Frederick forswore their claim to the duchies of Styria and Austria, King Ottokar II dispossessed them of their lands.
Ottokar was largely motivated since he sought to remarry into the Hungarian royal house; he could not expect an heir with the significantly older Margaret who was past child bearing age.
From her second marriage with Count Ulrich III of Heunburg, Agnes had five children, two sons (Frederick and Herman) and three daughters (Margaret, Elisabeth and Katharina).
The eldest daughter, Katharina, married the Styrian nobleman Ulrich of Sanneck, and their son Frederick I of Cilli eventually inherited his grandfather's estates.
Gertrude's youngest daughter, Maria Romanovna of Halicz, born from her third marriage, married in the second half of the 1260s with Joachim Gutkeled,[9] Ban of Slavonia between 1270 and 1272 (with short interruption) and from 1276 to 1277, and three times Master of the treasury between 1272 and 1275.
