Kunigunde of Austria (16 March 1465 – 6 August 1520), a member of the House of Habsburg, was Duchess of Bavaria from 1487 to 1508, by her marriage to the Wittelsbach duke Albert IV. Biography Early life Kunigunde was born in Wiener Neustadt, the fourth of five children to Emperor Frederick III and his wife Eleanor, daughter of King Edward of Portugal. However, only she and her elder brother Maximilian survived to adulthood. Frederick blamed her mother for the deaths of her older siblings, saying that she had fed them too much Portuguese sweet food. When Kunigunde fell ill, Frederick rushed into the women's quarter, took the baby from the cradle and moved her to his own bedchamber, removing her from the mother's supposed harmful care. Eleanor quickly fell ill herself. It is unknown whether mother and child ever saw each other again before her death. She was raised in Wiener Neustadt and at the Inner Austrian court in Graz, Styria, where she grew up in an informal and open atmosphere, without rigid court etiquette. Contrary to former practice, she learned not only to read, write, and embroider, but also received instruction in riding and hunting, astronomy and mathematics. Kunigunde's family had left the Imperial residence at the Hofburg in Vienna after lengthy quarrels with Frederick's younger brother Archduke Albert VI of Austria. Though Albert had unexpectedly died in 1463 and the emperor proclaimed a general Landfrieden peace, armed hostilities in the Austrian lands continued. Like most daughters of royal families, since her early years Kunigunde was involved in the political intrigues of her time. In 1470 the Hungarian king Matthias Corvinus requested her hand; however, Emperor Frederick, a rival for the Crown of Saint Stephen and also for the Lands of the Bohemian Crown, refused him. As her mother had died in 1467, Kunigunde made her formal presentation at the side of her father at the age of fifteen, in 1480, during the visit of Duke George of Bavaria, called "the Rich", to Frederick's court in Vienna. George was solemnly enfeoffed with the Imperial estate of Bavaria-Landshut and after the celebrations Kunigunde was sent to Burggraf Ulrich III von Graben to Graz for her safety; however, after a plot against the emperor was discovered, he moved to Linz and sent Kunigunde to the Tyrolean court in Innsbruck with Archduke Sigismund of Austria, Frederick's first cousin and former ward. Duchess