Talk:Beatrix of Bavaria

Move from Beatrix

Good move! SergeWoodzing (talk) 22:08, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Arms

An image of Bavarian arms had been added to this article, but those were a much later Wittelsbach coat and never the arms of Queen Beatrice. SergeWoodzing (talk) 20:58, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Requested move 1 September 2024

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved. Per discussion below. Best, (closed by non-admin page mover) Reading of Beans 06:30, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

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Beatrice of Bavaria → Beatrix, Queen of Sweden – The given name is per WP:COMMONNAME:

• The spelling "Beatrice" is very seldom used for her in the literature. I can find a pair of 19th century books which call her Beatrice,[1][2] a short entry in Women in World History (1999) and a genealogy chart in some Strindberg's work[3]. The rest of the literature calls her "Beatrix".(e.g. search for Beatrix+Erik+1359+Magnus and its variations)
• The most common territorial designation is "of Brandenburg", by an overwhelming margin compared to other options. It is used for example in various Scandinavian encyclopedias[4][5][6]. However, the name Beatrix of Brandenburg is already taken. (There's no primary topic here, and that title should actually be replaced with a dab page.)
• Few sources disambiguate her with the house name Wittelsbach,[7], and a couple of German sources disambiguate her as Beatrix von Bayern. In other sources I have not seen Bavaria/Bayern being used for her. Some encyclopedias call her Beatrix without any such designation, and indicate that she is a queen in the subtitle.[8].[9] Since both "Beatrix of Wittelsbach" and "Beatrix of Bavaria" are rare in the literature (and likely to only hinder recognizability), I suggest that we just use a descriptive phrase "Queen of Sweden".

— Jähmefyysikko (talk) 14:43, 1 September 2024 (UTC) — Relisting. Reading Beans 08:03, 9 September 2024 (UTC) — Relisting. Reading of Beans 05:50, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

I am not convinced that the descriptive phrase is a better solution than any of the cited unambiguous names. How many sources name her "queen of Sweden" anyway? It does not seem like a more recognizable name. She is a very obscure person who died young and one cannot expect a lot of coverage, especially in English. If a move should be made, I would favor Beatrix of Bavaria, as this is the name used in a biography of her aunt Philippa;[10] or, alternatively, Beatrice of Wittelsbach, as used in the above cited biographical encyclopedia. Surtsicna (talk) 17:41, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

Her queenship is not controversial in the literature. Erik is generally accepted to have been a king for a short period of time, and according to Ohlmarks, she was crowned Queen in 1357. She is called Queen Beatrix, svensk drottning or something similar in most of the sources. For example, see the Scandinavian encyclopedias cited above (the entries dedicated to her) or The Cambridge History of Scandinavia[11]. The above biography of Philippa also says that "her niece Beatrix was queen of Sweden".

I had missed the book about Philippa. Having at least a single English source makes Beatrix of Bavaria slightly less objectionable, even if it still a very rare name.

Adopting "Beatrice" based on a single source that does not even contain a single sentence of prose about her would be strange. One relevant guideline here is WP:UE, which says that if there are too few English sources to constitute an established English usage, we should follow the conventions in other languages. There is a sufficiently large body of Swedish literature (e.g. GBooks for Beatrix av Brandenburg) which establishes Beatrix as the conventional spelling. Jähmefyysikko (talk) 20:37, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

I am not disputing her queenship. I am pointing out that she is not commonly called "queen of Sweden" in English language sources, so the proposed title is less recognizable than the others that you mentioned. Surtsicna (talk) 23:14, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

She's not called anything 'commonly' in English literature, since such literature barely exists. How many English-language sources can we find? A dozen in total, perhaps? If we really dig deep, then two dozen, with most of them just mentioning her given name, with no other details about her. Per WP:UE we should follow the Swedish conventions.

If recognizability is the issue, then perhaps a more recognizable name could be Beatrix of Brandenburg, Queen of Sweden? This is not WP:CONCISE, but would be consistent with the titles of similar articles (see the non-redirect pages at intitle:"Queen of Sweden"). For niche topics, concision is perhaps not the most important criterion. Jähmefyysikko (talk) 13:02, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

Note: WikiProject Bavaria, WikiProject Women, WikiProject Women's History, WikiProject Sweden, WikiProject Germany, WikiProject Royalty and Nobility, WikiProject Middle Ages, and WikiProject Biography have been notified of this discussion. Reading Beans 08:02, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

• The Swedish article is at Beatrix av Bayern, which suggests that we should use Beatrix of Bavaria. I'm glad to note that she has redirects from many other variations of her name: in fact the proposed one, Beatrix, Queen of Sweden, is oddly the only conspicuous omission from the current set of redirects. PamD 09:55, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

  Other Wikipedia versions are not reliable sources, especially when the Swedish article lacks references supporting the name used in the text. I've now created the redirect (as I had done previously with Beatrix of Wittelsbach). Generally speaking, there are a lot of alternate names for medieval Swedish people and other related topics (e.g. Danish/Swedish/Norwegian/Old Norse spellings), and many redirects for names commonly used in the literature are missing. Even "Erik's Chronicle" was recently missing, even though it seems to be the most common translation of Erikskrönikan. Jähmefyysikko (talk) 07:36, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

• Question. I think we've agreed on the given name Beatrix, and the rest is just fine-tuning. @Surtsicna: How would Beatrix (wife of Erik Magnusson) sound? This would be neutral with respect to 'Queen', recognizable, and this title format is commonly used in WP for consorts. In the literature Beatrix is often introduced as Erik's gemål, 'consort'. See search results for "gemål Beatrix" OR "Beatrix gemål". If this is not acceptable, then we may go with either "Beatrix of Bavaria" or "of Wittelsbach". The latter is supported by the Riksarkivet bio for Erik Magnusson.[12] Jähmefyysikko (talk) 08:17, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

There are two problems with Beatrix (wife of Erik Magnusson). The first is that parenthetical disambiguation is deprecated when a natural one is available. In this case we have multiple available. The second problem is that defining a woman as someone's wife might not be so nice when there are several verifiable, unambiguous names we can use instead. I favor Beatrix of Bavaria (as used in the above mentioned biography of her aunt Philippa;[13]) because it is the common designation for the Wittelsbach princelings. Surtsicna (talk) 15:45, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

Ok, thanks for this, especially the essay, I'll keep it in mind whilst writing. In some cases there might not be anything else to tell than that the medieval woman in question was someone's daughter and married some lord, but perhaps in those cases we actually need to reconsider whether an independent article is really needed.

@Reading Beans, in case you want to close this, I agree with Beatrix of Bavaria per Surtsicna's explanation regarding the Wittelsbach princelings, and so does everyone else it seems. Jähmefyysikko (talk) 06:02, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

Relisting comment: Relisting for more participation as I see no consensus whatsoever here. Best, Reading of Beans 05:50, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Errors in the literature

Some errors seem to have propagated in the literature (and in WP). For example, most of the information in the encyclopedia entry of Women in World History is incorrect (compared with the more reliable Swedish Biographical Lexicon entries for Erik Magnusson and for her):

• Her parents are incorrectly identified as Margaret of Holland and Louis IV. In fact, her parents were Margaret of Denmark and Louis IV's son, Louis V.
• The entry states she was born in 1344, but her date of birth is actually unknown. Her mother died in 1340, and she is often assumed to be around the same age as her husband, who was born in 1339.
• The date of her marriage is given as December 1355. The actual date is unknown, it is only known that it occurred between 1346 and October 1356.
• The date of her death is given as 25 December 1359. Again, according to the biographical lexicon the exact date is not known; it might have been in summer.

— Jähmefyysikko (talk) 17:33, 23 September 2024 (UTC)

I removed Åke Ohlmarks (1973) Alla Sveriges drottningar (Stockholm : Geber) ISBN 9120040105 from "Other sources", since it also contains dubious claims, e.g. death of the father on year 1351 (Louis died in 1361). Jähmefyysikko (talk) 19:05, 27 September 2024 (UTC)