Mary was fifty-three, and her family expected her to cross Europe and go back to work. She had already governed the Netherlands for twenty-four years. She had already resigned once.
At twelve she married a boy of ten who was not even in the room. On the same day, his sister married her brother. Each family would gain a daughter-in-law. Each would send a daughter away.
The bells rang across Brussels on 18 July 1501 for a girl who would wear three northern crowns before she turned twenty-five, and lose every one of them long before she died.