Louise of Mecklenburg-Strelitz

Duchess Louise of Mecklenburg-Strelitz (Luise Auguste Wilhelmine Amalie; March 10, 1776 – July 19, 1810) is Queen of Prussia as the wife of King Frederick William III.

The couple's happy, though short-lived, marriage produces nine children, including the future monarchs Frederick William IV of Prussia and German Emperor Wilhelm I.

Her legacy becomes cemented after her extraordinary 1807 meeting with French Emperor Napoleon I at Tilsit – she had met with the emperor to plead unsuccessfully for favorable terms after Prussia's disastrous losses in the Napoleonic Wars.

She is already well loved by her subjects, but her meeting with Napoleon leads Louise to become revered as "the soul of national virtue".

Her early death at the age of thirty-four "preserved her youth in the memory of posterity", and caused Napoleon to reportedly remark the king "has lost his best minister".

The Order of Louise is founded by her grieving husband four years later as a female counterpart to the Iron Cross.

In the 1920s conservative German women will found  the Queen Louise League, and Louise herself will be used in Nazi propaganda as an example of the ideal German woman.

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