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y Tudor standards, Anne of Cleves's lineage was not particularly impressive. Through her father, Duke John "the Simple," Anne could claim descent from the Plantagenet 13th century English monarch Edward I Longshanks. Her mother, Maria, had been the heiress to the duchies of Juelich and Berg, relatively small territories on the Lower Rhine. The marriage of Anne's parents had created a much larger duchy of Cleves, with Dusseldorf as its capital. Of her siblings, only one was of strategic interest. Anne's older sister Sybilla was married to the Duke of Saxony, head of the Schmalkaldic League, a defensive alliance formed by Protestant German princes to ward off attacks by England's sometime enemy Holy Roman Emperor Charles V.
Trouble Alert 
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Above: Hans Holbein miniature |
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