Dowager

A dowager is a widow who holds a title or property, or dower, derived from her deceased husband. As an adjective, "dowager" usually appears in association with monarchical and aristocratic titles.

In loose popular usage, dowager as a stand-alone noun may refer to any elderly widow, especially one who is wealthy or behaves with dignity.

Use in the United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom, the widow of a peer may continue to use the style she had during her husband's lifetime, e.g. "Countess of Loamshire", provided that his successor, if any, has no wife to bear the plain title. Otherwise she more properly prefixes either her forename or the word Dowager, e.g. "Jane, Countess of Loamshire" or "Dowager Countess of Loamshire". (In any case she would continue to be called "Lady Loamshire".)

Monarchical dowagers

Dowager Queen is used in the United Kingdom and several other countries.

In reference to the fallen Russian imperial family and the Monarchy of China, the term "Dowager Empress" was used in English to describe the wife of a deceased emperor.

Examples

Historical and current

• Following the annulment of her marriage to King Henry VIII of England, Katherine of Aragon was styled either "Princess Dowager of Wales" or "Dowager Princess of Wales" in consequence of her previous marriage (1501) to Henry's older brother, Arthur, Prince of Wales (died 1502).
• Cixi was referred to as the Empress Dowager of China.
• Following the adoption of same-sex marriage in Spain, Luisa Isabel Álvarez de Toledo, 21st Duchess of Medina Sidonia married on her deathbed her longtime secretary Liliana Dahlgren, leaving her as the Dowager Duchess of Medina Sidonia.
• Helen E. Hokinson, a cartoonist for the The New Yorker, was best known for her sketches of American dowagers from the 1920s though the 1940s.
• Following the death of Edward John Spencer, 8th Earl Spencer in 1992, his widow, Raine McCorquodale, ceased to use the style Countess Spencer, becoming Raine, Dowager Countess Spencer. Her stepdaughter-in-law, Victoria, became Countess Spencer.

In media and entertainment

• In the 1997 movie Anastasia, the term is said many times to address the Dowager Empress Marie, Anastasia's grandmother.
• In The Princess Diaries books, Mia's grandmother is the Dowager Princess of Genovia, although she is simply known as "the Queen" in the films.
• In the video game Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn for the Nintendo Wii, one can see Ike refer to Lady Almedha as the Dowager Queen of Daein if one can enable the secret conversation regarding Soren in the Epilogue.
• The 2010 television series, Downton Abbey, features Dame Maggie Smith playing the fictional Violet, Dowager Countess of Grantham.
• In science fiction author C. J. Cherryh's Foreigner universe, Ilisidi, the Aiji-dowager, grandmother of Tabini, and twice denied the throne by the hasdrawad; a house of the atevi parliament.