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Doamna Chiajna( 1525–1588), wife of the voivode of Wallachia, Mircea Ciobanul( Mircea the Shepherd), daughter of Petru Rareș of Moldavia and niece of Stephen the Great.

Biography
It is thought that she was born in Poland in 1525. Chiajna is the Slavon name for Despina, but her birth name was Ana. In 1545 she married the voivode of Wallachia, Mircea Ciobanul, known in history for the killing of the boyars he believed betrayed him. This marriage resulted in three boys and some boys. After the death of Mircea the Shepherd on the 21st of September 1559, Doamna Chiajna becomes the legal tutor of her biggest son, Peter the Younger, 13 years of age, obtaining the throne. She strengthens her son's reign by sending gifts to the Turks and asking for two Phanariots to marry her daughters. Two men were proposed for her daughters, the first being the young and handsome Stamatie Paleologul and the second being the old Cantacuzen. The daughter that was supposed to marry Cantacuzen, ran away with a young Romanian boyar, Radu Socol. To wipe away the embarrassment of such an action, Doamna Chiajna sent another set of gifts to the Ottoman Empire. At the same time, she took revenge on the boyars by killing some of them. In 1574 she married another daughter to the sultan Murad. But after just a year, her daughter was exiled to Alep, Syria. She died in 1588 in Galata.

Doamna Chiajna was a very energic, cunning, and ambitious woman. Above all, she was an admirable mother who was capable of anything for her children. She helped the building of some religious places and in 1552, in Câmpulung Muscel, she established one of the oldest Romanian schools.

In Chiajna, in the middle of November, there is a special day dedicated to Doamna Chiajna, where people leave flowers at a statue of her realized by Nicolae Popa.

The struggle to power
In September 1559, after the death of Mircea the Shepherd, the boyars that managed to escape in Ardeal, gathered a small army with the intent of coming to Bucharest and taking control of the throne. Doamna Chiajna, being the legal guardian of her minor son who suddenly became the ruler, and also wanting to protect him, gathered her army and stood in front of them. It was for the first time in Romanian history that a woman was in charge of an army. As such, she fought in three battles in one month: in Românești, in Șerbănești, and in Boianu.

The legend
Neagu Djuvara, comments on the lady and the boyars of that time saying that the voivodes killed so many boyars (like Alexandru Lapusneanu) that there was a point in the Romanian historiography when the boyars were thought to be extinct from the Medieval Era and that the boyars from the XVII century are something completely new.