Queen Anne of England died without surviving issue despite 17 pregnancies. Did any other monarch try so hard to produce an heir without success?

Question

Queen Anne (reigned 1702 – 14) had seventeen known pregnancies during her marriage to Prince George of Denmark (b.1653, d.1708) but she died without surviving issue. Only five of her pregnancies led to live-born children and all of them died before she even ascended the throne. One son, William, lived to the age of eleven, dying in 1700.

Did any other monarch have so many known pregnancies yet fail to produce a surviving heir? If not (and I suspect not), which monarch comes closest to this (unwanted) record?

The question applies to both men and women who were monarchs in their own right and could be with more than one husband or wife (in the case male monarchs, this obviously means their wife or wives pregnancies!).

Answer 1

Not an exact fit, but Emperor Renzhong of Song came close with 16 children known to history. All three sons and eight of the daughters died young, so he eventually had to adopt the son of a cousin to succeed him. Though five of his princesses survived to adulthood, they were not considered heirs under Chinese succession laws. In that sense, Renzhong was unsuccessful in producing an heir.

We do know Renzhong tried pretty hard, because he had at least 18 empresses and other concubines who received formal titles on the historical record. Chances are that between them, there was at least 17 total pregnancies, but this is of course impossible to verify today.

Generally speaking, it would be incredibly difficult for one person to be pregnant as many times as Queen Anne was. Hence male monarchs with harems were more likely to have exceeded her count, but conversely, the historical record on pregnancies of consorts or concubines are rather less than meticulous.