queens consort england's medieval queens

The main problem with this book, however, lies in the format: with only twenty to thirty pages being spent on each queen, there isn't nearly enough time to fully explore who these women were, much less understand the complex political climate of their time.

The changing face of the monarchy from the Middle Ages to the beginning of the Tudor dynasty was interesting, especially the details Hilton digs up about the queen's role in the coronation ceremony and how it changed over the years. Hilton gives a brief biographical sketch of each queen, and then examines the circumstances surrounding her marriage, the political climate of the time, and the overreaching effects of that king's rule. The queens are divided into individual chapters (except for Anne of Bohemia and Isabelle of France, who have to share one) that vary in length depending on how much information we have about a given queen and how much she actually did - Eleanor of Aquitaine and the York princesses, obviously, get the highest page counts. The story of England's medieval queens is composed of two entwined narrative strands: the first the development of queenly tradition and practice, the second the diverse lives of the very individual women who controlled, enlarged and manipulated their customary heritage.'Īs stated in the introduction, Lisa Hilton's purpose is to present individual portraits of twenty English queens, from Matilda of Flanders to Elizabeth of York, while also examining the changing role of the queen and the monarchy in general. Yet between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries, English queenship evolved an identity of its own, an identity predicated on, but not limited to marriage to the king.

No equivalent constitutional role existed for the king's consort. The role and status of king were constantly in the process of redefinition, an ongoing negotiation between royal, ecclesiastical and aristocratic powers, but they remained throughout essentially constitutional, their authority enshrined in and upheld by law. 'In the period between the Norman Conquest and the accession of Mary Tudor in the sixteenth century, no woman ruled England as queen in her own right.

Queens consort england's medieval queens