The five queens of Navarre were the largest group of female sovereigns in one European realm during the Middle Ages, but they are largely unknown beyond a regional audience. This survey fills this scholarly lacuna, focusing particularly on issues of female succession, agency, and power-sharing dynamic between the queens and their male consorts.

The five queens of Navarre were the largest group of female sovereigns in one European realm during the Middle Ages, but they are largely unknown beyond a regional audience. This survey fills this scholarly lacuna, focusing particularly on issues of female succession, agency, and power-sharing dynamic between the queens and their male consorts.

From the 14th-century king consorts of Navarre to the modern European prince consorts of the 20th century, the male consort has been a peculiar yet recurrent historical figure. In this impressively broad collection, leading historians of monarchy analyze how male partners of female rulers have negotiated their unique roles throughout history.

Berengaria of Navarre was queen of England (1191–99) and lord of Le Mans (1204–30), but has received little attention in terms of a fully encompassing biography from Navarrese, Anglophone, and French perspectives. This book explores her political career whilst utilising the surviving documentation to demonstrate her personal and familial partnerships and life as a dowager queen. This biography follows Berengaria’s journey from a Navarrese infanta, raised in the northern Iberian kingdom, to her travels across Europe to marriage and the Third Crusade, venturing through Sicily, Cyprus, and on to the Holy Land in 1191. Berengaria’s reign and early years as dowager queen are examined in the context of the Anglo-French conflict and domestic disputes, before her decision to negotiate with the king of France, Philip Augustus, and become lord of Le Mans, for which she is far better known in local memory. The volume flows chronologically discussing her roles as infanta, queen, dowager, and lord, and is an ideal resource for scholars and those interested in the history of gender, queenship, lordship, and Western Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

This book is the first full-length biography of Joan of Navarre, a fascinating royal woman who became duchess of Brittany and queen consort of England through her two marriages in 1386 and 1403 respectively. Joan was enmeshed in the turbulent politics of the later Middle Ages as her extensive family and marital connections meant she was related to most of the royal houses of Western Europe—as well as the key protagonists of the Hundred Years War. The large foreign entourage that Joan brought with her to England, and her family ties across the Channel, made her unpopular with her subjects and her loyalties suspect, provoking several purges of her household and culminating in a charge of treason on which she was detained for several years. Yet Joan returned to court in her later years and fought vociferously to the end to retain queenly rights, revenues, and position. Ultimately, this book highlights Joan’s political agency and tenacity, bringing her out of the historical shadows and into the foreground of high politics in fifteenth-century England and Europe. Joan of Navarre is a useful resource for all students and scholars interested in queenship studies, women’s history, and European politics during the later Middle Ages.

Forgotten Queens in Medieval and Early Modern Europe examines queens dowager and queens consort who have disappeared from history or have been deeply misunderstood in modern historical treatment. Divided into eleven chapters, this book covers queenship from 1016 to 1800, demonstrating the influence of queens in different aspects of monarchy over eight centuries and furthering our knowledge of the roles and challenges that they faced. It also promotes a deeper understanding of the methods of power and patronage for women who were not queens, many of which have since become mythologized into what historians have wanted them to be. The chronological organisation of the book, meanwhile, allows the reader to see more clearly how these forgotten queens are related by the power, agency, and patronage they displayed, despite the mythologization to which they have all been subjected. Offering a broad geographical coverage and providing a comparison of queenship across a range of disciplines, such as religious history, art history, and literature, Forgotten Queens in Medieval and Early Modern Europe is ideal for students and scholars of pre-modern queenship and of medieval and early modern history courses more generally.

This biography of Queen María de Molina thematically explores her life and demonstrates her collective exercise of power and authority as queen. Throughout her public life, María de Molina’s resilient determination, as queen and later as regent, enabled her to not only work tirelessly to establish an effective governing partnership with her husband King Sancho IV, which never occurred, but also to establish the legitimacy of her children and their heirs and their right to rule. Such legitimacy enabled Queen María de Molina’s son and grandson, under her tutelage, to fend off other monarchs and belligerent nobles. The author demonstrates the queen’s ability to govern the Kingdom of Castile-León as a partner with her husband King Sancho IV, a partnership that can be described as an official union. A major theme of this study is María de Molina’s role as dowager queen and regent as she continued to exercise her queenly power and authority to protect the throne of her son Fernando IV and, later, of her grandson Alfonso XI, and to provide peace and stability for the Kingdom of Castile-León.

The most recent cutting-edge scholarship on the tenth, eleventh and twelfth centuries.