Redrawing the Lines of Power--Women's Family Trees

 Redrawing the Lines of Power--Women's Family Trees

I have just finished hanging a framed poster that was a recent gift from my son: "Matrilineal Dynasties of Europe." It was a perfect present. As it is described at the UseFul Charts website, "This unique chart views European history in a totally new way by focusing on the female-only lines within royal genealogy. Over 100 queens and empresses shown!"

My really crappy photo of
Useful Charts's beautiful
"Matrilineal Dynasties of Europe"
(published with permission)

It was exactly the kind of family tree I wish I'd had many years ago, when I was researching and writing a book that would eventually be published as The Monstrous Regiment of Women: Female Rulers in Early Modern Europe (2002). 

In the introduction, titled "Redrawing the Lines of Power," I wrote about my frustration with finding so few women on royal family trees. As I now look happily on the new poster hanging on my wall, I thought I might post an early version of my introduction--it was necessarily edited for the book, but I can print here what I originally wrote years ago . . .* 

And so, an earlier version of "Redrawing the Lines of Power," written in 1998, is published for the first time:

Let us now sing the praises of famous men, the heroes of our nation's history, through whom the Lord established his renown, and revealed his majesty in each succeeding age. Some held sway over kingdoms and made themselves a name by their exploits. . . . Some led the people by their counsels and by their knowledge of the nation's laws. . . . Some there are who have left a name behind them to be commemorated in story. There are others who are unremembered; they are dead, and it is as though they had never existed, as though they had never been born or left children to succeed them.

                                                            --Ecclesiasticus 44:1-3, 4, 8-9

Abraham, the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob. Moses and his brother Aaron. David, the father of Solomon, and Solomon of Rehoboam. Like the "praises" of these "famous men" sung by the author of Ecclesiasticus, the historical narrative of western Europe has focused on generations of men. Political histories, biographies, and genealogies trace lines of power from fathers to sons and grandsons, brothers and nephews. 

During the period of English history with which I am most familiar, for example, Edward III is followed on the throne by his grandson Richard II; Henry IV is followed by his son Henry V, who is followed, in turn, by his son Henry VI; Edward IV was to have been followed by his son, who would have been the fifth English Edward, but instead is succeeded by his brother, Richard III; Henry VII is followed by his son Henry VIII, who is followed by his son Edward VI. Then something strange disrupts this narrative. At his death in 1553, Edward VI is succeeded by his sister, Mary I.

The succession of a woman to the throne of England horrified many, including the Protestant reformer John Knox, who concluded that any woman who presumed to "sit in the seat of God, that is, to teach, to judge, or to reign above a man" was "a monster in nature." Women were incapable of effective rule, for "nature . . . doth paint them forth to be weak, frail, impatient, feeble, and foolish, and experience hath declared them to be unconstant, variable, cruel, and lacking the spirit of counsel and regiment."

Knox published this blistering assessment of female rule, The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women, in 1558; his bitter indictment of "gynecocracy" was quickly followed in print by a series of pamphlets that echoed and expanded his argument that female rule was unnatural, unlawful, and contrary to scripture. From Knox's point of view, the political situation could hardly seem worse. Not only had Mary Tudor succeeded to the throne of England, but Mary Stuart, wife of the dauphin of France, had become queen of Scotland, while her mother, Mary of Guise, was acting as regent in Scotland on Mary's behalf.

Unfortunately for Knox, though, the political situation could get worse, and did, almost immediately. When Mary Tudor died only a few months after the Blast appeared, her half-sister Elizabeth succeeded her as queen of England. In France, following the death of her husband Henry II, Catherine de' Medici attempted to become regent of France for her son, Francis II. Outmaneuvered in 1559, she succeeded a year later when Francis died and the dowager queen assumed the regency for her second son, Charles IX. Thus, by 1560, England, Scotland, and France were under the direct "regiment" of women.

I began thinking about this exceptional historical moment after I had the experience of reading, one after another, the arguments against female rule penned by Knox, Anthony Gilby, Christopher Goodman, Jean Bodin, Robert Filmer, and Bishop Jacques Bossuet, among many others, and then, in turn, the defenses of female rule published to counter their extreme, sometimes violent, positions. Much has been written about the political, religious, and cultural factors that shaped this debate, but I was interested in analyzing these texts in a different context. In order to relate theory and practice, I planned to write a series of biographical portraits of the remarkable women whose "regiment" had inspired the debate, exploring the way each of these women achieved, maintained, and manipulated her position even as her right and her ability to do so were contested.

As I considered my project, I was at first uncertain about how to proceed. Aside from Mary and Elizabeth Tudor, Mary Stuart and her mother, and Catherine de' Medici, I knew of only two other women to include in my project: Margaret of Austria, regent of the Netherlands, and Jeanne d'Albret, the Protestant queen of Navarre, whose son had become Henry IV, hing of France. Would it be possible, I wondered, to find enough female rulers to make a "series" of such profiles possible?

But the more I thought about my project, the more I came to see what had been there all along. These women weren't the first powerful women in early modern Europe. Any analysis of female rulers in the early modern period should really begin by focusing on the lives of four formidable women who died early in the sixteenth century: Isabella of Spain (d. 1504), who inherited the throne of Castile; Lady Margaret Beaufort (d. 1509), who chose not to press her own claims to the English throne in order to promote the cause of her son, Henry Tudor; Caterina Sforza (d. 1509), who seized power in Imola and Forlì to preserve it for her son, Ottaviano; and Anne of France (d. 1522), who acted as a shrewd and politically adept regent for her brother, Charles VIII. The careers of these powerful and successful women seemed to me to provide models for the women who were to follow in the next generation. 

Still, as notable as they were, these weren't the only women to whom Mary Tudor or Catherine de' Medici could look for example. As I searched the indexes of political histories and biographies, I began to find the names of female rulers about whom I knew little or nothing. Despite arguments like Knox's against female rule, and despite the ordinary descent of political power from one man to another, it became clear to me that a whole range of "dynastic accidents" in early modern Europe had resulted in a surprising number of women ruling as queens or functioning as regents. It became equally clear that the lives and political careers of these sixteenth-century queens were hardly without precedent. 

Yet I could find little more than the names of these women at first. How many Blancas of Navarre were there? How many Isabellas of Aragon? Of Castile? Of Portugal? Were Charlotte of Savoy and Bona of Savoy related? If so, how? How did Louise of Savoy fit in? Were Anne of France and Anne of Beaujeu the same woman? What about Mary of Guise and Mary of Lorraine? And why was all this so difficult for me to sort out? I knew that the relationships and connections linking these women couldn't be more complicated than those of the eight Henrys, six Edwards and three Richards I knew so well; the English line of succession from the twelfth through the sixteenth centuries has always been easier for me to recite than the names and dates of American presidents. 

But it was hard to find out much about these Isabellas, Annes, and Marys in traditional political history. Like the "unremembered" others in Ecclesiasticus, it was almost as if they "had never existed, as though they had never been born or left children to succeed them." But clearly they had been born, and equally clearly they had left children to succeed them. And despite the familiar narrative of conventional history, they had also had some degree of real "sway" over various kingdoms and principalities. And so, trying to figure out who these women were and whether and how they were related, I began to focus on the family trees in the books I had in front of me. And that's when I began to notice what (or who) was missing.

Like the generations of "famous men" in Ecclesiasticus-- Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and David, Solomon, Rehoboam--one Henry or Charles followed another in succession, father and son, springing forth as if by spontaneous generation. I searched, sometimes in vain, for women; wives and mothers were simply absent from many of the genealogies appended to the histories and biographies I was reading. I think my favorite is a Valois "family tree" that charts four branches of the family over the course of nearly four hundred years. It looks as if the line of Valois kings (from 1328 through 1547, anyway)--Philip VI, John II, Charles V, Charles VI, Charles VII, Louis XI, Charles VIII, Louis XII, Francis I--managed to do without any wives or mothers at all. Then again, maybe I like best the Habsburg genealogy that begins in the tenth century and continues through the seventeenth century. There are a few wives among nine generations of Habsburg descendants, but, at least according to this family tree, there were no Habsburg daughters born between 950 and the mid-sixteenth century, when Eleanor and Mary show up on one branch.

Meanwhile, in England, the five daughters of Edward III (r. 1327-77) are all too often lumped together at the end of the genealogical line as "daughters," but that at least is an improvement over the tables that chart the descendants of his sons without noting that he had any "daughters" at all. I imagine that "issue," as it often appears on such family trees, could include insignificant males as well as females, but I am suspicious that "other issue" refers exclusively to daughters. I am almost afraid to think of what the disclaimer on one "short genealogical tree" might mean: "The irrelevant branches have been pruned."

Of course not all the family trees I looked at omitted women. The "Kings and Queens of England" poster that is hanging right next to me as I type indicates the wives of Edwards I through III, Henry IV and V, Henry VII and Henry VIII (all six). But why isn't the wife of Henry VI included, especially since she was the strong and powerful Margaret of Anjou (Shakespeare's "tiger's heart wrapped in a woman's hide")? Edward IV and Richard III are also missing their wives, as are James V of Scotland and his grandson James VI, who becomes James I of England. Then again, to be absolutely fair, while Mary Tudor's husband (Philip II of Spain) is listed, Mary Stuart's husbands, all three of them (Francis, Darnley, Bothwell), are eliminated. Still, this version of the poster is a marked improvement over the previous edition, which left out the wives of Edwards I through III, Henry IV and V as well as Henry VI, and limited Henry VIII to only three of his six wives. If there are rules to determine when women are included and when they are omitted in such genealogies, I haven't been able to figure out what they are.

I must admit I took unexpected pleasure in some of the inconsistencies I found. The Oxford History of England's volume of The Earlier Tudors eliminates all of six of Henry VIII's wives, and while I am, in general, frustrated that so many women have disappeared from royal family trees, I was delighted to see that Henry's entire matrimonial career had been wiped out. Interestingly, his elder brother, Arthur, wasn't given his wife (Catherine of Aragon) either, but his sisters Margaret and Mary are accompanied by their husbands, or at least some of them, at any rate; Margaret has her first two, James IV of Scotland and Archibald, earl of Angus, while Mary has only her second, Charles, duke of Brandon--I don't know why she didn't get to keep her king, Louis XII of France. Henry, for whatever reason, hasn't been allowed to keep a single wife. He looks almost lonely.

Even the most complete family trees, one tracing the Medici family from Giovanni "di Bicci" (1360-1428) and his wife Piccarda Bueri through Giovanni Gastone (1671-1737) and his wife Anne of Saxe-Lauenburg, for example, work patrilineally, tracing descent through the male line. In so many family trees, men's names are set in capital letters or boldfaced or highlighted, their wives' names, when included, are smaller, underneath the names, dates, and titles of the men to whom they are connected, or off to the side, after "m" or "=" to indicate their status as wives. When women marry into a family, their names suddenly appear--but where did they come from? Who were their grandmothers, their mothers, their sisters? And when women marry out of the family, where do they go? Their names are left dangling on the trees of their families, dead ends on the lines of descent. Are they and their descendants the "irrelevant branches" that have to be pruned?

And so, out of frustration, trying to identify the "unremembered" others whose names I had stumbled across, and trying to sort out the connections between them, I set out to draw my own family trees, linking women, generations of mothers and daughters, aunts and nieces. I searched--not always successfully--for the dates of their birth, the dates of their death, the children who succeeded them. As I drew and then redrew my new genealogical tables, I came to see not a series of individual, isolated women who came from nowhere to be swallowed up in the Tudor, Valois, Habsburg, or Medici families, but networks of related women and patterns of connections between them.

Once I had started to redraw the lines, I began to see something else of significance. Mary Tudor can no longer be portrayed as a "monster in nature" who suddenly, and without precedent, dared to assume political power. Mary Tudor's mother, Catherine of Aragon, was not only Henry VIII's first wife, but a queen who had served as regent of England; Catherine, in her turn, was the daughter of Isabella, queen regnant of Castile, who herself was the niece of Maria of Castile, governor of Aragon, and granddaughter of Catherine of Lancaster, regent of Castile. Isabella's elder daughter, Juana (Catherine of Aragon's sister), inherited the crowns of both Castile and Aragon; Isabella's granddaughters included Isabel of Portugal, regent of Spain; Mary of Austria, regent of the Netherlands; and Catherine, regent of Portugal. Among Isabella's great-granddaughters were Margaret of Parma, regent of the Netherlands, and Joanna of Spain, regent of Spain.

I also began to see significant connections and relationships I couldn't always indicate on my redrawn family trees: there were "genealogical" links that went beyond blood ties. Margaret of Austria, who functioned as regent of the Netherlands from 1519 until her death in 1530, had been betrothed at age three to Charles, the dauphin of France; in 1483 she had been sent to the French court where, for ten years, her care and education were directed by the extraordinary Anne, who acted as regent of France for her brother. The betrothal didn't result in marriage; instead, in 1497, Margaret was sent to the court of Queen Isabella of Castile, marrying John, heir to his mother's Castile and his father Ferdinand's Aragon. What was the influence of two such politically adept women on Margaret, who would function so successfully as regent for so many years?

If all this seems confusing, you can see why I needed to redraw family trees. Instead of genealogies that focused on kings and their sons, making clear their relationships and connections, I wanted to draw links that moved backward and forward, tracing queens and their grandmothers, mothers, aunts, sisters, daughters, nieces, granddaughters, and grandnieces. I have to admit that I enjoyed the process of constructing these new family trees. I made the names of the four women I identified as models big--really big, with bold boxes around them. Isabella of Castile overpowers her husband, Ferdinand of Aragon. She also overshadows him--wherever I could, I put my women on top. I also eliminated every son I could, including Henry VIII's long-desired Edward, as "issue" with which I was not concerned, an "irrelevant branch" I could prune. I kept only those men through whom lines of power descended to a woman. The names of the men who remain on my redrawn genealogies are so tiny I can hardly read them without my glasses. It's somehow very satisfying to see Henry VIII looking so small. Instead of Francis I and Charles V looming so large on the scene, I could see women--generations and generations of women of power.

One of the family trees I drew for The Monstrous Regiment of Women

I could also see the shifting political alliances of early modern Europe from a very different (and revealing) perspective. As I drew my new family trees, I realized that the narrative of early modern European political history looked very different if I focused women instead of men. Men like John Knox might argue against women's right and fitness to rule, but women had and could and did rule--and rule well--even as they were were being told they could not and should not.

I began my research, as I said, afraid that I might not find enough female rulers to make the project worthwhile. Instead, as I worked, I found more and more women whose stories should be included in my project, too many women, in fact, to make the project, as originally conceived, practicable. But my redrawn family trees had also suggested a way of redefining the "biographical" essays I had originally planned. Instead of perpetuating the tendency to identify a single, extraordinary woman and to focus on her individual life and "unique" accomplishments, I decided to explore the relationships among women whose lives occupy a place in and perpetuate a continuing, though largely unrecognized, tradition of political rule. Their careers, like their lives, are intertwined.

The women who assumed political power in succeeding generations in England, Scotland, France, Spain, Portugal, the Holy Roman Empire, the Netherlands, and city-states of Italy were far more numerous--and more successful--than I had imagined, but even more surprising than their numbers and their successes is how completely their names and stories have disappeared from the history of early modern Europe. Aside from Queen Isabella, who funded the voyage of Columbus, "Bloody Mary" and good Queen Bess in England, and the romantic Mary, Queen of Scots, I had learned almost nothing about any of these "monstrous" women in a classroom, through a textbook, or from the pages of the histories and biographies I had read on my own throughout the years.

The "story" of early modern European political history has been defined by the lists of "famous men" we have constructed, lists that have "revealed . . . majesty in each succeeding age," lists that have told us who "held sway over kingdoms." There are, indeed, some "who have left a name behind them to be commemorated in story," just as there are "others"--primarily women--who have been forgotten. As far as "history" has been concerned, they are dead--it is "as though they had never existed, . . . never been born, or left children to succeed them."

I have tried here to read the past in a different way and to narrate the story from an alternative perspective. I hope, in fact, to have presented a counter-narrative here--by focusing on the lives and relationships of women, those "others" who did exist, those others who--like theirs fathers, husbands, and sons--did "hold sway" over kingdoms and make themselves names "by their exploits," who did leave children to succeed them, and who, though dead, should not be "unremembered."

My efforts here are not intended to be, and could never be claimed to be, definitive and comprehensive. I have crossed too many chronological, geographical, institutional, and theoretical boundaries to speak authoritatively. Instead, I hope they will be regarded as exploratory and suggestive-- summarizing, contextualizing, and drawing together what is known about female rule and rulers in early modern Europe, perhaps best read as an outline for or a rought draft of a counter-narrative that remains to be written.

By the way, after thinking about it for some time, I decided as I redrew my family trees to let Henry VIII keep two of his six wives--Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn, strong and determined mothers whose daughters became queens.

. . . 

If you've read this far, I hope you can see that I've continued the work I began more than twenty-five years ago. In 1998, I wrote, ". . . as I worked, I found more and more women whose stories should be included in my project, too many women, in fact, to make the project, as originally conceived, practicable."

Now, at this site, also named The Monstrous Regiment of Women, I've been able to write about many of the women whose stories I couldn't tell then.

*For the sake of readability, I haven't linked all the names here to corresponding essays on this site--if you use the search function, you will be able to find posts for all of the women named here.

Update, 19 April 2026: It’s now hard to fine this chart at the website, and I am not sure whether it can still be purchased. (To find it, you have to use the search bar, but if you click “buy,” you get a “not found” message. It seems as though you can still download it, and the accompanying “video explanation” is still on YouTube. Why can’t we have nice things?

Constance, duchess of Brittany and countess of Richmond: "comitis Conani filia"

Constance, duchess of Brittany and countess of Richmond (died 5 September 1201)

Born about the year 1161 (according to some sources, she was born on 12 June 1161), Constance was the daughter of Conan IV, earl of Richmond and duke of Brittany. Constance's father struggled for years to obtain control of his dual inheritance--first, the title of earl of Richmond, after the death of his father, Alan, first earl of Richmond, in 1146; and then, the duchy of Brittany, after the death of his mother, Berthe of Brittany, in 1156.

A watercolor of
Constance of Brittany and 
her son Arthur
(by Madame Maria de Hocédé,
the French governess of the children
of Queen Victoria, dated 19 February 1860)

As historian Jean Dunbabin notes, the "threats" from outside of Brittany "were small": the "real problems lay within the duchy," notably "internal rebellions" among competing lords and a "succession crisis" when Conan III "dispossessed" his male heir and left the duchy to his daughter, Berthe, instead.* 

After Conan III's death in 1148, his dispossessed son, Hoel, took control of Brittany. Eventually Henry II of England, "presumably in his capacity as duke of Normandy, therefore overlord of Brittany," intervened in the conflict, supporting Berthe, whose son, Conan, was living at Henry II's court. 

In September 1156, after Berthe's death, Conan arrived in Brittany, claiming his role as duke. But Conan IV's position was never secure and his control over the duchy never quite settled. As for the English king, he had his own interests in Brittany, and in 1160, as insurance for his continued support, Henry insisted on a marriage between Conan and Margaret of Huntingdon. 

The three--Conan IV, Henry II, and Margaret--were related in complicated ways. Conan IV's mother, Berthe of Brittany, had been the illegitimate daughter of the English king, Henry I, who was Henry II's grandfather. (I think that makes Berthe of Brittany the aunt of Henry II, right?) Thus Conan and Henry were cousins. And Margaret of Huntingdon and Henry II were also cousins--Margaret's grandfather, David I of Scotland, was the brother of Matilda (or Maud) of Scotland, Henry II's mother. (Got all that?) Also of note, when it comes to the status of Margaret of Huntingdon, she was the daughter of Henry of Scotland, who died before he could inherit the throne of his father, David of Scotland--instead, after Henry of Scotland's death, Margaret's two brothers, Malcolm, reigned 1153-1165, and William, reigned 1165-1214, succeeded their grandfather as kings of Scotland. (Whew!)

But back to Brittany. Despite the English king's intervention--and the close familial connections among Conan IV, his wife, Margaret, and Henry II--unrest persisted in Brittany, and Conan's own misjudgments and misadventures, along with ongoing interference from the English king, contributed to the unstable situation. In 1166, Henry arranged a betrothal between his eight-year-old son, Geoffrey Plantagenet, and Conan's daughter, Constance--who was only five years old.** Henry also "persuaded" Conan IV to abdicate, and although the little Constance was now nominally duchess of Brittany, the English king "took control of Brittany in his son's name."

Meanwhile, Constance's father, Conan IV, retained only his county of Guingamp, where he would remain until his death in 1171. Her mother, Margaret of Huntingdon, survived another thirty years; she was only twenty-six at the time of Conan's death, and she remarried twice, giving birth to several more children. She died in 1201. 

Even though her parents were both still living, Constance spent her childhood in the household of Henry II or in that of his queen, the formidable Eleanor of Aquitaine, traveling with the courts as they moved through their vast territories in England and on the continent. We catch a glimpse of her in the next few years; by 1170, she is part of the queen's household in Poitiers, and in the spring of 1174, she travels with Henry from Poitiers to Normandy; later that year, in July, she travels with him to England, where she is sent to the castle of Devizes.

Henry II remained in control of Brittany until July 1181, when the twenty-year-old Constance was at last married to Geoffrey. Geoffrey had already been involved in a rebellion against his father, and two years after his marriage to Constance, he was again in open revolt. Now Geoffrey II, duke of Brittany, he was at the court of the French king, perhaps planning another rebellion, when he died on 27 August 1186. Although accounts vary, the most frequent story about his death is that he was trampled by a horse during a joust.

While there is "some evidence" to suggest that Constance had begun to act as duchess of Brittany after her marriage, it is likely that "her exercise of authority" was primarily "subject to her husband." During Geoffrey's lifetime, the pair jointly issued a number of charters, She had also come into her inheritance as countess of Richmond in 1183. 

Charter issued by Constance of Brittany

Now, as a widow, Constance of Brittany was finally "free to govern in her own right." She was also the mother of two daughters, Eleanor and Matilda, and a son, Arthur, born after Geoffrey's death. But her independence did not last long--on 3 February 1188, Henry II married her off to Ranulf, earl of Chester, one of his most loyal supporters. 

Constance of Brittany's seal,
a female figure bearing a flower
in her right hand
and a bird on her left, c. 1188

Though Constance's second marriage may have been useful to the king of England, it did not work out particularly well for Constance or Ranulf. He may have "styled" himself duke of Brittany and earl of Richmond, but as historian Jacques Choffel notes, "aucun Breton ne le reconnaîtra comme son sovereign" ("no Breton ever acknowledged him as his ruler"). J. A. Everard adds, "[w]hatever Henry II's intentions, Ranulf seems to have had no involvement in the government of the duchy of Brittany or the honour of Richmond." 

Just months after the marriage, Henry II died, and the new king, Richard, traveled to Brittany, intending to assert his authority there by assuming control both of the duchy and its heir, Arthur. Faced with the opposition of Constance and of the "Breton barons," the new English king "relented." Constance was allowed to continue governing Brittany as she had been doing, and Richard left Arthur with his mother, but he took custody of Constance's daughter Eleanor in September of 1189, evidently to insure Constance's good behavior. 

Richard was soon off on his big crusading adventure, however, and between his departure in 1190 and his return in 1194, Constance was able to govern Brittany without his interference and in the almost complete absence of Ranulf, who seems to have had no role in Brittany other than referring to himself as the duke. 

From 1188, in fact, Constance seems to have acted on her own in Brittany, though her legal claim to do so was not entirely clear. Was she acting as duchess in her own right? She had been her father's heir, but her father had renounced his rights as duke of Brittany to Henry II, who had then granted them to his son, Geoffrey. Had Constance's hereditary rights been somehow reinstated after Geoffrey's death? But she was now a married woman, her husband claiming the title duke of Brittany. Could she, as a married woman, be exercising power on her own? Or was she acting as regent for her son, Arthur? 

During Geoffrey's lifetime, the couple had issued charters jointly, but during her marriage to Ranulf, Constance issued charters only in her own name, using her ducal title "Constantia, comitis Conani filia, ducissa Britannie, comitissa Richemondie." She presents herself not as a wife of a duke or a mother of a duke but as the daughter of a duke. As Elodie Chaudet notes, 

Sur soixante-dix-sept chartes, soixante et une ont été émises par Constance seule. . . . Cette pratique d’émission solitaire souligne que l’exercice du pouvoir par Constance s’est effectué sans tutelle. Elle a gouverné seule, certes entourée de conseillers, mais ayant le choix de la décision finale et de l’application effective des décisions. [Of seventy-seven charters, sixy-one were issued by Constance alone. This practice of issuing them independently underscores that Constance's exercise of power is carried out without guardianship. She governed solely, certainly surrounded by counselors, but having the ability to make the final decision and to effect the implementation of her decisions.]

In 1196, Constance called together the Breton états--the gathered assembly recognized the nine-year-old Arthur as duke of Brittany. Reaction was swift--Richard of England demanded that Constance place her son, potentially the king's heir, into his custody. With her daughter Eleanor still in the English king's control, Constance refused. Summoned to meet with Richard in Normandy, Constance was taken captive by her husband, Ranulf, as she traveled. He arrested her and imprisoned her in his castle of Saint James en Beuvron. For his part, Richard aimed to march into Brittany to "rescue" Arthur, but the boy was sent to the French court for safekeeping.

Because of continuing unrest in Brittany and ongoing opposition to his plans, Richard eventually relented. By 1198, Richard made sure that Constance was released from her captivity--and at some point thereafter, likely after Richard died in April 1199, Constance's marriage to Ranulf was annulled. (About the details of the marriage's end, Chaudet writes that sources are silent--she suggests that an annullment is most likely, probably on the basis of non-cohabitation or non-consummation.) 

By the fall of 1199, Constance had married once more, this time to Guy of Thouars, probably a match suggested by the French king. She gave birth to at least two more daughters, Alix (b. 1200?) and Catherine (b. 1201?). It may well be that there was a third girl, Marguerite (b. 1201?)--according to some sources, Constance died either giving birth to twins or shortly having given birth to twins. (Other, less favorable accounts of Constance of Brittany, claim she died of leprosy . . . )

Constance of Brittany died on 5 September 1201. She was buried in the Cistercian abbey of la Villeneuve--she had planned for the institution's foundation and issued a charter in 1201, endowing it with an annual rent. She also issued an agreement with the archbishop of Tours about her burial at the abbey.

Villeneuve abbey, as it appeared in 1695

Constance's mother, Margaret of Huntingdon, died in the same year as her daughter. Constance's son, Arthur, survived his mother, but he was captured by King John on 1 August 1202--Eleanor of Aquitaine had taken refuge at the chateau of Mirebeau, and Arthur had laid siege to it. He was imprisoned in the Château de Falaise. He remained there, but after April 1203, he was never seen again. Interestingly, Arthur's elder sister, Eleanor, "the fair maid of Brittany," was also imprisoned by King John in 1202; she remained in captivity throughout the life of King John and after his death in 1216, his son and successor, Henry III, maintained her as a prisoner until her death in 1241. (Family values, huh?)

*For a useful account of Brittany during the time of Conan III and Conan IV, see Jean Dunbabin's France in the Making: 843-1180 (click here)

**As historian Amy Kelly notes in Eleanor of Aquitaine and the Four Kings, this marriage "was definitely consanguineous, but Henry had been careful to appeal for a papal dispensation to circumvent that difficulty." The occasional detail about Constance's life is found in Kelly's biography of Eleanor ofAquitaine and, similarly, in Alison Weir's biography, Eleanor of Aquitaine. What both historians make clear is that Eleanor of Aquitaine neither likes nor trusts Constance of Brittany.

Yolande of Aragon, the Queen of Four Kingdoms

Yolande of Aragon, duchess of Anjou, claimant to throne of Aragon (born 11 August  1384)

While very little biographical information exists about the woman who was the subject of my last post, Francisca de Nebrija, a very great deal of evidence survives for Yolande of Aragon.

Yolande of Anjou kneeling before the Virgin Mary,
detail from the Hours of Isabella Stuart

By birth, she was the daughter of Juan I of Aragon and Violant (or Yolande) of Bar, herself a remarkable woman who managed her husband's kingdom for seven years (1388-95) as his "queen-lieutenant."

After the death of Juan of Aragon in 1396, his younger brother claimed the throne--despite the fact that Yolande of Aragon was her father's surviving child and heir. Although Yolande of Aragon would never reign in Aragon, she would nevertheless claim the title for herself.

By marriage, Yolande of Aragon was duchess of Anjou, countess of Maine, countess of Provence and Forcalquier. and countess of Piedmont. Yolande and her allies had resisted her marriage to Louis II of Anjou, but despite their efforts, the couple was married in 1400. She gave birth to five children, three sons and two daughters.

By marriage, Yolande also became queen of Naples and Sicily. In 1380, before she was married to him, Louis II of Anjou, had been named as heir to the kingdom of Naples and Sicily by Joanna I of Naples (and Jerusalem, a kingdom Joanna never actually ruled). Although Louis was then unnamed by Joanna, and Charles of Durazzo became king of Naples instead, Louis eventually fixed that problem by capturing Naples from his rival's son and ruling for ten years--before eventually losing support and being ousted from Naples in 1399, just before his marriage to Yolande of Aragon . . .

By dint of her aptitude for politics, Yolande of Aragon played an influential role in France during the Hundred Years War. Yolande of Aragon made the crucial decision to support the French against the allied English and Burgundians. She repudiated the planned marriage between her son, Louis, and the duke of Burgundy's daughter, and in 1413 she met with Isabeau of Bavaria, the French queen, to arrange for the marriage of Charles of Valois, fifth son born to the royal family, to Yolande's daughter, Marie of Anjou.

By her foresight and through an abundance of caution, in 1415 Yolande of Aragon moved her family to Provence after the battle of Agincourt. She took with her not only her children, but Charles of Valois, the young man to whom her daughter had been betrothed.

By chance, Yolande of Aragon would become mother to a queen. Charles of Valois became dauphin in 1417, after the deaths of his two surviving older brothers, Louis in 1415 and Jean in 1417. He was married to Marie of Anjou in 1422.

Through strength and determination, Yolande of Aragon resisted Isabeau of Bavaria's insistence that Charles, now heir to the French throne, return to the French court. Suspicious and protective, Yolande  of Aragon is said to have written to the queen: "We have not nurtured and cherished this one for you to make him die like his brothers or to go mad like his father, or to become English like you. I keep him for my own. Come and take him away, if you dare."

The French queen did not dare. After the death of Louis II of Anjou in 1422, Yolande of Aragon became regent of Anjou, governing it on behalf of her minor son, Louis III. She also protected the dauphin against an array of foes, and she supported his cause, particularly after the incapacitated Charles VI declared the English king, Henry V, as heir to the French throne. Yolande of Aragon's support for the dauphin included her recognition of the possibility for salvation offered by Joan of Arc. When the dauphin finally defeated his enemies and began to rule France, Yolande of Aragon's daughter, Marie, became queen of France.

After the end of the Hundred Years' War, Yolande of Aragon eventually retired from the court (if not  politics and political maneuvering). She moved to Anger, in Maine, and then to Saumer. She patronized artists, and a number of surviving manuscripts are associated with her, including the spectacular Rohan Hours and the book of hours now known as the Hours of Isabella Stuart. 

Despite the fact that she never ruled as queen, Yolande of Aragon was called the "queen of four kingdoms"--queen of Aragon, where she might have become queen regnant, as "queen" consort in Naples and Sicily, which her husband claimed, and as titular queen of Jerusalem.

Yolande of Aragon,

fifteenth-century stained glass,

Cathédrale Saint-Julien - Le Mans

Her eldest son, Louis III of Anjou, died childless as a relatively young man. But he was succeeded by Yolande of Aragon's second son, René of Anjou. Like his father, René also got caught up in political scheming in Naples, and he too was promised this kingdom by a Neapolitan queen, this one Joanna II of Naples. 

René's young daughter, Margaret, would join her grandmother, Yolande, in Saumer. Margaret of Anjou would marry Henry VI of England, and during his periodic bouts of incapacity, would attempt to govern in his stead. 

Yolande's daughter Marie was not only queen of France, but she would act as regent of France as well. Yolande's youngest son, Charles of Maine, would be a strong supporter of his brother-in-law, Charles VII.

Yolande of Aragon died on 14 November 1442 at the Chateau de Tuce-de-Saumur. All she accomplished in her life! She was only fifty-eight years old at the time of her death.

Today she rests in the the cathedral of Angers, along with her son René of Anjou and her granddaughter, Margaret, queen of England. 

Today, the most accessible account of Yolande of Aragon is Nancy Goldstone's The Maid and the Queen: The Secret History of Joan of Arc. For a more scholarly approach, I recommend Zita Eva Rohr's Yolande of Aragon (1381-1442) Family and Power: The Reverse of the Tapestry.

Margherita de' Medici, Regent of Parma and Piacenza

Margherita de' Medici, duchess and regent of Parma and Piacenza (born 31 May 1612)

Margherita de' Medici was the daughter of Maria Magdalena of Austria, grand duchess and regent of Tuscany, and Cosimo II de' Medici, archduke of Tuscany. Like her mother, Margherita would become regent for her minor son after the death of his father.

Margherita de' Medici, c. 1628,
about the time of her marriage,
by Justus Sustermans

Born on 31 May 1612, Margherita was given an excellent humanist education, worthy of a woman of her social class and family status--in religion, art, classical literature, music, statecraft, and science, as well as in Latin. As the product of this education, she could compose odes and epigrams in both Italian and Latin.

Although Marie de' Medici, dowager queen of France, hoped to marry her son, Gaston, duke of Orléans, to Margherita, the Florentine girl was promised instead to Odoardo Farnese in 1620, when they were both eight years old--Odoardo had been born just a month before Margherita. 

Odoardo's father, Ranuccio I Farnese, was the duke of Parma, Piacenza, and Castro, and the alliance between his son and a daughter of the archduke was intended to strengthen the alliance between Parma and Tuscany.*

Odoardo Farnese succeeded to his title when he was still a child, in 1622, at the time of his father's death. His uncle was regent of Parma until 1626, and after he died, the young Odoardo's regent was his mother, Margherita Aldobrandini.** She continued as regent until her son reached his majority, in 1628, when he and Margherita de' Medici were married in a spectacular ceremony in the Florentine cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore.

In Parma, Margherita de' Medici, now duchess of Parma and Piacenza, gave birth to eight children, the first in 1629, a year after her marriage, the last in 1641. During his frequent absences in pursuit of his territorial ambitions, Odoardo trusted at least some of the political duties to his wife. In 1635 he appointed her governor of Piacenza, for example. (As for Odoardo's ambitions--among other failures, he was excommunicated in 1641 and lost the Farnese fief of Castro, though it was eventually returned to him in 1644 as part of a peace negotiation with the Barberini family. After his death, however, papal forces razed Castro.)

As Adelina Modesti notes, Margherita was able to "[use] her cultural background, family connections, and force of personality to navigate successfully the transition between her natal and marital families, enabling her to gain an extraordinary degree of political power and cultural influence, which she used to enhance the interests of her marital family without losing her sway with the family she left behind."

Margherita de' Medici,
duchess of Parma and Piacenza,
copy of a portrait by Sustermans,
Galeria Nazionale

In August 1646, the dowager duchess and former regent of Parma, Margherita Aldobrandini, died. A month later, in September, Margherita de' Medici's husband, Odoardo Farnese, died. Since her eldest son was still a minor, Margherita de' Medici, now herself dowager duchess of Parma and Piacenza, became regent for her son. Her regency lasted until 1648, when her son, Ranuccio II of Farnese, achieved his majority.

As Modesti notes, however, Margherita de' Medici continued to exert a great deal of influence even after her son became duke, acting as his "political advisor and diplomatic ambassador even after he became an adult, married three times, and ruled officially in his own right."

Margherita de' Medici lived another thirty years. She died on 6 February 1679, aged sixty-six, noted as "a woman of extraordinary talent with good taste in the arts: mourned by the people and the court, she was greatly famed for her acute judgement, eminent compassion, and exquisite traits."

The most complete treatment of Margherita de' Medici, duchess of Parma and Piacenza, is Adelina Modesti's “Margherita de’ Medici Farnese: A Medici Princess at the Farnese Court,” in Medici Women: The Making of a Dynasty in Grand Ducal Tuscany.

*There is some evidence to suggest that the marriage negotiations at first involved the eldest Medici daughter, Maria Christina, but she seems to have been born with some kind of physical disability--when the duke of Parma discovered this, he insisted on renegotiating the alliance. Maria Christina lived in the Florentine convent of the Holy Conception (Santissima Concezione), founded by her great-grandmother, Eleanor of Toledo, duchess of Florence (wife of Cosimo I de' Medici). She remained there until her death, at age twenty-three, in 1632.

**Whose story is an interesting one! The granddaughter of Pope Clement VIII, Margherita Aldobrandini was married to the thirty-year-old Ranuccio I Farnese when she was just twelve years old. She remained childless for a decade, leading Ranuccio to the conclusion that she had been cursed! Or he was . . . Or something. When at long last a child was born to Ranuccio and Margherita, the baby was deaf. Convinced that his wife was cursed, Ranuccio had a former mistress, Claudia Colla and her mother, Elena, tried for witchcraft--and executed in 1611. And Odoardo was born, as I said, in 1612 . . . 

Nzinga, Queen of Ndongo and Matamba

Nzinga of Ndongo and Matamba (died 17 December 1663)

Given my educational and professional background, I usually write about historical women with whom I have some familiarity and experience, either from the classroom or from my own research and reading.

Close-up view of a statue of
Queen Nzinga,
Luanda, Angola
(contrast to romanticized European view
of Nzinga, below)

But I recently ran across a reference to Nzinga, queen of  Ndongo and Matamba, also known as Queen Anna Njinga Mbande. I am ashamed to admit that I don't know much at all about the history of any of the kingdoms, states, and peoples of Africa, and so I had never heard about this remarkable ruler of the Mbundu people.

Today's post isn't one that reflects any expertise or deep knowledge on my part--still, I hope that it piques your interest to explore further.

Sometimes (as well) known by the name Dona Ana de Souza, Nzinga was born about the year 1583, the daughter of Ngola (King) Kiluanji Kia Samba and his queen, Guenguela Cakombewas.

By the time of Nzinga's birth, the Mbundu people had already had a long and troubled history with Portuguese invaders, would-be colonial rulers, and slave traders, who had first arrived in the area at the end of the fifteenth century and, in 1575, had established the colony of Luanda.

Nzinga's father, who became king about the year 1592, had begun to resist Portuguese raids into his territory for slaves. At some point in the early seventeenth century, about the year 1617, King Kiluanji was replaced by his son, Mbandi, Nzinga's half brother. 

The circumstances surrounding this event aren't clear--many online sources suggest the king was deposed by his "illegitimate son," adding that Mbandi killed Nzinga's son (or the queen's son, it's not clear). Others claim that Nzinga and her husband fled after her father was deposed, others that they remained behind after Ngola Kihuanji was replaced by his son, still others that the king was not deposed but, more simply, died, to be followed on the throne by his son.

According to Hettie V. Williams's entry on Nzinga in the Encyclopedia of African American History, because of King Kiluanji Kia's resistance to supplying them with slaves, the Portuguese enlisted the aid of neighboring Imbangala warriors to attack him, thus "bringing the kingdom to its knees." After Mbandi's succession, Nzinga and her husband, fearing for their safety, left the kingdom. (Williams indicates that the child Mbandi killed was Nzinga's son.)

Whatever the circumstances of Mbandi's rise, the first solid detail about Nzinga's political life is dated to 1622, when she served as her brother's emissary to the Portuguese governor, João Correia de Sousa, in Luanda. 

Before meeting with the governor, she is said to have been baptized, acquiring her Portuguese name, Ana de Sousa, deriving from the name of the governor's wife, who served as her godmother. By all accounts Nzinga's baptism seems to be regarded today as a wily act of political expediency.

In a singularly strategic gesture, Nzinga seems also to have outwitted a Portuguese attempt to humiliate her--finding herself in a room with only one chair, clearly designated for the governor, she realized that to be left standing while the governor sat was a ploy to demonstrate her inferiority.

To avoid this move, she chose to sit on the back of one of her attendants, thus removing any suggestion that she was inferior to the Portuguese man with whom she was dealing. (The moment was captured in a drawing of the meeting made by an observer.) 

The contemporary illustration,
 drawn by Italian priest Giovanni Antonio Cavazzi da Montecuccolo,
of Nzinga during the peace negotiations of 1622 

Nzinga successfully negotiated a treaty with the Portuguese, ending the conflicts between them and her brother, as king. Mbandi retained his throne, and the Portuguese agreed to limit their slaving efforts. (Though the Portuguese do not seem to have honored the terms of the treaty to which they had agreed.)

In 1624 (or 1626, sources differ), following her brother's death, Nzinga became queen. Again the details are unclear--according to some accounts, Mbandi committed suicide, with Nzinga first assuming the role of regent for his son; according to at least one other source, Nzinga murdered her brother in order to gain the throne for herself; in other sources, the Mbundi people resisted female rulers, and Nzinga sought assistance from the Portuguese to establish her rule; others sidestep the issue and simply say she became queen after her brother's death.

Or, in the account offered by Williams, Nzinga's brother died "in mysterious circumstances," and she "subsequently seized power." 

Whatever the circumstances, and however Nzinga became queen, the task facing her was a daunting one. According to Alexander Ives Bortolot's account on the Metropolitan Museum of Art's website, 

In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, states on the Central African coast found their economic power and territorial control threatened by Portuguese attempts to establish a colony at Luanda (in present-day Angola). Many of these states had become regional powers through trade in African slaves. It was the growing demand for this human labor in New World colonies such as Brazil that ultimately led Portugal to seek military and economic control of this region. Old trading partners came under military attack by Portuguese soldiers and indigenous African raiders in search of captives for the slave trade, and rulers were forced to adapt to these new circumstances or face certain destruction. One leader who proved to be adept at overcoming these difficulties was the queen of Ndongo, Ana Nzinga.*

Having become queen, Nzinga realized that she needed to carefully negotiate a position between the hostile Portuguese slave traders and the aggressive African neighbors surrounding her. Betrayed by the Portuguese with whom she had negotiated the 1622 peace treaty, she was ultimately forced to flee Ndongo, eventually establishing herself as queen of Matamba. (Interestingly, in establishing herself as the ruler of Matamba, Nzinga defeated and replaced the ruling queen, Mwongo Mataba.)

There, she offered sanctuary to runaway slaves as well as to runaway African soldiers, trained by the Portuguese. She was also able to incite rebellion in Ndongo, ruled after her flight by her sister, installed as a puppet ruler by the Portuguese--but who in reality acted as a spy for Nzinga.

In 1641, after the Dutch seized control of Luanda, forcing the Portuguese out, Nzinga negotiated an alliance with this new European colonial power. With the help of the Dutch, she went to war against the Portuguese, gaining some victories and suffering some defeats.

Notably, she "led troops into battle, dressed as a man, took the title of ngola or king, and kept male concubines"!

By 1651, the Portuguese having reestablished themselves in Luanda, Nzinga returned to Matamba, sued for peace, and negotiated a new settlement. She turned her attention to rebuilding the now combined kingdom of Ndongo and Mtamba, devastated by years of war. Given Matamba's geographical location, she was able to establish the kingdom as a trading power.

Achille Devéria's nineteenth-century
drawing of Queen Nzinga

She also resettled former slaves and, without a male heir to succeed her, consolidated her political power to ensure the future of her state. 

Nzinga reconverted to Christianity before her death, at age eighty-one, on 17 December 1663.

Following her death, civil war divided Matamba between followers of her sister, Barbara, and of Nzinga a Mona, an Imbrangala warrior who was a member of her court. The forces supporting Barbara were ultimately victorious

In addition to a novel and several books for children, there is a full-length historical study of Nzinga, Linda Heywood's Njinga of Angola: Africa's Warrior Queen. 

*The Metropolitan Museum of Art's history of art timeline, where Bortolot's essay appears, "pairs essays and works of art with chronologies,telling the story of art and global culture through the Museum’s collection." The essay on Nzinga is part of a larger series on "Women Leaders in African History, 17th-19th Century."

Update, 15 March 2023: The BBC's History Extra podcast series has just released "Njinga: Queen, Warrior, Diplomat." To listen, click here. (The link here is to Overcast, but the series is also available on Apple podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, and other streaming services--the podcasts used to be freely available at the History Extra site, but the new episodes now seem to be behind a paywall.)

Caterina Cornaro, the Last Queen of Cyprus

Caterina Cornaro, queen of Cyprus (died 10 July 1510)

When Giovanni II, king of Cyprus, died in 1458, he was succeeded on the throne by his daughter Carlotta of Lusignan. Carlotta did not rule Cyprus for long, however.* 

By 1460 she had been deposed by her half-brother, Giacomo, who had himself crowned in her place. In an effort to gain support for his rule, the new king of Cyprus sought a political alliance through marriage and, turning to the republic of Venice, requested a bride. 

Titian's 1542 painting of
Caterina Cornaro

In response, the signory selected Caterina Cornaro, the daughter of Fiorenza Crispo and Marco Cornaro, who, interestingly, "happened to hold most of the island of Cyprus in mortgage." On 30 July 1468 the betrothal of the fourteen-year-old Caterina to Giacomo was celebrated by proxy in Venice. 

But Caterina did not travel immediately to Cyprus to meet her new husband; instead, she remained in Venice for four years more years. In the mean time, Giacomo seems to have considered carefully other possible marital alliances, most notably the suggestion of Ferdinand of Naples that the king of Cyprus marry his daughter instead, but Giacomo hesitated and was eventually persuaded to accept the marriage he had already negotiated. In 1472 Caterina finally left for Cyprus, where her marriage to Giacomo was formalized. Within the year he died, leaving his wife, then pregnant, to succeed him. 

Immediately after her husband's death, Caterina acted to preserve Cyprus for her unborn child. A regency council was established, and Caterina, recognizing that "her throne was on a volcano" (stava apicato a un chavelo), sent word of Giacomo's death to Venice, which responded by sending troops to Cyprus to protect the young queen. 

Meanwhile, on learning of the situation in Cyprus, Carlotta of Lusignan, who had taken refuge in Rome after Giacomo's usurpation, prepared to reassert her claim to the throne. Her supporters forced their way into the Lusignan palace, killing several members of Caterina's household, including her uncle and cousin, but the queen herself escaped. 

When Venetian troops arrived, the conspirators were hunted down and order was restored. On 28 August 1473, the queen of Cyprus gave birth to a son, who was baptized Giacomo III on 26 September 1473. 

But the son for whom Caterina struggled to preserve the crown of Cyprus died in 1474, just a year old, and once again Carlotta of Lusignan conspired to effect her rival's overthrow, this time with the aid of Ferdinand of Naples. 

In response, the republic of Venice sent Caterina's father and mother to Cyprus and ordered that Giacomo's mother, sister, and illegitimate son be sent to Venice. Denied motherhood, Caterina seems to have turned her energies to sovereignty, supported by her subjects: she "recalled to [them] those memories of independence which flattered their pride," a contemporary commented.

The counselors and commissioners sent from Venice inexorably assumed more and more power in Cyprus. Caterina protested to the doge, complaining, for example, that one of the Venetian envoys "without respect or reverence would enter her chamber when he would." 

Even her brother was won over by those who sought to relieve Caterina of her crown; pressure was exerted to convince her that the best course of action for her was to abdicate. Finally, in 1489, "the unhappy lady yielded . . . to persuasion and threats." Her decision to abdicate her throne was described by a Venetian ambassador as having been made as a result of "full and free determination." 

She returned to Venice and was "freed" from the rule of Cyprus in a formal ceremony; in return, she was awarded the castle and town of Asolo. She took possession of her new "kingdom" on 11 October 1489. 

"We cannot tell whether the exiled Queen of Cyprus was really satisfied with her mimic Court, her empty title," muses historian Marian Andrews, "or whether, like a wise woman, she made the best of that which was within her reach, and ceased to sigh for the unattainable." 

What we do know is that she governed Asolo efficiently for nearly twenty years. Though her "kingdom" was limited, Caterina Cornaro dispensed justice, founded charitable institutions, patronized artists, welcomed intellectuals, and was loved by her "subjects." At last, when the combined forces of the Holy Roman Empire, France, and Spain invaded Italy and threatened Asolo, she was forced to return to Venice. 

She died there on 10 July 1510 and was buried the next day in the Cornaro chapel.

*This essay has been adapted from The Monstrous Regiment of Women: Female Rulers in Early Modern Europe.

Marie de' Medici and Politics in the French Court

Marie de' Medici, queen and regent of France (died 3 July 1642)

When she became queen of France, Maria de' Medici was ridiculed as the descendant of rich merchants, but as with her Medici foremother, Catherine de' Medici, such was not entirely the case.*

Maria de' Medici

Maria's father, Francesco II de' Medici, was undoubtedly the descendant of wealthy merchants, but he was also related to powerful cardinals and popes and succeeded his brother as grand duke of Tuscany. 

Maria de' Medici's mother was Joanna of Austria, the daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand and Anna Jagellion, queen of Hungary; through her mother, then, the young woman who would become queen of France was related to Habsburg royalty throughout Europe.

The young Maria was sixteen years old when she attended the burial of Catherine de' Medici in 1589, and legend has it that on this occasion her lifelong friend and companion Leonora Dori, later Leonora Galigai and later still Leonora Concini, said that there was no reason Marie should not occupy the French throne herself one day. As improbable as the prediction may have seemed, Marie did succeed her Medici cousin on the throne of France. 

The childless Henry III was assassinated soon after Catherine de' Medici's death, and Henry of Navarre became Henry IV of France. The new king already had a wife, Marguerite of Valois, from whom he was estranged, and a mistress, Gabrielle d'Estrées, to whom he was devoted. Nevertheless Maria's uncle Ferdinand, grand duke of Tuscany, offered the new king his political support against the Catholic League that opposed his accession--if Henry would accept his niece as a bride. 

Henry IV could not afford to reject the duke's offer, but neither did he accept it. He wanted to marry his mistress; his wife, however, refused to cooperate with the annulment of their marriage unless he accepted the offered Medici alliance. In 1594 Henry IV converted to Catholicism and entered Paris; by 1599, somewhat more secure on his throne, he announced his intention of marrying Gabrielle. Within a month, however, she died in childbirth, and Marguerite agreed to release him from their marriage; by the spring of 1600 the king was negotiating with Ferdinand of Tuscany for a match with Maria. They were married by proxy on 5 October. 

The forty-eight-year-old king had many illegitimate children, but Marguerite had "failed" to provide him a son, so Henry had no legitimate heir to follow him on the throne. His new bride arrived in France in November and quickly produced the requisite son. Louis, later King Louis XIII, was born on 27 September 1601. Five more children followed: Elizabeth, born in 1603; Christine, in 1606; Henry, in 1607; Gaston, in 1608; and Henrietta Maria, in 1609.

A portrait of Marie de' Medici
as queen of France

While fruitful, the marriage of Henry IV and Maria, now Marie, was not easy, but despite their frequent and public quarrels, it was not the disaster that so many historians claim. But successful or not, it did not last forever. On 14 May 1610 Henry IV was assassinated. 

Just the day before the king's death, Marie de' Medici had been crowned queen of France in a splendid ceremony. Despite his original "command" that his queen "not meddle in affairs of state," the coronation ceremony had taken place so that Marie's position as regent of France could be strengthened while the king undertook a military campaign in the Netherlands. 

Within two hours of her husband's assassination, Marie placed her children under guard to safeguard their security, secured the streets around the Louvre palace, and appeared before the Parlement of Paris to have her regency acknowledged.

In conducting herself as queen regent, Marie decided to model herself on her predecessor and cousin Catherine de' Medici; she aimed for conciliation and appeasement. "Her task," as A. Lloyd Moote defines it, was "avoiding internal turmoil and external danger." Her "success in achieving those twin aims must, in the immediate setting, be considered a major achievement." 

After the rivalries and tensions that had culminated in her husband's assassination, the queen's regency was at first welcomed by opposing factions and began peacefully. Marie herself approached her new role as regent with a measure of confidence and optimism; "I can call myself very fortunate and quite consoled because of the good order and great tranquility that begin to be seen in the affairs of this realm" she wrote to her sister three months after her husband's death. But her optimism proved to be ill-founded. 

Unlike her model, Marie was not a success as regent. Religious unrest continued to be a problem, and relationships with foreign powers were uneasy. To complicate matters further, her relationship with her son the king was tense. Resentful of the humiliations she had endured during her husband's life, she abandoned his counselors and friends, turning for support to her Italian courtiers, to Rome, and to her Habsburg relatives  

For her principal advisor she looked to her friend Leonora's husband Concino Concini, whom she arranged to have appointed maréchal of France, an appointment that "conferred [on him] the second-highest military honor in France." Unlike Henry IV, Louis XIII had been raised a Catholic, like Marie herself; to defuse religious tensions, Marie acted to "curb inflammatory rhetoric" on both sides of the relgious debate and "republished the agreement of Nantes in 1612, 1614, and twice in 1615." 

Marie as queen of France, 1606,
painting by Frans Pourbus the Younger

Among the most serious problems Marie faced was the external danger posed by Habsburg aggression. Accordingly, she "placed all her hopes" on the Franco-Spanish pact negotiated in 1612. To appease the increasingly rebellious nobility, Marie offered a number of concessions, but, as Louis' biographer Elizabeth Marvick notes, this "policy of appeasement" was "costly," and in spite of her efforts, "public tranquility continued to be disturbed by dissatisfied lords." 

In 1614 Louis XIII was fourteen years old, the age at which he could be proclaimed an adult, capable of ruling without a regent. Marie, under increasing pressure, was forced to summon a meeting of the Estates General. 

On 2 October Louis' majority was declared; during the ceremony marking the occasion, he announced his intention to assume his role as king: "Gentlemen, having arrived at the age of majority . . . I intend to govern my realm by good counsel, with piety and justice. I expect from all my subjects the obedience and respect that are due the sovereign power and royal authority which God has placed in my hands." 

But "he" did not intend to rule alone. He noted with gratitude the role his mother had played as regent in the preceding years and concluded with a request to her that she "continue" to "govern and command" as she had "heretofore." 

Gaining some recognition during the 1614-1615 meetings of the Estates was Armand de Richelieu, then bishop of Luçon. By the summer of 1615 Marie's pro-Spanish policy came to fruition with a double marriage: Her thirteen-year-old daughter Elizabeth was married to the ten-year-old Philip, son and heir of Philip III of Spain, while Louis XIII was married to the thirteen-year-old Anne of Austria, Philip's older sister. 

Although these alliances represented a personal success for the regent, they only increased the disaffection of the nobility, and despite a truce agreement reached in 1616, the resulting conflict culminated in the assassination of Concini on 24 April 1617. The next day, the fifteen-year-old Louis turned on his mother. He exiled her to the chateau of Blois: "Madame," he is quoted as saying to her, "I wish to relieve you now of the fatigue of state business." 

He continued: "It is time for me to take this burden from you for I do not intend to allow anyone else to do so. But I shall always treat you with the respect due to a mother. You will hear from me at Blois. Adieu, madame. Do not cease to love me and you will find me a good son." 

Marie responded: "Sire, I regret not having acted, as regent, in accordance with your wishes. But I did my best, and I beg you to consider me in future your humble and obedient mother and servant." 

Interestingly, Louis' harsh treatment of his mother and her friend Leonora Concini, who was tried for witchcraft and executed, encouraged support for the queen. After she was denied permission to attend the marriage of her daughter Christine to Victor Amadeus, heir to the duke of Savoy, in February 1619, her "rescue"--or escape--was arranged. 

With the aid of Richelieu, she traveled to Provence and raised a rebellion against her son. The king gathered an army to proceed against his mother, preparing for the first of the so-called Wars of the Mother and Son. Mother and son were reconciled, and by the terms of the treaty of Angoulême, signed on 30 April, he assigned her the governorship of Anjou. 

By 1620, mother and son were once more at odds, and the second "War of the Mother and Son" commenced. This time the king was determined not to surrender to his mother. Accordingly, he went to war against his mother's army, which he defeated. With a "face-saving acknowledgment" that "she had taken up arms only out of fear of being oppressed by the royal government," Marie signed the treaty of Angers in August. Within six weeks "the king's mother" had been restored to her son's good graces and rejoined his privy council.

Maarie de' Medici, 1616,
Frans Pourbus the Younger

In thanks to Richelieu, she arranged for his appointment as cardinal, and in 1624 Cardinal Richeliu also joined the king's council. Marie's restoration was so complete that in 1621 and 1622, while her son was engaged in a fight against the Huguenots, she often traveled with him. The king, for his part, turned increasingly to his mother for advice. "There was only one person who seemed cautious and sensible" to him, according to historian Victor-Lucien Tapié: 

The queen mother had lost none of her ambition of desire for power, but now she strove to avoid any upheaval. She confined herself to telling Louix XIII that his realm was badly governed, that his ministers were no longer achieving anything notable, that they were especially negligent in their conduct of foreign policy, and that in consequence French prestige was on the wane all over Europe.

But such "insight" was not her own, Tapié asserts; she was, in "reality," simply "obediently reciting something that she had been taught," in this case the advice of Richelieu.

Whatever the ultimate source of Marie's advice to her son, Louis nevertheless relied on her, appointing her as regent of France in 1627-28, when he joined his forces at the siege of La Rochelle, and again in 1629, when he was in Savoy. But when Richelieu advised the king to pursue a course of conciliation with the Huguenots and with Protestant Europe to balance Habsburg influence, Marie turned against her former adviser. 

On 10 November 1630, she demanded that her son dismiss Richelieu. She believed Louis would honor her demand, but she was wrong. Instead, her supporters were eliminated; by February 1631 she was exiled again, "escorted" to Compiègne. Louis seems to have considered sending her back to Florence; instead he allowed her to "escape" to Brussels. Her son "declared her a rebel against his authority, outlawed her person, and sequestrated her property."

Although her nephew Ferdinand II of Tuscany offered her asylum in Florence, Marie de' Medici refused. In June 1633 she was in Ghent and ill; Richelieu sent her a note of sympathy, which she rejected, but by February of 1634 she wrote him to ask him to ask for a reconciliation. When he answered, he advised her to go to Tuscany. 

Her younger son Gaston, whom she seems to have encouraged to think of gaining the throne of France for himself, had followed her to the Netherlands, but by 1635 he had reconciled to his brother and returned to France. Marie repeatedly asked Louis to allow her to return to Paris as well. 

When French troops threatened to invade the Netherlands in 1638, the exiled Marie de' Medici fled to England, where her daughter Henrietta Maria was queen, married to Charles I, and where the former queen consort and queen regent of France was decidedly unwelcome. Again Marie wrote to Richelieu: "I have forgotten the past. I only want to be friends with you. I should be so happy if you would deign to grant me the great favour of my return to France." Marie seems also to have been considering yet another regency, rumors of which reached Richelieu, but her efforts at reconciliation came to nothing. 

Meanwhile, England had been plunged into its own internal difficulties, and the increasingly unpopular king found that the presence of his Catholic mother-in-law only added to his problems. Attacked in parliament, she was finally forced to leave England in 1641, but where she would go was problematic. 

Her predicament is described by Medici historian James Cleugh: "England had rejected her. France declined to receive her. Even King Philip IV of Spain [her son-in-law] now refused to allow her to settle in . . . the Netherlands. Her pride would not allow her to return to Tuscany as a rejected Queen and mother." She was eventually allowed to travel to Cologne, where she died on 3 July 1642. 

*This essay has been adapted from The Monstrous Regiment of Women: Female Rulers in Early Modern Europe.