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Remembering Queens and Kings of Early Modern England and France pp 199–218Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

She-Wolf or Feminist Heroine? Representations of Margaret of Anjou in Modern History and Literature

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Abstract

This chapter explores the posthumous reputation of Margaret of Anjou (1430–1482), queen consort to Henry VI of England, in modern historiography and fiction. Henry VI’s mental incapacity enabled Margaret to fill the resulting political vacuum as the figurehead of the Lancastrian monarchy during the Wars of the Roses. She was immortalized by Shakespeare as a “she-wolf,” thus cementing her reputation, but the advent of women’s history ushered in a more sympathetic, revisionist perspective. This chapter considers recent representations of Margaret in historical fiction; explores their treatment of her personality, her sexuality, and her desire for power; and analyzes whether they perpetuate two opposing reincarnations of Margaret as either a “she-wolf” or a proto-feminist heroine, or whether a more nuanced representation is emerging.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Diana Dunn, “Margaret of Anjou: Monster-Queen or Dutiful Wife?” Medieval History, 4 (1994), 200; Diana Dunn, “Margaret of Anjou, Queen Consort of Henry VI: A Reassessment of her Role, 1445–53” in Crown, Government and People in the Fifteenth Century ed. by Rowena E. Archer (Stroud: Alan Sutton Publishing Ltd., 1995), 107–108.

  2. 2.

    Patricia-Ann Lee, “Reflections of Power: Margaret of Anjou and the Dark Side of Queenship,” Renaissance Quarterly, 39.2 (1986): 193.

  3. 3.

    Dunn, “Margaret of Anjou: Monster-Queen or Dutiful Wife,” 201.

  4. 4.

    Polydore Vergil and Henry Ellis (ed.), Three Books of Polydore Vergil’s English History, comprising the reigns of Henry VI, Edward IV and Richard III (London: Camden Society, 1844), 70; William Shakespeare, “The Third Part of Henry the Sixth, with the Death of the Duke of York,” in The RSC Shakespeare: William Shakespeare’s Complete Works, ed. Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen (Basingstoke: Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 2007), 1247–1248.

  5. 5.

    Helen Castor, She-Wolves: The Women Who Ruled England Before Elizabeth (London: Faber and Faber Ltd., 2010), 31.

  6. 6.

    Helen E. Maurer, Margaret of Anjou: Queenship and Power in Late Medieval England (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2003), 3.

  7. 7.

    R. A. Griffiths, The Reign of King Henry VI (Second Edition) (Stroud: Sutton Publishing Ltd., 2004), 804; John Gillingham, The Wars of the Roses: Peace and Conflict in Fifteenth Century England (London: Phoenix Press, 2001).

  8. 8.

    R. L. Storey, The End of the House of Lancaster (London: Barrie and Rockliff, 1966), 177, 192.

  9. 9.

    Agnes Strickland, Lives of the Queens of England, Volume III (London: Lea and Blanchard, 1852); Jock Haswell, The Ardent Queen: Margaret of Anjou and the Lancastrian Heritage (London: Peter Davies Ltd., 1976), 11.

  10. 10.

    Anne Crawford, “The Kings Burden?: The Consequences of Royal Marriage in Fifteenth-Century England,” in Patronage, the Crown and the Provinces in Later Medieval England, ed. Ralph A. Griffiths (Gloucester: Alan Sutton Publishing Ltd., 1981), 53.

  11. 11.

    Maurer, Margaret of Anjou; Dunn, “Margaret of Anjou: Monster-Queen or Dutiful Wife?”; Dunn, “Margaret of Anjou, Queen Consort of Henry VI”; J. L. Laynesmith, The Last Medieval Queens: English Queenship 1445–1503 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).

  12. 12.

    “A.D. 1456, 9 Feb, John Boking to Sir John Falstof ” in The Paston Letters I: Henry VI, 1422–1461 A.D. ed. James Gairdner (London: Edward Arber, 1872), 378.

  13. 13.

    Maurer, Margaret of Anjou, 3; Dunn, “Margaret of Anjou, Queen Consort to Henry VI,” 109; Castor, 339.

  14. 14.

    Jean Plaidy. The Red Rose of Anjou (London: Arrow Books, 2009); Alan Savage, Queen of Lions (London: Warner Books, 1994); Susan Higginbotham, The Queen of Last Hopes (Naperville, Illinois: Sourcebooks Landmark, 2011); Philippa Gregory, The Lady of the Rivers (London: Simon and Schuster, 2011); Philippa Gregory, The Kingmaker’s Daughter (London: Simon and Schuster, 2013); Conn Iggulden, Wars of the Roses: Stormbird (London: Penguin, 2014); Conn Iggulden, Wars of the Roses: Trinity (London: Penguin, 2015); Conn Iggulden, Wars of the Roses: Bloodline (London: Penguin, 2016); Conn Iggulden, Wars of the Roses: Ravenspur, Rise of the Tudors (London: Penguin, 2017).

  15. 15.

    Higginbotham, 332.

  16. 16.

    Dunn, “Margaret of Anjou: Monster-Queen or Dutiful Wife?”: 200.

  17. 17.

    Sharon Penman, The Sunne in Splendour (London: Penman, 1984), especially 19–21 and 43–45.

  18. 18.

    Iggulden, Trinity, 459.

  19. 19.

    “The Reconciliation of Queen Margaret and her son with Warwick and Clarence, Angers, 1470” in Margaret Lucille Kekevich, Colin Richmond et al., The Politics of Fifteenth-Century England: John Vale’s Book (Stroud: Alan Sutton Publishing Ltd., 1995), 216.

  20. 20.

    Joanna Hickson, First of the Tudors (London: Harper, 2016), 403–406.

  21. 21.

    Dunn, “Margaret of Anjou, Queen Consort of Henry VI: A Reassessment of her Role, 1445–53,” 118.

  22. 22.

    “A Letter from the Queen to Nicholas Straunge of Iseldon, respecting the marriage of his daughter Katherine” and “A Letter from the Queen to the Lord Chancellor” in Letters of Margaret of Anjou and Bishop Beckington and Others Written in the Reigns of Henry V and Henry VI ed. Cecil Monro (London: The Camden Society, 1863), 125, 132.

  23. 23.

    Higginbotham, 125.

  24. 24.

    Plaidy, 328; Penman, 397.

  25. 25.

    Jock Haswell, The Ardent Queen: Margaret of Anjou and the Lancastrian Heritage (London: Peter Davies Ltd., 1976), 103.

  26. 26.

    Plaidy, 204, 206; Gregory, The Lady of the Rivers, 178.

  27. 27.

    Higginbotham, 307, 311–313.

  28. 28.

    Plaidy, 242; King, 63; Iggulden, Trinity, 258; Gregory, The Lady of the Rivers, 375.

  29. 29.

    Plaidy, 331, 384, Iggulden, Bloodline, 142.

  30. 30.

    Savage, 363.

  31. 31.

    Iggulden, Bloodline, 22.

  32. 32.

    Gregory, The Kingmaker’s Daughter, 9.

  33. 33.

    Gregory, The Kingmaker’s Daughter, 100–101.

  34. 34.

    Dunn, “Margaret of Anjou: Monster-Queen or Dutiful Wife?”: 202.

  35. 35.

    John Silvester Davies (ed.), An English Chronicle of the Reigns of Richard II, Henry IV, Henry V and Henry VI written before the year 1471 (New York: Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1968), 79; Laynesmith, 138.

  36. 36.

    Laynesmith, 136.

  37. 37.

    Helen Maurer, “Delegitimizing Lancaster: The Yorkist Use of Gendered Propaganda During the Wars of the Roses” in Reputation and Representation in Fifteenth-Century Europe, ed. Douglas L. Biggs, Sharon D. Michalove and A. Compton Reeves (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 182.

  38. 38.

    Maurer, Margaret of Anjou, 45.

  39. 39.

    Higginbotham, 18.

  40. 40.

    Higginbotham, 85.

  41. 41.

    Higginbotham, 125.

  42. 42.

    Plaidy, 224–225; Hickson, 51, 59, 93, 489; Iggulden, Stormbird, 172; Iggulden, Trinity, 104.

  43. 43.

    “John Blacman” in Henry VI, Margaret of Anjou and the Wars of the Roses: From Contemporary Chronicles, Letters and Records ed. Keith Dockray (Stroud: Fonthill Media, 2016), 66.

  44. 44.

    Plaidy, 224–225.

  45. 45.

    Iggulden, Stormbird, 272–273; Hickson, 60–61.

  46. 46.

    Lee, 191.

  47. 47.

    Maurer, “Delegitimizing Lancaster,” 180–181.

  48. 48.

    Savage, 24.

  49. 49.

    Savage, 11, 133.

  50. 50.

    Savage, 75, 165, 271, 337, 358, 366–7, 198, 282.

  51. 51.

    Savage, 284.

  52. 52.

    Betty King, Margaret of Anjou (London: Robert Hale Limited, 2004), 180, 186, 193.

  53. 53.

    King, 279.

  54. 54.

    Higginbotham, 202.

  55. 55.

    See Susan Bordo, The Creation of Anne Boleyn: In Search of the Tudors’ Most Notorious Queen (London: OneWorld Publications, 2014), for a reconstruction and explanation of Anne Boleyn’s reputation, using both historiography and popular culture.

  56. 56.

    Joanna L. Chamberlayne, “Crowns and Virgins: Queenmaking During the Wars of the Roses” in Young Medieval Women ed. by Katherine J. Lewis, Noël James Menuge and Kim M. Phillips (Stroud: Sutton Publishing Ltd., 1999), 54.

  57. 57.

    Robert Fabyan and Henry Ellis (ed.), The New Chronicles of England and France in Two Parts (London: F.C. and J. Rivington, 1811), 618.

  58. 58.

    Savage, 61.

  59. 59.

    Savage, 61, 123.

  60. 60.

    Savage, 220.

  61. 61.

    Plaidy, 121–122.

  62. 62.

    Maurer, “Delegitimising Lancaster,” 170, 180–1, 183.

  63. 63.

    Dunn, “Margaret of Anjou, Queen Consort of Henry VI: A Reassessment of her Role, 1445–53,” 109–110.

  64. 64.

    Higginbotham, 19, 79.

  65. 65.

    Maurer, Margaret of Anjou, 127.

  66. 66.

    Maurer, Margaret of Anjou, 165–166.

  67. 67.

    Plaidy, 452, 458; Iggulden, Ravenspur, 238–239; Savage, 414; King, 313; Penman, 363.

  68. 68.

    “A.D. 1454, 19 Jan: News Letter of John Stodeley” in Gairdner, 265.

  69. 69.

    Gregory, The Lady of the Rivers, 326, 328.

  70. 70.

    Michael Hicks, The Wars of the Roses (London: Yale University Press, 2010), 127–128.

  71. 71.

    Savage, 200–201.

  72. 72.

    Iggulden, Stormbird, 189–191.

  73. 73.

    Iggulden, Bloodline, 128.

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  1. University of Exeter, Exeter, UK

    Imogene Dudley

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  1. New College of the Humanities, London, UK

    Estelle Paranque

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Dudley, I. (2019). She-Wolf or Feminist Heroine? Representations of Margaret of Anjou in Modern History and Literature. In: Paranque, E. (eds) Remembering Queens and Kings of Early Modern England and France. Queenship and Power. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22344-1_11

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