Abstract
Heckel examines how women of royal houses in the ancient and medieval worlds formed essential links between men who sought the throne and their predecessors. Although many societies were either constitutionally or traditionally opposed to the rule of women (“Queens Regnant”), the importance of the bloodline, which in the absence of male heirs flowed through the female, must not be underestimated. Because the familial status of the female became a strong—and often deciding—factor, men who aspired to the throne often used marriage to royal women, or blood relationships to them, as a means of gaining legitimacy. Heckel considers the variety of relationships, as well as their political advantages and drawbacks.
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Notes
- 1.
Abbreviations of ancient authors, works, and collections of documents are those used by the Oxford Classical Dictionary; abbreviations of journals are those found in L’Année Philologique, available at http://www.annee-philologique.com/files/sigles_fr.pdf. The daughter of Pippin I, Begga , married Ansegisus son of Arnulf but the descendants were known as Pippinids . “This choice of names—one of the indicators that we have of collective identity—would seem to suggest that, until the late eighth century, the family thought of itself primarily as Pippinid, and thus by implication as descended through Begga, rather than Arnulfing and descended through Ansegisus” (Ian Wood, “Genealogy Defined by Women: The Case of the Pippinids,” in Gender in the Medieval World. East and West, 300–900, ed. Leslie Brubaker and Julia M.H. Smith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 238. One of their sons was Pippin II. But this reflects the relative importance of the bride’s family as compared with that of the husband. It is common when such an imbalance occurs that the sons are named for the maternal grandfather. The role of the daughter is also to support her father’s interests and those of his family. This is surely the point of the decision of Xolotzin, the king of the Chichimecs, to give Teotihuacán to his sister, Tomeyauhtzin, whom he married to a local noble. Karen E. Bell, “Ancient Queens in the Valley of Mexico,” in Ancient Queens. Archaeological Explorations, ed. Sarah M. Nelson (Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press, 2003), 141) misses an important point when she calls this “a brother’s act of good will or affection, or both, [which] made his sister queen.” Similarly, Antiochus III married his daughter Cleopatra to the young Ptolemy V Epiphanes . Their son, perhaps tellingly, took the epithet Philometor. The subsequent prevalence of the name Cleopatra in the Ptolemaic royal house is also significant (in general, see John Whitehorne, Cleopatras (London: Routledge, 1994); for the propaganda and power as it relates to Ptolemaic women see Richard A. Hazzard, Imagination of a Monarchy: Studies in Ptolemaic Propaganda (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000), 101–59. Philip II chose to marry his daughter Cynnane to Amyntas IV, whom many considered the rightful heir to the Argead throne. In terms of dynastic stability, Philip gained more than Amyntas from this union. E.D. Carney (Women and Monarchy in Macedonia (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2000), 70) takes a less sinister view of Philip’s intentions (cf. Daniel Ogden, Polygamy, Prostitutes and Death. The Hellenistic Dynasties (London: Duckworth, 1999), 26). Cleopatra I and Cynnane, although they may have represented the interests of their respective fathers, were less inclined to support their brothers.
- 2.
Ogden, Polygamy, xix.
- 3.
Herodotus 1.11–12. W.W. How, A Commentary on Herodotus. Vol. 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1912), 59: “It is quite in accordance with Eastern usage that the usurper should take the wife of his predecessor.” But a usurper’s position must be considered different from that of a successor who had the benefit of “election” (or at least support) by the power elite. See also Ogden Polygamy, 4. By contrast, Gonzalo Pizzaro could have legitimized his position in his rebellion against the viceroy of Peru by marrying the Coya (the Inca heiress) but refused to do so because, by doing so, he would have become the champion of the oppressed natives at a time when the main cause of rebellion was the crown’s insistence upon suppressing the rights of the conquistadors to exploit the Indian population.
- 4.
Discussion in W. Heckel, Who’s Who in the Age of Alexander the Great. Prosopography of Alexander’s Empire (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), 271 s.v. “Xandrames.” Even Alexander the Great, following the example of Darius I, strengthened the legitimacy of his rule by marrying women of the Achaemenid royal house—though in both cases the women were daughters rather than widows.
- 5.
J.C. Yardley (trans.), Justin, Epitome of the Philippic History of Pompeius Trogus (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1994), 243.
- 6.
Justin 24.2; cf. Justin 38.8.3–4 for similar action by Physcon.
- 7.
Ogden, Polygamy, 14–16; Carney, Women, 42–4; cf. Kate Mortenson “Eurydice: Demonic or Devoted Mother?” Ancient History Bulletin 6 (1992): 155–69.
- 8.
Bell, “Ancient Queens,” 140, from the manuscript “Los primeros Señores de Teotihuacán, y sus comarcas son los que siguen.” For the importance of the female in Tenochtitlán (i.e. among the Aztecs) as “the transit through which rulership passed” see Susan D. Gillespie, The Aztec Kings. The Construction of Rulership in Mexican History (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1989), 98.
- 9.
Herodotus, Robin Waterfield (trans.), The Histories (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008); W.W. How, and J. Wells, A Commentary on Herodotus. Vol. 2 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1912). How and Wells, Commentary, 2.125 observe: “Nothing is known otherwise of this alleged Spartan custom. … The true reason doubtless was the influence of Atossa … as daughter of Cyrus and chief wife of Darius” [emphasis added].
- 10.
On Melisende see Hans Eberhard Mayer, “Studies in the History of Queen Melisende of Jerusalem.” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 26 (1972): 93–183.
- 11.
The marriage was pronounced illegitimate on grounds of consanguinity, though clearly the motive for annulling the marriage appears to have been to deprive the Courtenays (recently ousted from Edessa) of power in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. But see Bernard Hamilton, The Leper King and His Heirs. Baldwin IV and the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 23–7.
- 12.
See Hamilton, Leper King, 194–5, for the situation in 1183.
- 13.
See Peter W. Edbury, The Conquest of Jerusalem and the Third Crusade. Sources in Translation (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998), 154–5, from the Lyon Eracles.
- 14.
Whether the claim that she was illegitimate was made at the time of her accession or later is unclear, although Mayer (“Melisende,” 100–2) writes: “She had been born from an illicit union and had been expressly legitimized by the church but from 1183 at the latest doubts were being expressed about this. The debate was a delicate one because what applied to her applied equally to her brother on the throne.” William of Tyre, writing before the succession crisis of 1186, states unequivocally that Sibylla was declared legitimate, but the Old French Continuation of William of Tyre, which favored the claims of Conrad of Montferrat who contrived to marry Isabella remarks that Baldwin IV “knew that Guy of Lusignan would not be suitable to govern or sustain the kingdom and that his sister did not have any right to it (for when her mother separated from her father the children were not declared legitimate)” (Edbury, Conquest, 14, emphasis added). At any rate, there was at the same time a suggestion that Raymond III of Tripoli was the legitimate heir (plus dreit heir aparant) since his mother was allegedly born when Baldwin II became king. According to Jonathan Riley-Smith (The Feudal Nobility and the Kingdom of Jerusalem 1174–1277 (London: Anchor Books, 1973), 10), “a Genoese annalist … wrote that he [sc. Raymond of Tripoli] claimed to represent a more legitimate line of the royal house of Jerusalem than did the holders of the crown, because his mother, Hodierna, had been born while her father, King Baldwin II, was ruling over Jerusalem and therefore had a better right than her sister Melisende, Baldwin IV’s grandmother, who had been born while Baldwin II was still Count of Edessa: an argument that was historically erroneous but was based on the concept of the porphyrogenitus and very similar to what we shall see proposed on behalf of Isabella of Jerusalem in 1183.” A similar attempt to delegitimize the claims of the Empress Matilda involved the rumor that her parents had not been legally married See Helen Castor, She-Wolves. The Women who Ruled England Before Elizabeth (New York: Harper Collins, 2012), 86.
- 15.
Conrad had the support of King Philip of France, while Richard I favored Guy. But Conrad was also the brother of Sibylla’s first husband, William Longsword, and thus the uncle of Baldwin V.
- 16.
Attalus’s remark about “legitimate heirs” (Ath. 13.557d–e; Plut. Alex. 9.7–8) may have implied that Alexander the Great was a “bastard” on account of his mother’s Epirote origins.
- 17.
On Matilda and King Stephen see Marjorie Chibnall, The Empress Matilda: Queen Consort, Queen Mother and Lady of the English (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991) and, for broader issues, Marjorie Chibnall, “England and Normandy, 1042–1137,” in The New Cambridge Medieval History. Vol. 4, ed. David Luscomb and Jonathan Riley-Smith, 191–216 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). See also the popular but scholarly account of Castor, She Wolves, 39–127. On Robert Curthose, see Charles Wendell David, Robert Curthose, Duke of Normandy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1920); William Robert Aird, Robert Curthose. Duke of Normandy (c.1050–1134) (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2008). On William Rufus, see Frank Barlow, William Rufus (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000) and on Henry I, see C. Warren Hollister, Henry I (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001).
- 18.
See Hans Eberhard Mayer, “Angevins Versus Normans: The New Men of King Fulk in Jerusalem,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 133 (1989): 1–25.
- 19.
Cited by Chibnall, Matilda, 97, with n.28.
- 20.
Stephen’s wife is described as “forgetting the weakness of her sex and a woman’s softness, she bore herself with the valour of a man” (Gesta Stephani, cited by Castor, She Wolves, 106).
- 21.
Translations: Thucydides, Martin Hammond (trans.). The Peloponnesian War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); my own translation of Plutarch and the Matilda epitaph; see Chibnall, Matilda, 191 for other versions of the text.
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Heckel, W. (2018). King’s Daughters, Sisters, and Wives: Fonts and Conduits of Power and Legitimacy. In: Dunn, C., Carney, E. (eds) Royal Women and Dynastic Loyalty. Queenship and Power. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75877-0_2
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