Rule: Models of Rulership and the Tools of Justice

Abstract

The medieval queen’s success depended on her ability to manage the royal household and the treasury, to support the king and to represent him, to bear the prospective male heir and to act as regent for her under-age son on the king’s death. The Ottonian empress Adelheid ruled effectively as regent four times. Her epithets (consors regni and consors imperii) and her frequent appearances in the imperial charters illustrate her prestige and power. One hundred years later Countess Matilda of Tuscany participated as a military leader in battles in support of church reform and the papacy against Emperor Henry IV, whose army she drove out of Italy.