Abstract
To date, there has never been a full-length study of the power held by female sovereigns in France during the late Middle Ages. Yet these are crucial centuries in that they redefined the queen’s place at the heart of the monarchy following the promulgation of Salic Law, which denied women the right to succeed to the throne. This book seeks to define the true nature of the power these women possessed and their role within both the court and the kingdom of France. Theorists have placed particular emphasis on the duality of the queen’s body, which was not only a mortal body but also an allegorical one. Like the Virgin Mary, the queen became the great intercessor between the king and his subjects.
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Notes
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Collection Gaignières, Bibliothèque nationale de France (hereafter referred to as ‘BnF’), Paris, reproduced in Contamine, Autour de Marguerite d’Écosse, Fig. 3.
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‘He put Adam to sleep and created the body of woman from one of his ribs. This was a sign that she was meant to be his companion standing at his side, whom he would love as if they were one flesh, and not his servant lying at his feet.’ Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies, trans. Rosalind Brown-Grant (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1999), 22.
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Cosandey, La reine de France; Bartolomé Bennassar, Le lit, le pouvoir et la mort. Reines et princesses d’Europe de la Renaissance aux Lumières (Paris: Éd. de Fallois, 2006).
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Maurice Druon, The Accursed Kings, book 1, The Iron King, trans. Humphrey Hare (London: Harper, 2013; first published 1955).
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Cosandey, La reine de France.
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Gaude-Ferragu, M. (2016). Introduction. In: Queenship in Medieval France, 1300-1500. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-93028-9_1
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