Always the French Queen: Identity Politics

Abstract

John Fisher’s initial enthusiasm in describing the events that took place at the Field of Cloth of Gold was undercut by his sermon’s insistence on the transitory nature of earthly joys, together with eloquent examples of how weather might ruin a joust or wind blow down an elaborate tent.² Nevertheless, his opening lines testify to Mary’s continuing importance as a source of national pride. Here Mary, Catherine, and Claude are celebrated as one of the wondrous sights beheld at the extravagant spectacle staged by Henry and Francis at their meeting in 1520. But where Queen Claude of France was barely named, both Catherine and Mary are singled out, Mary noted as Louis’s queen, Henry’s sister, and “excellent and fayre” in her own right (fol. A2r). Her beauty and her quality are imagined as a part of an epic narrative that surpasses any such event in history. Fisher’s praise illustrates how Mary’s title “queen of France” becomes a lifelong source of status, one that shaped people’s conceptions of her and provided a continuing source of authority.