Conclusions

Abstract

Maria de Luna was a noblewoman by birth, a daughter of the most prestigious line of the fiercely antiroyalist Aragonese nobility, yet by marriage and upbringing she became a member of the inner circle of the royal family that ruled over not only Aragon, but also a string of kingdoms and principalities in Iberia and the Western Mediterranean. For Maria, the queen, the tension between these two poles was both a cause of conflict and a source of strength. In her efforts to harmonize these two spheres she aggressively pursued her family’s policies and those of the dynasty, waged war on her challengers, patronized reactionary and reforming clergy and did not hesitate to impose herself on her lesser peers among the landed aristocracy. Yet her duties to her own dependents often undermined her larger policies, and she was never able to act “impartially” toward her noble peers. Maria’s shared upbringing with Martí gave them a remarkable unity of purpose and mutual trust. The time they spent apart and their fraternal relations contributed to their failure to produce an heir who would survive them—something that should have been in many senses as their most important accomplishment. This and other failures aside, Maria’s deliberate cultivation of her “queenly dignity,” and the discretion with which she veiled her authority, helped preserve her from what could easily have been the harsh judgment of misogynistic contemporaries and unreflectively chauvinistic historians—a fate all too common for dynamic woman rulers across the Medieval West.