By Elisabetta Lurgo

Cover Image: Portrait of Marie Louise d’Orléans (1662-1689), c. 1679, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Marie-Louise_d%27Orl%C3%A9ans,_reine_d%27Espagne.jpg

If, according to the contemporary view, the reign of Marie-Louise d’Orléans, wife of King Carlos II of Habsburg, ended with the fleeting victory of the Austrian faction at the court of Spain, her sudden death, which gave rise to tenacious suspicions of poisoning, has something to feed the romantic imagination.

Marie-Louise was the daughter of Philippe d´Orléans, brother of Louis XIV, and Henriette-Anne Stuart, sister of King Charles II of England. When she was born, she did not seem destined for Spain; at court, there were talks about an alleged marriage to the heir to the French crown. But Louis XIV’s daughter, Princess Marie-Thérèse, whom everyone already treated as a little Queen of Spain, died in 1672, aged five; the king’s niece was the only one who could replace her cousin. The wedding between Marie-Louise and Carlos II was celebrated after the peace of Nijmegen, in the royal chapel of the castle of Fontainebleau, on August 31, 1679.

The young Spanish king was not yet eighteen, but his shaky stride was obvious to all. His legs were too short to hold him upright; he dragged them around painfully and often appeared drowsy; epileptic seizures left him exhausted, and he suffered from multiple intestinal disorders. He probably had macrocephaly and his face was misshapen, with a disproportionate nose. His prognathism, a typical Habsburg malformation in which the lower jaw protruded, was so pronounced that swallowing was very difficult and his speech was hampered by excessive salivation. Carlos II showed a touching eagerness for Marie-Louise, whose beauty everyone celebrated, highlighting the promise of fertility that she held. In love with his young wife, Carlos devoted a passionate affection to her for a long time, before languishing in a resentful solitude, obsessed with the idea of a spell that prevented him from becoming a father, unable to tame a sick body eating him away relentlessly.

Once she arrived in Spain, Marie-Louise retained her fidelity to France, to the point that, at the court of Madrid, there were those who suspected her of being, basically, only a well instructed spy for Louis XIV; falsely, because the sense of honour, duty and royal dignity, which her father and uncle instilled in her to the highest degree, forbade Marie-Louise from betraying her new homeland. However, Marie-Louise never succeeded in truly detaching herself from France and her family; Spain remained strange to her.

In France, the common voice peddled the image of a languishing young queen in Madrid, in a dismal court, hostage to a King and a people who hated all that was French. Certainly, the instinctive antipathy of the Spaniards for their Queen was undeniable, as were the French prejudices against Spain. However, Marie-Louise was above all a shy young woman, aware of her duties but without particular aptitudes, tragically ill-prepared to face the challenges imposed by her role.

Contemporary sources also drew astonishment, mixed with tacit disapproval, for the Queen’s attachment to her French family. It is true that her mother, the charming Henriette-Anne, died when she was only eight years old, but her father was overflowing with affection for his offspring and Philippe d’Orléans’ second wife, Élisabeth-Charlotte de Bavière, once settled into the family, testified to Marie-Louise’s tenderness. A true writing enthusiast, Élisabeth-Charlotte sent two letters to Madrid every week, while the Duke of Orléans wrote to his daughters, who were married abroad, at least once every seven days, even in times of war, which astonished the courtiers.

To become tangibly more attached to her new the kingdom, Marie-Louise would have needed a child whose Spanish interests could be defended. But her womb, the stake in a succession with enormous implications, remained empty. The survival of the Spanish Hapsburg monarchy depended on it; the wait for this heir who never arrived became a veritable international obsession and, for Marie-Louise, a painful and humiliating odyssey. As is tradition, the blame fell on her, even if the deficiencies of Carlos II were so obvious that questions arose regarding his impotence. Ministers and ambassadors lied in wait for the secrets of the royal household, the doctors debated the causes of the Queen’s sterility, the chambermaids offered their advice and their questionable remedies; the Church also got involved and Marie-Louise was offered exorcisms aimed at freeing her from an alleged spell. An infamous rumour circulated, which said that Louis XIV made his niece unfit to have children, thus, to prepare the succession of the Dauphin to the throne of Spain; it was also claimed that the princess inflicted on herself treatments which would have rendered her sterile in order to be sent back to France upon the death of the king.

Against the background of this drama the ancestral conflict between the wife and the mother-in-law emerged; in this case Marie-Anne of Austria, who was regent for Carlos II from 1665 to 1675. It is undoubtedly necessary to nuance the picture of a persecuting Queen mother, ready to sacrifice her daughter-in-law to the interests of the Habsburgs of Austria, yet the fact remains that her relationship with Marie-Louise was difficult. Little cut out for the fight, the young queen could only be defeated, as Marie-Anne was so jealous of Marie-Louise’s ascendancy over Carlos II.

At the beginning of February 1689, the Queen was struck down by a colic which had afflicted her for a long time and for which she had often asked her father for medication. Two days earlier, despite a tormenting cough, she got out of bed to go hunting. An accident while hunting nearly killed her. Her horse reared up and, in the effort she made to restrain him, Marie-Louise struck the pommel of the saddle; she received a very violent blow to the stomach, and many feared the worst. On returning from the hunt, Marie-Louise went back to bed to treat her cough. The next day, feeling better, she ate plenty of raw oysters, olives and large glasses of ice milk. The next morning, at five o’clock, she had stomach pains, vomiting and very severe dysentery. Her illness quickly worsened; on February 11, after her confession, she was given Extreme Unction. The apostolic nuncio, who gave her the papal blessing, found her dying; “Only her eyes showed signs of knowledge,” he wrote.

Marie-Louise d’Orléans, Queen of Spain, died on February 12, 1689, at nine o’clock in the morning, “so quietly,” her confessor wrote, “that we hardly noticed her passing away”.

Several accounts of the Queen’s illness did not forget to mention the hunting accident she suffered. But it would take much more to quell the rumours about poison that were spreading in the European courts. When, on February 20, the tragic news reached Versailles, tongues were loosened. Without doubt, the death of the young queen did not displease the Austrian “party” at the court of Carlos II; indeed, in April 1689, the declaration of war against France was announced in Madrid. But the poisoning thesis, so prized by early modern historiography, willingly belittled Marie-Louise’s state of health. She had just recovered from smallpox, a very dangerous disease; for a long time, she had suffered from stomach pains and nausea. The most banal hypothesis is also the most probable, that is, poisoning caused by the ingestion of contaminated food, especially raw oysters; in such a case, the outcome is often fatal, especially for a young woman who was recovering, prone for years to eating disorders. But involuntary poisoning by Marie-Louise herself is not entirely to be ruled out; to promote fertility, the Queen had been taking all kinds of remedies for years and, during the final crisis, she had just undergone an unprecedented treatment, based on “drugs” whose composition is unknown.

For her French family, a fond memory and a painful feeling of failure remained, perhaps tinged with remorse. Marie-Louise, so unloved during her lifetime, ended up being missed, as much by her husband as by her subjects. Never again did Carlos II feel the “spring air” he apparently experienced with his first wife. Shortly before dying, he opened the tomb of Marie-Louise and gazed at her with morbid fascination before running away, frightened. The French chroniclers recall that the young queen’s body was still “whole and with all her clothes”, with the face “a little coloured”. The legend of Marie-Louise, “a French fleur-de-lis blowing in a south wind”, was born.

Further Reading

Bartolomé Bennassar, Le Lit, le pouvoir et la mort. Reines et princesses d’Europe de la Renaissance aux Lumières (Éditions de Fallois, 2006).

Ezechiel Borgognoni, “The Royal Household of Marie-Louise of Orleans, 1679-1689 : the Struggle over Executive Offices ,” The Court Historian, 23.2, 2018: 166-181.

Jaime Contreras, Carlos II el Hechizado. Poder y melancolía en la Corte del último Austria (Temas de Hoy, 2003).

Elisabetta Lurgo, Marie-Louise d’Orléans, nièce de Louis XIV. La Princesse oubliée (Perrin, 2021).

Sylvia Z. Mitchell, “The Spanish Habsburg Court during the Reign of Carlos II (1665-1700)”, The Court Historian, 23.2, 2018: 107-112.

By Irene Carstairs

Twitter: @CarstairsIrene

Tamar of Georgia presided over a period of unprecedented expansion, as well as an era of peace and prosperity that would never be seen in the nation again. Under her reign, Georgian historical writing began to resemble something recognisable as history, not a collection of biblical stories, folktales, and kings. Consequently, Tamar receives more space in the Kartlis Tskhovreba—the Georgian chronicles—than any other monarch. Despite this, Tamar is one of the most difficult monarchs to get to know on a personal level, because of the way she is written about. She was a fierce woman who ordered massacres, conquered enemies, and freed the subjugated, but she was also a kind and compassionate woman who fed the hungry, clothed the naked, and helped to raise orphans. She was, as all humans are, a complex, multi-faceted person.

According to the chronicles however, she was exactly one of those things. Despite her many military achievements, she is constantly described as kind, cheerful, and righteous, the way that dedopalebi, or queens, always were. However, Tamar was not a dedopali (დედოფალი) (the Georgian singular for queen) she was a mepe (მეფე) or king. There was, and is, no word for queen regnant in the Georgian language, and the way mepebi (kings) and dedopalebi (queens) are described in the chronicles is strictly divided by gender. Dedopalebi are always beautiful, cheerful, and pious. They are one-dimensional and receive almost no mention. Mepebi, on the other hand, are made out to be complex, three-dimensional people who can subjugate their enemies and bring peace to the land, but also transport their enormous library across the Caucasus, and almost miss battles because they were reading.

Being the first female monarch, the chroniclers struggle in their descriptions of Tamar and her actions. Instead of recording Tamar’s more “kingly” achievements or empire building the way they would for a mepe, Tamar is relegated to the pious, gracious role of a dedopali, while her second husband and generals receive the credit, despite the fact that Tamar was involved in the planning of campaigns. Instead of being addressed in her full complexity the way the kings before her were, she is rendered one dimensional—impassive and pious to the point where much of what is written about her reads more like hagiography than biography.

This is starkly apparent in Tamar’s first marriage at the beginning of her independent reign after the death of her father. Worried about the future of the Bagratid succession and keen for trade from the Kievan Rus, a marriage with Yuri Bogolyubsky was contracted in secret by Tamar’s aunt and advisors. When the young prince arrived in Georgia, everyone was deeply impressed with his strength and good looks, but knew little about him. When told she was to marry Yuri, Tamar replied “How can you expect me to take such a hasty step? We know nothing of the conduct of this foreigner, nor of his deeds, or his valor, nature or disposition. Let me wait till we see his virtues or shortcomings” (Ezosmodzghvari, 2014, 289).

 Tamar’s protests fell on deaf ears. Her advisors “opposed her, talking of her childlessness, of the barrenness of her house, demanding a leader for the army, and pressing on her soul by every means.” (Ezosmodzghvari, 2014, 289). Tamar was forced into the marriage, despite knowing it was a bad idea.

Tamar’s protest to her first marriage, though short and quiet, echoes when placed in the context of Georgian historical writing. It is common in the Kartlis Tskhovreba for Tamar’s words and actions in a moment of crisis to be calm and regulated, but then for the later actions of her or her men to be on a completely different scale. The most dramatic example of this was when 1,200 Armenian Christians were slaughtered on Easter morning in 1209. In one sentence, Tamar’s heart “blazed with anger.” In the next, her second husband and her trusted generals massacre 12,000 Muslims in the Sultanate of Ardabil during Eid. Tamar’s words of the moment frequently seem to not match up with her actions, and it is quite likely that her “words,” many of which were later composed by a chronicler, did not match her actions. This was seen in the case of her first marriage as well.

There was a short honeymoon period, but it did not last long. Yuri soon turned to drunkenness and fornication, and verbally abused his wife in public. Eventually, he started to torture Tamar’s subjects, and she divorced him. The two recorded accounts of this time say:

“Humble and kind, reasonable and charming, Tamar endured that trial for two whole years, or maybe even more…He [Tamar’s advisors] now prepared the exile of the prince…Tamar – who was kind and by no means inclined to anger – shedding tears, sent him [Yuri] into exile, providing him with countless riches and treasures. She did not put him to death, though he deserved it…” (Chqondidi, 2014, 245).

and:

“Tamar, like an anvil, cheerfully endured for two and a half years the vices of the Russian,  [Yuri] and no one besides her could stand it anymore… All that became unbearable for Tamar, and she said to him [Yuri] in front of all the others: “I am taught by the law of God that a man should not leave his first conjugal bed, but you should not patiently stay with a man who does not keep his bed pure… I am unable to straighten the shadow of a crooked tree, and feel no guilt on my side; I must shake off the dust which has stuck to me from you.” With that, she got up and left him. And Queen Rusudan and all the princes banished him.” (Ezosmodzghvari, 2014, 290).

In the first source Tamar is described only as tenderhearted, almost seeming sad to send her faithless, dissolute husband away. In the second, Tamar’s frustration and anger is surrounded with religious sentiment, and her reasons for staying with Yuri are also religious in nature. While there is no doubt that Tamar was a very devout woman, in this case her allusions might have run a little deeper than faith. In medieval Georgia, religion was the only place where women could hold legitimate power without contest, and Tamar, whose reign began with a civil war, needed to be able to use her piety to legitimise her rule. To be described as wantonly casting off a first husband, as foul as he may be, would have given people doubt about her ability to rule. It was later evidenced by her daughter, Rusudan of Georgia, that a female monarch who was not seen to be perfectly pious risked losing control of her own people.

While the Tamar of the chronicles may have shed tears over her husband’s departure, it is impossible to guess how she actually felt when she sent him away. While she did spare his life and give him a large allowance, this may not be the display of tenderheartedness that many scholars paint it as being. Yuri had a large coterie of noblemen who liked him, enough to rebel with him when he later returned to Georgia, and so the kind treatment of him might not have been done out of mercy but out of political expediency; it is, as it often is with Tamar, difficult to tell.

This cuts to the heart of one of the greatest difficulties when it comes to studying Tamar; she is unknowable. There are few remaining contemporary sources describing her reign, and because the chroniclers painted her so firmly into the traditional corner of a dedopali, it is more difficult to know Tamar than it is to know her contemporary monarchs and consorts. She is praised endlessly for her charitable works and good deeds, but how many of them were altruistic and how many were done out of political expediency? Her second husband is credited as a great conqueror, with Tamar as his patient, pious support, but how much of Davit Soslan’s success did Tamar have a hand in? It is impossible to guess, and unless more sources come to light, we may never know.

Bibliography

Abashidze, Medea, trans. The Chronicle of Giorgi Lasha and His Time. Tbilisi, Georgia: Artanuji Publishing, 2014.

Chqondidi, Theodore. The History and Eulogy of Monarchs. Translated by Dmitri Gamq’relidze. Tbilisi, Georgia: Artanuji Publishing, 2014.

Ezosmodzghvari, Basili.The Life of Tamar, the Great Queen of Queens. Translated by Dmitri Gamq’relidze. Tbilisi, Georgia: Artanuji Publishing, 2014.

Met’reveli, Roin, and Stephen Jones, eds. Kartlis Tskhovreba. Tbilisi, Georgia: Artanuji Publishing, 2014.

Rayfield, Donald. Edge of Empires: A History of Georgia. London, United Kingdom: Reaktion Books, 2013.

Targamadze, Zurab. 2017. “Social and Legal Status of Women in Medieval Georgia.” International Journal of Culture and History 3, no. 1 (2017): 72-79

By Amy-Jane Humphries

This second part of our last #Pride month post delves further into sexualities and royal studies, continuing the story of John Hervey.

Frederick, Prince of Wales (1707-1751)

The social circle that Hervey, the Fox brothers, and Frederick ran in was defined by its sexual relationships, both heterosexual and homosexual.[1] When Frederick arrived in Britain in 1728, Hervey was abroad with Stephen Fox. Frederick quickly made a royal mistress of Anne Vane in a move which has been viewed as “signalling his advance into adult manhood.”[2] In this period, “rampant heterosexuality [was] proof of masculinity”[3] which, in turn, meant that homosexuality was coded as evidence of effeminacy and vice versa. In pursuing women as they did, both Hervey and Frederick were making statements about their manhood and their virility in line with the libertine spirit that they were attempting to embody. Their relationship to women was, it seems, just as complex as the relationship they themselves had. We know from their surviving correspondence that, during the early 1730s, the two were incredibly close – they even penned an almost universally panned opera together. The letters between them which have managed to survive reveal the affectionate pet-names that they had for one another. They also embodied classical roles within their letters, most frequently that of Orestes and Phylades but also that of Hephaestion and Alexander the Great. One might not be altogether in error if they read such illusions as reflecting some sort of truth about their relationship that could not be explicitly articulated.  This embodying of different identities was a trope many letter writers used throughout the period and arguably the most famous example of this are the characters of ‘Mrs Freeman and Mrs Morley,’ played by Sarah, Duchess of Churchill and Queen Anne respectively. It hints a more intimate entanglement between them, one which might account for why Hervey was so hostile towards Frederick later in his memoirs. However, we cannot ever be certain exactly what happened between them as many of their letters and parts of Hervey’s memoirs have not survived. Just like with some of Hervey and Steven Fox’s letters, the account of this friendship has largely been lost due to the interference of Hervey’s descendants. This absence further indicates that there may have been more to their relationship than meets the eye, but, as with all of his relationships, this one ended badly too.

The end of Hervey and the Prince’s relationship is believed to have been caused, in part, by Anne Vane, who had been a Maid of Honour in Queen Caroline’s household. Both men were involved with her sexually during the same period and it appears that a disagreement regarding her contributed to the breach between them. The birth of Vane’s first child, Fitz-Frederick Cornwall Vane, in 1732 was a complex affair because although the naming of the child indicates that Frederick fathered the child, and despite him acknowledging Fitz-Frederick, there were other paternity candidates who put themselves forward after the birth. This would have been a blow to Frederick’s self-esteem – particularly as his mother would later cast doubt upon his ability to father a child – and possibly helped to alienate him from Hervey. The extent to which Anne was the predominant cause of the breach between them is difficult to measure because we do not have the full picture of what was taking place. Hervey was certainly pushed out of Frederick’s sphere, however, because he soon found himself turning to Anne to try and get back into the Prince’s good graces. His inelegant attempt to blackmail her into helping him undoubtedly did little to help the situation – in fact, it probably made matters much worse for him. While it appears that the end of their relationship hinges on their involvement with Anne Vane, she is probably not the sole reason. Rather, she is likely part of a wider tale, the rest of which has been lost to history. There may well have been a romantic part of Hervey and Frederick’s relationship which went awry. Hervey might also have been collateral damage in Frederick’s attempts to reform his public image and, with his eventual marriage to Augusta of Saxe-Gotha, demonstrate himself to be a devoted husband and father, rather than a philandering libertine. Therefore, the friendship may have simply run its course.[4] Regardless of how it happened, by the mid-1730s, Hervey’s feelings had manifested into an intense loathing of the Prince of Wales and he found solace in the one person that detested him just as much: Frederick’s own mother.

Caroline of Ansbach, Queen of Great Britain (1683-1737)

Hervey “made prodigious court to [Caroline], and really loved and admired her”[5] in a way that he likely did not wholly expect. He became intrinsic to their routine—“the Queen sent for him every morning … and kept him, while she breakfasted”[6]—and was absorbed into the family as totally as Prince Frederick was pushed out. Caroline’s feelings towards her eldest son are inexplicable to us but they may be in part explained by the long separation between them when Frederick was a child. He was left behind in Hanover when the royal family decamped to Britain and at the time both George and Caroline were devastated. The son that the couple had lost had been replaced in their affections by the birth of William Augustus in 1721. Thus, when Frederick arrived in Britain, half-forgotten, uninvited and largely unannounced, in 1728, he did not receive the warm welcome he might have been dreaming about. From there, the Hanoverian tradition of open hostilities between the father and his heir was renewed once more and Caroline became more vehement about her hatred for her eldest child, siding with her husband on the matter just as she had done when they had been in Frederick’s position during George I’s reign. It is unlikely that the presence of Hervey, driven by his own reasons for loathing Frederick, helped matters between the King and Queen and their eldest son. Her disdain was cemented further by Frederick’s behaviour at the time of Augusta’s first pregnancy. Unwilling to have his parents witness the birth, Frederick bundled the labouring Augusta into a carriage and had her transported from Hampton Court to St. James’ Palace in a move that was not only childish but also showed a complete disregard for his wife’s safety. That both mother and child survived the ordeal was really a matter of luck and the ludicrous episode remains a permanent stain on Frederick’s character. Hervey reported all of this in his memoirs in unforgiving detail. 

For historians, John Hervey’s relationship with Queen Caroline is key to our understanding of the court because it brought him into the epicentre of the Georgian political world. He left us some of the most vivid – if not always the most kind or accurate – portrayals of the royal family during times both happy and sad. His voice paints a picture of the reign of George II and it is his proximity to Caroline that we have to thank for that. He watched the wheels of power turn and he believed that it was Caroline creating that movement – although, it must be said that his less than flattering portrayal of George II may have caused him to overstate the extent of Caroline’s power. Nevertheless, Hervey captured her importance to the careers of George’s courtiers in his famous line: “whomever she distinguished, the king employed.”[7] He would have known this first hand as through Caroline he was able to acquire a significant rise in his wages as Vice-Chamberlain of the Household.[8] Their relationship was ultimately built upon mutual affection and she became more to him than a vehicle for promotion. Indeed, when Caroline died in 1737, it was the beginning of the end for John Hervey.

John Hervey died in 1743, aged forty-six. He never truly recovered from the blow of losing Caroline. In the aftermath of her death, he was largely alone. His beloved Ste had long since moved on, his wife had found her own way in the world, and his Prince had cultivated a new life without him. He left behind eight children, and all three of his lost loves survived him. Despite his somewhat tragic end, Hervey had lived a full life and left behind a vital account of one of the most interesting periods of British history that otherwise might have been obscure to us. It is impossible to do his varied life justice here alone, but it is my hope that this Pride month you might have a closer look yourself at the life of John Hervey, 2^nd Baron Hervey and better get to know the man who was so distinguished by the Queen.

Bibliography

Sussex Record Office. 941/47/4. John Hervey to Stephen Fox, 26^th August 1731.

Browning, Reed. “Hervey, John, second Baron Hervey of Ickworth (1696-1743), courtier and writer.” In Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004-. Accessed 14^th June 2021, https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-13116.

Kilburn, Matthew. “Hervey [née Lepell], Mary, Lady Hervey of Ickworth (1699/1700-1768), courtier.” In Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004-. Accessed 16^th June 2021, https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-13118.

Koscak, Stephanie. “Rituals of Royal Masculinity in Eighteenth-Century Britain: Frederick, Prince of Wales, Takes a Mistress.” The Court Historian 26 (2021): 71-92.

Pope, Alexander. Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot. 1735. Accessed 14^th June 2021 https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44895/epistle-to-dr-arbuthnot.

Sedgwick, Romney, ed. Lord Hervey’s Memoirs. London: William Kimber, 1952.

Smith, Hannah and Taylor, Stephen. “Hephaestion and Alexander: Lord Hervey, Frederick, Prince of Wales, and the Royal Favourite in England in the 1730s.” The English Historical Review 124 (2009): 283-312.

Wilson Crocker, John, ed. Memoirs of the Reign of George II from his accession to the death of Queen Caroline. Vol 1. Philadelphia: Lea and Blanchard, 1848.

Wilson Crocker, John, ed. Memoirs of the Reign of George II from his accession to the death of Queen Caroline. Vol 2. London: Bickers, 1884.

Worsley, Lucy. Courtiers: The Secret History of the Georgian Court. London: Faber and Faber, 2010.

[1] Hannah Smith and Stephen Taylor, “Hephaestion and Alexander: Lord Hervey, Frederick, Prince of Wales, and the Royal Favourite in England in the 1730s,” The English Historical Review 124 (2009), 311.

[2] Stephanie Koscak, “Rituals of Royal Masculinity in Eighteenth-Century Britain: Frederick, Prince of Wales, Takes a Mistress,” The Court Historian 26 (2021), 80.

[3] Smith and Taylor, “Hephaestion and Alexander,” 269. 

[4] Koscak, “Rituals of Royal Masculinity,” 75.

[5] Hervey, Memoirs, 47.

[6] Hervey, Memoirs, 46.

[7] John Wilson Crocker, ed. Memoirs of the Reign of George II from his accession to the death of Queen Caroline, vol 1 (Philadelphia: Lea and Blanchard, 1848), 93.

[8] Hervey, Memoirs, 46.

By Amy-Jane Humphries 

For our last #Pride posts, we have a two-parter on the courtier John Hervey, his relationship with Caroline of Ansbach, queen of Great Britain and Ireland, and his role in LGBTQIA+ history!

Pride Month provides a wonderful reminder that our world has been shaped by queer lives all over the world and throughout human history. These stories can be found in all of our histories, and royal history is no exception. Time and later prejudices can often obscure some of the lives that turned the wheels of history but there are individuals who have withstood the test of time and remain as vivid to us today as they were when they lived. John Hervey, 2^nd Baron Hervey, is one such person. He was a prominent—one may even say infamous—courtier during the reign of George I and II. In the latter’s reign particularly, he was a royal favourite—the “child, pupil, and charge” of Queen Caroline.[1] By 1734, Hervey had found himself “in greater favour with the Queen, and consequently with the King, than ever; they told him everything, and talked of everything before him.”[2] The topics of these discussions were painstakingly, and often ruthlessly, recorded by Hervey and have survived to us in the form of his memoirs, which document the King’s reign until the death of Queen Caroline in 1737. Hervey is a more compelling character than your typical royal favourite, though. He was demonstrably, if not openly, bisexual and did not conform to the gendered expectations of the early eighteenth century. He was described by Sir Charles Hanbury Williams as being “excessively handsome, but so effeminately affected that it brought even his sex into question.”[3] Hervey’s androgyny made him the victim of vicious attacks by his political and romantic opponents both in the popular press and in poetic satire, with Alexander Pope penning the one of the most famous attacks on this courtier.[4] John Hervey was a fascinatingly complex character, and it is impossible to do him justice here alone. To celebrate Pride Month, though, we are going to have a look closer at four of the most important relationships in John Hervey’s life: that with his wife, Mary ‘Molly Lepell; the love of his life, Steven ‘Ste’ Fox; the Prince, Frederick of Wales; and the Queen, Caroline of Ansbach.

‘Now trips a lady, and now struts a lord’[5]: The Origins of Lord Hervey

            A word or two must be given first to the early life of one of the eighteenth century’s most famous individuals. John Hervey was born on 15^th October 1696 in a house on Jermyn Street in London. His courtly trajectory was perhaps then destined from birth, as Jermyn Street was built by and named after the 1^st Earl of St Albans, Henry Jermyn, whom the Herveys were related to. Jermyn was a courtier and politician during the reign of Charles I and he was the life-long favourite of Queen Henrietta Maria. John was the eldest son of at least seventeen children born to Elizabeth Howard and John Hervey, the future Earl of Bristol. Lord Bristol also had three children from his previous marriage to Isabella Carr. One might imagine, therefore, that the Hervey house in Ickworth, Suffolk was a loud and raucous place to grow up. The young John was plagued by ill-health, but he did not allow it to hold back. Certainly, it did not prevent him from frequently accompanying his father to Newmarket for the races, nor did it stop him from becoming an able jockey in his own right.[6] Much of his youth was spent in the company of his mother, however. Unlike her husband, the Countess thrived in the court environment. She became one of Queen Caroline’s bedchamber women when the Hanoverians first came to Britain and Caroline was made Princess of Wales. She remained in post until Caroline’s death in the 1730s. Though she adored the court, her great love was cards and Hervey could often be found at the gaming table with her, learning how to play quadrille and other “games of skill.”[7]

            The extended time that Hervey spent with women in his youth has been attributed to his later androgyny and the perceived eccentricities that he displayed—particularly his penchant for using face powder.[8] It is worth noting with regards to his use of cosmetics that it was not unusual for men in this period to utilise powders and rouges to enhance their beauty. A pale face paired with rouged lips and cheeks was considered the height of fashion and it is reflected in many of the portraits created during the first half of the century. However, the excessive use of cosmetics was derided and the fact that this was a notable part of Hervey’s appearance does imply that his usage teetered on excess. By the middle of the century, such individuals who displayed themselves in an outlandish, colourful manner as Hervey did would be unkindly referred to as Macaronis. Hervey also had other motives for using cosmetics, though. During his trip to Italy in 1728, he underwent surgery which left him with a facial scar. For courtiers of any period, not least in the eighteenth century, appearances were everything. Thus, while we can certainly see this as evidence of Hervey possessing a fluid gender identity, other factors saw him utilise these products.

Owing to his precarious health, Hervey was educated by tutors at Ickworth and it was not until 1712, when he was fifteen, that he finally began to attend the Westminster School. He then matriculated at Clare College, Cambridge and graduated in 1715. Afterwards, Hervey embarked on a grand tour of Europe. This had been a fashionable adventure for young aristocrats since the seventeenth century and a stay in Rome and Venice was considered the cornerstone of the trip. Hervey began his in Paris before moving onto the unusual destination of Hanover, which looks less like a strange detour when one realises that his arrival coincided with one of the many extended visits that George I made to the electorate over the course of his reign in Britain. It was there that the twenty-year-old Hervey met two of the people who would come to dominate his later life: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Prince Frederick, the son of the Prince and Princess of Wales. Lord Bristol’s hope was that by enabling his son to pay court to both the King and to the young prince, he might thereby secure the prominence of the Hervey family well into the future. Lady Mary and Prince Frederick were complicated figures in Hervey’s life and the exact nature of his relationship to both, but more importantly to Frederick, has remained elusive to historians. His return to court after the tour brought him into contact with a young woman with whom he had a relationship that is much more visible to us: his wife, Mary Lepell.

Mary Lepell (1700-1768)

Mary Lepell, affectionately known as Molly, was an animal of the court just like her future husband and mother-in-law. She was a Maid of Honour in the Princess of Wales’s household and was considered to be one of the great beauties of the Georgian court. The Maids of Honour provided George I’s court with some of the glitz and glamour it was so often in want of. Molly and her friends were frequently the subject of romantic verses and their exploits filled the gossip columns of the popular press. In Molly, Hervey felt that he had found someone who understood him, someone he could connect with about the trials and tribulations of court life. Moreover, he believed that he had come to love her more than he had ever loved himself.[9] When they married in the summer of 1720, neither of them had much money at their disposal. Molly came from a relatively impoverished background and Lady Bristol’s penchant for cards had much depleted the Hervey finances over the years. Thus, they were forced to keep their union a secret as they depended upon the salary Molly earned from her position at court. Admitting to their marriage would have left them in a dire financial state but the lie could not last forever as the marriage proved particularly fecund in its early days. Between 1720 and 1724, Molly had four children in quick succession. Several others would be born at less regular intervals in the ensuing years, reflecting that the lustre of first love had worn off quicker than either of them would have liked. The truth appears to have been their undoing, however. It may have been the clandestine nature of their match which had enthralled them and when reality caught up with them, they no longer savoured each other as they had once done. By 1726, the pair had begun to grow apart, and Hervey had moved on to other loves.[10]

Steven Fox (1704-1776)

In 1728, a year after his great patrons, George II and Queen Caroline, had come to the throne, Hervey abandoned his political career and his wife to go to Italy. Publicly, this trip was for Hervey’s health, which had grown precarious and unreliable once more. Privately, though, it was a chance for him to further cultivate his relationship with Stephen Fox, the future Earl of Ilchester. Undoubtedly, the relationship with Stephen Fox was the defining romance of Hervey’s life. Over the course of the following decade, the pair often lived together, but their relationship does not seem to have been a constant one as Hervey pursued other liaisons in this period and infrequently returned to the bed of his wife. The pair wrote passionate, and sometimes explicit love letters to one another, a number of which were removed from Hervey’s letter book by his descendants.[11]  They had an intense sexual and emotional relationship and Stephen completely eclipsed Molly in Hervey’s affections; Hervey wrote to him in 1731 that he loved him “more than he thought I could ever love anything.”[12] He had thought that of Molly too, once. His wife certainly came to tolerate, even accept the affair. The pair had three more children during Hervey’s decade with Stephen, and one last child followed after it concluded. It was Stephen to whom Molly wrote in 1728 to enquire as to her husband’s health while they were on the Continent.[13] Later, she even sold Stephen her house in London, which suggests that they were at least cordial, or perhaps even had a tentative friendship of their own.[14] Hervey and Stephen’s relationship did not withstand the test of time, however. In 1735, Stephen married the thirteen-year-old Elizabeth Horner, the only heir of Thomas Strangways Horner. Though it must have initially been a marriage of convenience, Stephen was reportedly “distressingly affectionate” towards his young wife.[15] Having thrown away his relationship with his wife and losing his great love to the institution of marriage, Hervey found himself alone by the mid-1730s. Two other significant relationships had failed by this point, too—that of Hervey with Anne Vane and, more importantly, Frederick, Prince of Wales.

Come back on Thursday for the second part of the life of John Hervey!

[1] John Wilson Crocker, editor., Memoirs of the Reign of George II from his accession to the death of Queen Caroline, vol 2, (London: Bickers, 1884), 46.

[2] Crocker, ed., Memoirs, 46.

[3] Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, quoted in Lord Hervey’s Memoirs, edited by Romney Sedgwick (London: William Kimber, 1952), 14.

[4] See Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot where Alexander Pope figures Hervey as Sporus, the young man who was castrated and then married to the Emperor Nero. In doing so, Pope is making clear statements about Hervey’s gender and sexuality which would have been clear to eighteenth century readers who understood who he was referring to.

[5] Alexander Pope, Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot, 1735, accessed, 14^th June 2021, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44895/epistle-to-dr-arbuthnot.

[6] Sedgwick, ed. Lord Hervey’s Memoirs, 14.

[7] Sedgwick, ed. Lord Hervey’s Memoirs, 14.

[8] Reed Browning, “Hervey, John, second Baron Hervey of Ickworth (1696-1743, courtier and writer,” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2004-), accessed 14^th June 2021, https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-13116.

[9] Lucy Worsley, Courtiers: The Secret History of the Georgian Court (London: Faber and Faber, 2010), 52.

[10] Worsley, Courtiers, 108.

[11] Worsley, Courtiers, 205.

[12] SRO 941/47/4, John Hervey to Stephen Fox (26 August 1731), 295.

[13] Worsley, Courtiers, 207.

[14] Matthew Kilburn, “Hervey [née Lepell], Mary, Lady Hervey of Ickworth (1699/1700-1768), courtier,” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2004-), accessed 16^th June 2021, https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-13118.

[15] Worsley, Courtiers, 253.

By Jessica Minieri (Twitter: @jessica_minieri)

Cover Photo: Blanca’s initial on the ceiling of the Cathedral de Santa María la Real in Pamplona, Spain (Wikimedia Commons).

In 1402, Navarrese princess, Blanca (c.1387-1441), arrived in Palermo to marry the king of Sicily, Martí “El Joven” (r. 1390-1409), in an effort to secure his throne following the death of his first wife and co-ruler, Maria of Sicily (r. 1377-1401). The circumstances of this union began in the fourteenth century as the Aragonese royal house worked to unite its monarchy with Sicily in the decades following the War of the Sicilian Vespers (1282-1302). Since 1302, Sicily was ruled by a semi-autonomous cadet branch of the Aragonese House of Barcelona that maintained its own monarchy, parliament, and political institutions. While Maria’s death in 1401 temporarily stalled hopes in Barcelona for a dynastic merge with Sicily, Martí’s place as king of Sicily and heir of his father in Aragon, Martín “El Humano” (r. 1396-1410), left that possibility open.

After months of searching for a new wife, Blanca, princess of the Iberian Kingdom of Navarre, travelled to Palermo to become the new queen of Sicily and give new life to Aragonese hopes of a dynastic union.

While Blanca’s and Martí’s future may have seemed bright in the early years of their marriage, by 1409, things in Sicily had turned sour quickly as Martí died of battle wounds sustained in Sardinia. At his death, Blanca assumed the title of lieutenant general (vicaria generalis) and Martín of Aragon, Blanca’s father-in-law and Martí’s father, inherited the throne of Sicily. This arrangement, however, only lasted until May 1410 when King Martín died and left both the kingdoms of Aragon and Sicily without formal heirs. As the resulting political and dynastic situation worsened in Barcelona, Blanca remained as lieutenant until a replacement could be named at the ascension of a new king. This position, similar to a regent, allowed her to rule Sicily with the authority of a king. As the tension over the Arago-Sicilian succession grew violent in Iberia, a faction of Sicilian nobles led by Bernardo Cabrera, count of Modica (1350-1423), plotted to reshape Sicily at Blanca’s expense.

According to the minutes of the Catalan Parliament (Corts) in March 1412, Cabrera attempted to abduct Blanca and force her into marriage with Nichola Peralta, a descendant of Maria of Sicily. Cabrera’s representative to the Corts, Antonio Rigau, argued that a marriage between Nichola and Blanca would restore Sicily’s monarchy to its pre-1409 status and prevent it from falling under Aragon’s direct control via a dynastic merge with Barcelona. This arrangement, however, would stall Blanca’s ability to return to Navarre and prevent her from inheriting her father’s throne since, after the death of her sister, Juana, in 1413, Blanca became the heir.

Luckily for Blanca, this scheme foundered, and she was able to combat Cabrera’s ambitions until a new king, Ferdinand de Antequera (r. 1412-1416), was elected in Aragon in June 1412. Meanwhile, Blanca travelled around the island as Cabrera sieged the castles and municipalities that she visited. In her published letters from 1412, Blanca refers to Cabrera as a “rebel to this house” (rebelli di la casa) and an “occupier and destroyer of the kingdom” (occupaturi et distrudituri di quistu Regnu). Blanca’s fight to protect her throne characterized her lieutenancy since this fight with Cabrera dragged on for years.

Once news arrived in Sicily of the election of Ferdinand de Antequera, Blanca received the support she needed from Barcelona to repel further challenges to her position. By the end of 1412, Blanca banished Cabrera from Sicily and arranged for a marriage between Peralta and Isabella de Luna, a member of a high-ranking Catalan noble family. With the threat to herself and, by extension, the monarchy, extinguished, Blanca herself needed to arrange her journey home to Navarre.

The logistics of this journey had been in motion in Navarre for years as Blanca’s parents, Carlos III (r. 1387-1425), and Leanor of Castile (r. 1387-1416), petitioned the Catalan Parliament and the schismatic Avignon Pope, Benedict XIII (disputed reign 1394-1403/1423), in 1410 and 1411 to negotiate the terms of Blanca’s return. Both attempts, however, were unsuccessful since Blanca could not leave Sicily without a replacement. Ferdinand de Antequera’s ascension following years of failed negotiations and uncertainty brought new hope of Blanca’s return for Carlos and Leanor. Unfortunately, this process was not settled until late 1414 when Juan of Aragon, son of Ferdinand and Blanca’s eventual second husband, became of age to succeed her as lieutenant. Once Juan embarked for Palermo, Blanca traveled to Pamplona to become her father’s formal heir in 1415. By her death in 1441, Blanca had ruled Navarre as regnant queen with Juan for sixteen years.

While she may be most known in the Anglophone world for her reign in Navarre, Blanca’s lieutenancy in Sicily is still revered in popular celebrations of the island’s medieval past. From her namesake village of Biancavilla in the Province of Catania to commemoration of the legend of her failed abduction at Donnafugata Castle in Ragusa, Bianca di Navarra remains an ever-present figure in the landscape of the Sicilian medieval past.

Bibliography and Recommended Reading

De Bofarull y Mascaro, Prospero Coleccion de documentos ineditos del Archivo General de la Corona de Aragon. Barcelona: Archivo General de la Corona de Aragon, 1847

Fodale, Salvatore, “Blanca de Navarra y el gobierno de Sicilia,” Principe de Viana 60, no.217 (1999), 311-322.

Lo Forte Scirpo, Maria Rita. C’era una volta una regina: due donne per un regno: Maria   d’Aragona e Bianca di Navarra. Napoli: Liguori, 2003.

Ramirez Vaquero, Eloisa. Carlos III rey de Navarra, Principe de sangre Valois (1387-1425). Gijón: Ediciones Trea, 2007.

­­­­_____. “El Retorno a Navarra de la reina de Sicilia in 1415,” Principe de Viana 70, no. 246 (2009), 121-144.

Sciascia, Laura, “Bianca di Navarra, l’ultima regina. Storia femminile della monarchia siciliana,”     Principe de Viana 60, no. 217 (1999), 293-310.

Starrabba, Raffaele. Lettere e documenti della regina Bianca, vicaria del Regno di Sicilia (1411-1412). Palermo: Amenta, 1887.

Woodacre, Elena, ed. Queenship in the Mediterranean: Negotiating the Role of the Queen in the  Medieval and Early Modern Era. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013  

_____.  The Queens Regnant of Navarre: Succession, Politics, and Partnership, 1274-1512. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.

By Amy Saunders

For the third of our #PrideMonth posts, we have a special guest post from historian Amy Saunders on the iconic Christina of Sweden!

Christina of Sweden (1628-1689) inherited the throne at six years old after the death of her father Gustavas Adolphus King of Sweden. Christina’s biological sex was called into question at her birth when it was initially announced that Queen Eleanora had given birth to a son and heir. Soon after the queen’s attendants decided they had made a mistake and the king’s sister had to inform Gustavas that the baby was female. Although a woman could inherit the throne in Sweden it had only happened once before 1628 and a son would have been preferred. Prior to giving birth to Christina, Eleanora had several difficult and unsuccessful pregnancies, this, combined with Gustavas being away fighting in the 30 Years War, meant that they had no more children.

Later, Christina’s cross dressing, her self-declared disinterest in marriage, her relationship with Ebba Sparre and her traditionally-gendered-masculine interests, such as fencing and hunting, all fed into a seventeenth-century image that we would today term as queer. As Gabby discussed in the last Pride month #teamqueens blog, the terminology that we use today to describe gender and sexuality such as homosexual, heterosexual, transgender, and queer did not exist in the early modern period. Christina would not have self-identified as lesbian or bisexual or as gender fluid, as these terms had not been coined in the 1600s. Despite the lack of terminology, Christina’s gender and sexuality was frequently commented upon by her contemporaries and these aspects of her life have been seized upon by modern writers of historical fiction. 

Christina’s abdication and conversion to Catholicism made her a celebrity in her own age. She was so well-known that her masculine interests and outward appearance led to a Vatican-run propaganda machine that aimed to align her with Catholic virginal saints in the hope that this would mitigate her gender ambiguities. 

Christina’s dramatic narrative has inspired numerous biographies, fictional plays, films, and short stories. This post introduces three films that reimagine Christina’s story for three different audiences from the 1930s to modern day. These films reflect the times in which they were created and this post hopes to encourage you to explore some of these fascinating films for yourself. Warning: spoilers ahead! 

Queen Christina, starring Greta Garbo, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1933.

This 1933 film starts with Christina, dressed in men’s clothing, kissing Ebba Sparre. While this could have been an early celebration of same-sex love, Christina is quickly re-aligned to heteronormative ideals. 

At the start of the production, Christina is depicted as having traditionally masculine interests and enjoying male humour. She uses her crossdressing to facilitate activities not available to her as a seventeenth-century woman and to play practical jokes on strangers. In this moment of fast-paced tenderness with Ebba, a modern audience might assume that Christina’s sexual and romantic interests are in women. However, it is quickly reinforced that despite her clothing and outward displays of affection towards Ebba, Christina is sexually attached to men, sleeping with a Spanish Ambassador. 

This Ambassador, Antonio, ultimately becomes Christina’s love interest and they break societal expectations by having a sexual relationship outside of marriage. There’s a very Shakespearean Twelfth Night moment when Christina and Antonio meet, where he believes her to be a young man and is clearly confused at his obvious attraction to the stranger. As with Orsino and Viola, Antonio sees this as humorous and as a wonderful surprise when Christina’s sex is revealed. 

To Christina, Antonio represents freedom and a different world that will offer her new opportunities that she does not find in Sweden and as queen. Although Antonio tells her many things about Spain that make her want to leave Sweden and attract her to a Mediterranean lifestyle, it is ultimately a man that shows her what life can be and therefore a man that is the catalyst in this narrative.

For 1933, this film challenges gender expectations and highlights female sexuality. The queen’s sexual encounters with men outside of marriage are widely spoken of but not used to discredit or depose her, whilst her potential interest in women is not discussed openly despite being very present prior to her relationship with Antonio. 

The Abdication, staring Liv Ullmann, Warner Bros., 1974

Whereas Queen Christina charts the events immediately prior to Christina’s abdication in 1654, The Abdication focuses on her initial arrival in Rome and her acceptance into the Catholic faith. Christina’s historical decision to abdicate was motivated by several factors, which for reasons of space will not be discussed here. Her choice to throw herself on the mercy of the Catholic church was, however, not only motivated by religious desire but also by the lifestyle that she believed she could have as one of the Catholic elites in Rome. 

Liv Ullmann’s Christina is tormented by her past with flashbacks to her difficult childhood trying to appeal to the physiological interests of the 1970s. However, just like Garbo’s Christina, Ullmann’s queen finds comfort in a man, and it is a man who acts as the catalyst for the development of her personality and shows her the way to a better life. Nora Sayra, who reviewed the film the week it opened, complained that Christina “is presented here as a love‐starved waif who needs only a great passion to wash out all her early traumas.” I’m inclined to agree with Sayra. At the end of the film Christina and Cardinal Azzolino’s love, which is already forbidden by their positions of ex-queen and Cardinal, is further denied through Azzolino’s elevation to Pope. Here Christina’s sexual and romantic desires have been denied her, but her life has been forever changed by the interventions of a man.  

Christina, the Girl King, starring Malin Buska, Marianna Films, Triptych Media, Starhaus Filmproduktion, & co., 2015. 

Finally, the most recent reimagining of Christina’s life, like its predecessors, is influenced by the men around her, but MalinBuska’s Christina distinctly attempts to pursue her own path, demonstrating her own agency and will throughout. The film follows Christina from her childhood to her abdication and suggests that from an early age her councillors encouraged her to act like a prince. In the film, Christina struggles with her gender identity, finding that her upbringing and personality conflict with the new expectations placed upon her as an adult female ruler. 

Christina is surrounded by male suitors, whose depth of love is hard to gauge. Her cousin Karl’s love could be genuine, or he could be an archetype of toxic masculinity who is threatened by her free will. Johan Oxenstierna may be interested in Christina as a person, but her position as queen is also important to him and that his desire to marry her may be based more on her ability to make him a king than her own personality. Finally, there is the overdressed Count Magnus de la Gardie.

Chirstina seeks answers to religious, moral, and philosophical questions in an attempt to understand her own position as queen, her sexuality and desires. Her love for Ebba, which starts as an instant physical attraction, soon evolves, and they begin a passionate physical and romantic relationship. Christina’s love for Ebba is used against her and Ebba is manipulated by the powerful and religious men around her into seeing their relationship as wrong and sinful. Here, Ebba is forced into a heterosexual marriage and into following societal expectations placed on women. Christina views this as betrayal and a weakness, but the viewer feels nothing but sympathy for the threatened and fearful Ebba.

Christina ultimately ends up alone, riding off into the sunset. Whilst all the films end in a similar scene, there’s a sense in Christina, The Girl King, that her exit is as a free and independent woman and as a person more in control of her own destiny than she has ever been before.

Concluding Thoughts

Apart from featuring Christina as a central figure, these films all demonstrate that ideas around gender and sexuality can be challenged, reinforced, and celebrated through historical fiction. These films allow Christina to be reconstructed as a human being the audience can understand and connect to, despite the almost 400 years that separate the viewer from the subject. They enter the world of seventeenth-century Europe, allowing the viewer to exclaim with interest as famous people or paintings appear on screen, and to see the conflict between Catholicism and Protestantism as it played out in the lives of real people. These films are a fascinating and thought-provoking introduction to the life of Christina of Sweden and are excellent Pride Month watches, in addition to the suggested readings, watching’s and listening’s below. 

Amy Saunders, Alex Churchill, and Charlotte White, Christina of Sweden, History Hack podcast: https://historyhack.podbean.com/e/history-hack-christina-of-sweden/, (2021). 

Amy Saunders and Nicola Tallis, Christina of Sweden, History Gems podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/queen-christina-of-sweden-with-amy-saunders/id1541852649?i=1000521419502, (2021).

Jo Strong and Amy Saunders, Queens on Screen, History Indoors: (2021), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1k5h8KF-q4&list=PLWWcq_1DDryRyBvkcbzaWi3J_9i_PZHZ4&index=12&t=3s. 

Margaret A. Kuntz, “Questions of Identity: Alexander VII, Carlo Rainaldi, and the Temporary Facade at Palazzo Farnese for Queen Christina of Sweden” Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome, Vol. 58 (2013), 143-179. 

Sarah Waters, “‘A Girton Girl on a Throne’: Queen Christina and Versions of Lesbianism, 1906–1933” Feminist Review, vol 46. (1994), 41-60.

Veronica Buckley, Christina, Queen of Sweden: The Restless Life of a European Eccentric, (Harper Perennial: London, 2005).

By Gabrielle Storey

This piece is the second of four for Pride Month: in this discussion we briefly look at some of the issues around terminology in historical and art studies. We will be providing a specific reference piece for royal studies and sexualities at the end of the month!

The decision around what categorisations and labels to apply to historical figures is inherently complex. The issues of utilising modern terminology to figures who would not have used these terms begs the question: how do we describe and discuss non-heteronormative sexualities? There is also a need to consider culturally appropriate terms – although for many members of the LGBTQIA+ community, queer has been reclaimed from its derogatory use and fully embraced as a positive identity, not all members of the community feel the same way, and the categorisation of LGBTQIA+ history under ‘queer history’ can bring its own problems. One such approach advocated by Margaret Middleton in her article ‘Queer Possibility’ is to frame the language used appropriately, for example to add the phrase ‘if x were alive today, historians would describe them as lesbian/gay/queer’, and so forth. Gender and sexuality are social constructs and thus societies of the past (and thinking globally as well) would have different views and descriptors for what we would now bracket under LGBTQIA+ identities and sexualities.

As Elena McGrath has highlighted, the terms we use for exploring attraction outside of a monogamous, cis male and female partnership can be politically loaded. They write for a blog post compiled by Claire Hayward in 2016: “A term like queer implies a society that associates same-sex love with gender non-conformity as a particular kind of social transgression, and that has not existed in all times and places.” Loving, desiring, and engaging with someone outside societal norms, and/or the expression of one’s true self can still be contested and in some countries criminalised today. When some of the world today has moved towards embracing their past, other parts are still living acts of revolution to confront LGBTQIA+ histories. Some historical societies were far more open to genderfluid and LGBTQIA+ folk and their lives, and demonstrate the openness which was available to some. People study and appreciate history for several reasons, however the searching for a relatable figure, through which one can empathise with due to a shared identity, is one which can be difficult due to a lack of evidence and certainty.

Historians and heritage specialists may face slightly different challenges when preserving, discussing, and analysing works: however, the need to situate items and figures within their historical context whilst appreciating the difficulties of using anachronistic terminology need to be more openly discussed. Many artistic works undoubtedly deserve an appraisal and acknowledgement of their queer subjects or background: likewise, historical figures, even those who are already LGBTQIA+ icons, need to described with the awareness that our terminology may not have been accurate in their time, and even that we risk inaccuracies with these discussions without all the information available. This should not discourage historians from engaging with LGBTQIA+ history and historical figures that fall outside heteronormative boundaries, but instead to embrace the flexibility and terminology that we can utilise today.

What this piece argues is that historians, particularly scholars of royal studies, make informed choices when using terminology surrounding gender and sexuality, and that this decision is clearly stated. Consumers of works and students of these works should be able to view and participate in these discussions, in order to fully engage with the past. LGBTQIA+ studies is an important aspect of our past, which deserves a fuller exploration and to be prioritised when analysing and interpreting history.

Recommended Reading

Christina B. Hanhardt, “Queer History.” Organization of American Historians, 2019. Accessed 12 June 2021. https://www.oah.org/tah/issues/2019/may/queer-history/.

Claire Hayward, “ Queer Terminology: LGBTQ Histories and the Semantics of Sexuality,” 9 June 2016. Accessed 16 June 2021. https://notchesblog.com/2016/06/09/queer-terminology-lgbtq-histories-and-the-semantics-of-sexuality/?fbclid=IwAR3mrM0FX7LortBx9yfyFaz1QvwOhG50AWv2s8ud6OObS1PpoyYzEjQeOTU.

Discussion on LGBTQIA+ terminology in the arts, 9 June 2021 https://twitter.com/_tabracadabra/status/1402553292488687616.

English Heritage, “LGBTQ History.” Accessed 16 June 2021. https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/learn/histories/lgbtq-history/.

Jon Sleigh, “Know your queer icons: a warning from art history,” 3 February 2020. Accessed 14 June 2021. https://artuk.org/discover/stories/know-your-queer-icons-a-warning-from-art-history.

Margaret Middleton, “Queer Possibility.” Journal of Museum Education 45:4, 426-436, DOI: 10.1080/10598650.2020.1831218.

The Victoria & Albert Museum has a useful resources page, including a link to terminology: https://www.vam.ac.uk/info/lgbtq

By Holly Marsden

Cover Image: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2018/mar/08/rupaul-drag-race-transgender-performers-diversity

Happy Pride month! To celebrate, we are going to explore a very different kind of royalty…drag queens and kings! It is firstly important to understand why the festivals, street parties and rainbow splattered vodka bottles exist. Pride celebrates queer culture, history and activism in commemorating the Stonewall Riots, which took place on 28^th June 1969. Police raids on bars that welcomed queer folk had become routine during the 1960s. In response to a raid on the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, New York, members of the city’s LGBTQIA+ community spontaneously demonstrated, and retaliated against violent police officers.

This event led to the galvanisation of LGBTQIA+ community members of Greenwich Village and beyond in formulating organisations who demanded for equal rights. The following year in 1970, Christopher Street Liberation day commemorated the riots. Pride marches also happened in Chicago and Los Angeles, before spreading globally in 1971. Without trans women such as Marsha P. Johnson, drag queens, butch lesbians and every single person who fought the system, queer people would not have the rights, nor celebration of Pride, that we do today.

Today, in 2021, #TeamQueens will be commemorating and celebrating by looking at drag queens and kings who have donned historical dress, particularly outfits that have imitated royal queens. But why might a drag king or queen choose to portray those at the top of the social strata? As Emily Aboud, aka king TriniDad & TooGayThough, states ‘what I love about drag is that it is a way to satirise and take power back from what oppresses us and what disenfranchises us. As a cis woman being a drag king who is a hyper-masculine dude, it allows me to harness that masculinity in a way that I’m not allowed to as a woman and almost take ownership of my body. It shows that, genuinely, gender is a performance. It’s empowering to show that people can choose how to present themselves and how to present their gender. As a drag king, the power in the cabaret scene is in satirising what oppresses us: living in a patriarchy but getting to do a satire on what it means to be a man is so empowering and so funny. Drag can make huge political statements. Cabaret venues are usually full of oppressed groups of people, a community. It’s a truly incredible thing to be part of a community of kings, queens and viewers who are all interested in flipping the gaze and switching lenses. It’s one of the most political art forms we have, no doubt.’

With that in mind, let’s take a look at some of the best of drag’s royal guises. Up first is Rosé from season 13 of RuPaul’s Drag Race, who imitated Mary Queen of Scots in an utterly hilarious performance for challenge ‘The Snatch Game.’ Rosé’s Youtube channel, ‘The Rosé,’ honours the performance through a video interview by Austin Nunes, which, as the channel states, aimed to ‘get the tea and discuss her future plans now that she was returned from the dead to play “The Snatch Game” on RuPaul’s Drag Race.’ The look features a merlot-coloured dress, embroidered with a damask pattern and finished with HUGE sleeves and golden ruff. Mary Stuart even receives a makeover at the end of Rosé’s video, relinquishing her signature tight curls for a straighten style with a middle part, in order to appease the Tik Tok generation.

Now we have two interpretations of France’s most infamous queen: Marie Antoinette. Raja Gemini from Drag Race season three’s haute couture look featured an enormous white powdered wig crowned with flowers. Her neck was draped in multiple strings of pearls, which sat atop matching Rococo patterned leggings and corset, complete with printed cherubs and floral designs. Raja’s powder-white face and extravagant blush meant she could be associated with none other than Marie Antoinette. In a look that couldn’t be more different, Detox Icunt from season two of the All Stars series of the show donned an entirely different colour palette of a sickly fluorescent green and electrifying hot pink in a historical challenge. Detox’s look includes a similarly Antoinette-shaped green wig and pink corset and mantle shaped by a hoop that can only hark back to the French court. The look is tied together by a green lace trim, green fan, green bows, and hot pink lips, cheeks and eyes. Although entirely different, both queens truly ‘let them eat cake.’

L: https://i-d.vice.com/en_uk/article/k7ajv3/rupauls-drag-race-best-outfits-fashion-style, R: http://www.frockflicks.com/rupauls-drag-race-goes-historical/

Finally, let’s celebrate the look of a drag king. The character of Shakespeare in Morgan Lloyd Malcom’s play Emilia is portrayed by a woman in drag. This harks back to Shakespeare’s own plays; the word ‘drag’ is thought to have originated from dresses worn by men portraying women dragging along the stage. Although this example veers away from the monarchy ever so slightly, Shakespeare was a frequenter of the Jacobean court. The play is centred around Emilia, who was a poet and muse to Shakespeare. The play aims to let Emilia Bassano’s ‘voice be heard’ through exposing Shakespeare as taking credit for Emilia’s works. By presenting Shakespeare as a woman in drag, the play satirises Shakespeare’s patriarchal attitude and hyper-masculinity. The costume includes beautiful, chin-length, tousled hair and a preened moustache. Shaksey also wears a burgundy doublet and breaches, complemented by a white, lace-trimmed ruff. As this costume is for the stage, rather than a drag performance, it is more realistic than the other exaggerated looks we have seen today.

By looking at the iconic outfits of these kings and queens we can see how dress can be used to subvert gender binaries and power hierarchies. In the art of drag, clothing is a pivotal tool used for satire. For more historical drag fun, check out Anita Wigl’it’s portrayal of Queen Elizabeth II on RuPaul’s Drag Race Down Under (which couldn’t be more different from Rosé, Raja, Detox and Shakespeare’s outfits) and London-based drag kings Beau Jangles and Bjorn the Viking. Drag is fun, political and creative, and the perfect way to celebrate Pride.

Recommended Viewing/Reading:

Brown, Leighton and Riemer, Matthew. We Are Everywhere: Protest, Power, and Pride in the History of Queer Liberation. Berkeley: Clarkson Potter/Ten Speed Press, 2019.

You can hear more from Emily at @trinidadtoogaythough on Instagram

Listen Queen Mary’s gorgeous (and completely accurate) Glaswegian drawl here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ij8E-Z6DMR4

A description of Emilia and a link to buy the playtext can be found here: https://www.shakespearesglobe.com/whats-on/emilia-2019/

Make sure to check out RuPaul’s Drag Race, especially the UK series!

By Bruno M. Shirley (Cornell University)
Twitter: @brunomshirley

Lanka’s long twelfth century has been called many things: the “Augustine Age” of Sinhala-language literature; an Age of Reform for Buddhist institutional and intellectual lineages; a Golden Age of growing internal stability and external influence across the Bay of Bengal, at least under the long reign (c. 1153-86) of Parākramabāhu I. Mindful of the rapid succession of increasingly vulnerable monarchs following Parākramabāhu’s death, others have seen this period as one of gradual decline from instability into outright chaos, culminating in the eventual invasion of Parākramabāhu’s former capital Poḷonnaruva in c. 1215 and a permanent shift of power towards the island’s south.

But there is another way we can view this period: an Age of Queens, in which powerful women were able to assert their places in a shifting political and social order. Lanka had seen female monarchs before, of course. The story of Anula, a queen-consort from the first century BCE who poisoned her way through multiple proxy-king lovers before claiming the throne herself, is a perennial favourite in modern Sri Lankan history books. But the thrilling details of Anula’s story are related to us only through the c. fifth century Mahāvaṃsa, a narrative of the island’s past intended to speak more to its then-present religious and political concerns than it was to simply record “historical details.” The women of the twelfth century also feature in medieval extensions to the Mahāvaṃsa narrative, but even here, as Kathleen Nolan has argued for medieval France, “…reading women’s lives, especially powerful women’s lives, through the words of suspicious male monastics, requires careful sorting through the biases and motivations of the author” (13).

For the twelfth century queens, unlike their earlier counterparts, we have the luxury of complementary sources – textual, epigraphic, numismatic – which offer us more nuanced pictures of their lives and reigns. Each view is only fragmentary, of course; the remaining shards of long-broken mirrors, each set up to reflect a very particular angle. But taken together these glimpses give us insights into some of the most fascinating women in medieval Lankan history.

How can we account for the sudden prominence of queens in this period? I suspect that the answer lies in the very duality of stability and chaos between which the Poḷonnaruvan kingdom fluctuated. Consortial relationships with powerful monarchs like Parākramabāhu or the prolific self-publicist Niśśaṅka Malla (r. c. 1187-96) secured political capital, military connections and economic means; moments of instability offered opportunities to those willing to take them. These opportunities were no accident: in one of Niśśaṅka Malla’s most rightly famous inscriptions, the remarkable Galpota (“Stone Book”), he writes that in the absence of (male) princes, the stability of the realm should be left in the hands of the royal consorts (bisova). This is no proto-feminist moment: he goes on to suggest that in the absence of bisova, even a royal slipper placed on a throne would make a better king than his lower-caste political rivals (a reference to the Arthaśāstra, Kauṭilya’s classic political treatise). Niśśaṅka Malla’s concern here seems to be more with the continued dominance of his own caste and direct lineage than with the wholesale succession of women to the throne; but his words seem to have been taken firmly to heart, including by his own principal wife (agra-maheśī) Kalyāṇavatī (r. c. 1202-1208).

Perhaps the most noteworthy of these medieval queens is Līlāvatī, the agra-maheśī of Parākramabāhu I himself. Līlāvatī was placed on the throne, and subsequently deposed, not twice but three times, ruling c. 1197-1200, 1209-1210 and 1211-1212. Each assumption of the throne was associated with a (different) general, suggesting to some scholars that Līlāvatī was merely a puppet queen, ruling in name alone to further the ends of these powerful men. The Mahāvaṃsa’s treatment of her reigns might appear to support this interpretation; in the unusually terse description of her first reign, for example, she is not even grammatically treated as the direct subject. The general Kitti merely “caused the sovereignty to be done” by her (Līlāvatyā… rajjaṃ kārāpayī, MV 80:31); the wording is similar in the description of her second reign. Again, Nolan’s “suspicious male monastics” come to mind!

It is in our other sources that we get a clearer glimpse – if not of the woman herself, who left behind no diaries or other private insights into her own mind, then of the public face she crafted alongside her advisors and courtiers. We know, for example, that she patronised new literary works like the Dāṭhavaṃsa, a Pali-language history of a sacred Buddha-relic which praises her extensively as “a mother unto her subjects.” We also know she took particular care to rebuild religious monument originally erected by her late husband Parākramabāhu, like the (almost certainly misnamed) Potgul Vihāraya just south of Poḷonnaruva proper, suggesting that her matrimonial connection remained central to her queenly project.

It is in the text of her inscriptions and coins that we gain perhaps the most interesting insight. Līlāvatī’s inscriptions, in contrast to those of her male counterparts, feature a glaring absence of any explicit and appositional regnal titles. Male monarchs, such as Līlāvatī’s husband Parākramabāhu I, would use terms like maharajān (“great king,” EZ II 41: 6) in grammatical agreement with their own names. Līlāvatī’s predecessor Niśśaṅka Malla used an entire string of these: in EZ I 19, for example, he names himself vīrarāja Niśśaṅka Malla laṅkeśvara KāliṅgaParākramabāhu cakravartin (“Heroic king Niśśaṅka Malla, Lord of Lanka, [of the] Kaliṇga, Parākramabāhu, the wheel-turner”). However, Līlāvatī takes no such descriptive terms in her own self-appellations besides the honorific prefixes svāmin and vahansē.

A number of the terms we often translate “queen” – bisova, agramaheśī, rājñī, devī – are present in Līlāvatī’s inscriptions, or the inscriptions of other noblewomen of the period (such as Kalyāṇavatī, or Līlāvatī’s co-wife Candavatī). But all are either used indiscriminately to refer to any royal, or even noble, woman (such as devī and rājñī); or they are only used with oblique cases to suggest a relationship to a royal husband (“the bisovarun of a king,” “the agra-maheśī of Parākramabāhu”). This suggests, perhaps, that no grammatically feminine term adequately captured the notion of a female monarch; Līlāvatī was forced to rely on adjectival clauses to describe her queenly stature. In her coinage, however – too minute a medium to accommodate such lengthy workarounds – she remarkably refers to herself using the masculine title: Śrī Rāja Līlāvatī.

I am well aware of the dangers of an “exceptionalist” argument, so thoroughly criticised by Louise Gay on this very blog. But the apparent openness to female succession of the late Poḷonnaruvan period does indeed seem to be an exception. Later Lankan kingdoms, established in the more readily defensible south, seem to have been (almost) entirely androcentric, even in periods of similar crisis and instability. An increasing eroticisation of royal masculinity, well-documented by Stephen Berkwitz, may be at least partly the cause: as these norms of gendered performance became more and more well-established, female succession likely seemed less and less plausible. Later queens would have had to accommodate more difference than a single grammatically-masculine regnal title. But if the twelfth century Age of Queens is an exception in the longue durée of Lankan history, it is the exception that undermines the rule: the apparently normalcy of later hyper-masculine kingship is belied by the willingness of twelfth century women to claim new social positions, to subvert inscriptional conventions, and even to assert themselves not as queens, but as rāja – (female) kings in their own right.

Suggested for further reading

Amirell, Stefan. “Female Rule in the Indian Ocean World (1300-1900).” Journal of World History 26, no. 3 (2015): 443–89.

Berkwitz, Stephen C. “Divine Kingship in Medieval Sri Lanka: Dynamics in Traditions of Power and Virtue in South Asia.” Entangled Religions – Interdisciplinary Journal for the Study of Religious Contact and Transfer 8 (2019).

—. “Strong Men and Sensual Women in Sinhala Buddhist Poetry.” In Religious Boundaries for Sex, Gender, and Corporeality, edited by Alexandra Cuffel, Ana Echevarria, and Georgios Halkias. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2019.

Blackburn, Anne M. “Buddhist Connections in the Indian Ocean: Changes in Monastic Mobility, 1000-1500.” Journal of the Economic & Social History of the Orient 58, no. 3 (September 2015): 237–66.

Gornall, Alastair. Rewriting Buddhism: Pali Literature and Monastic Reform in Sri Lanka, 1157–1270. London: UCL Press, 2020.

Hallisey, Charles. “Works and Persons in Sinhala Literary Culture.” In Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from South Asia, edited by Sheldon Pollock. California: University of California Press, 2003.

Strathern, Alan. “Sri Lanka in the Long Early Modern Period: Its Place in a Comparative Theory of Second Millennium Eurasian History.” Modern Asian Studies 43, no. 4 (July 2009): 815–69.

Taylor, Keith. “The Devolution of Kingship in Twelfth Century Ceylon.” In Explorations in Early Southeast Asian History: The Origins of Southeast Asian Statecraft, edited by Kenneth R. Hall and John K. Whitmore. Michigan: The University of Michigan Centre for South and Southeast Asian Studies, 1979.

Thompson, Ashley. Engendering the Buddhist State: Territory, Sovereignty and Sexual Difference in the Inventions of Angkor. Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2016.

By Irene Carstairs
Feature Image: Restored fresco from Betania monastery. Tamar is pictured in green. Image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c6/Queentamar_giorgi.jpg

Today is the first of our special guest blog posts from the fantastic Irene Carstairs! You can follow her on Twitter @CarstairsIrene or see more of her work at http://www.thathistorynerd.com/.

From the late eleventh century to the early thirteenth century the kingdom of Georgia enjoyed a golden age. Out of the four Bagratid monarchs who ruled during this era, the most influential was Tamar, the first female king of Georgia.

In 1177, Georgia was ravaged by a civil war, the second in as many generations. Tamar’s father, Giorgi III, worried that the country would plunge into another war upon his death. Giorgi had no sons, only two daughters, the eldest of whom, Tamar, was barely 18 years old in 1178. That year, Giorgi made her his heir, and crowned her co-king in the citadel of Uplistsikhe.

Tamar and Giorgi ruled jointly for about six years. Not much of Tamar’s life during this time is known, but according to The Kartlis Tskhovreba, the Georgian chronicles, Tamar was serious and hardworking, and virtually took over running the government.

Giorgi died in Kakheti on March 27, 1184. Shortly after, his sister Rusudan assumed regency for Tamar, who was still considered underage. Widow of two sultans, Rusudan was a hardened politician. She had, more than once, served as a diplomatic envoy for her father and husbands, and she had taken over the duties of queen after the death of Tamar’s mother, Burdukhan. Rusudan had raised Tamar in her court, and Tamar trusted her implicitly.

Tamar’s reign was challenged from the beginning. Shortly after Giorgi’s death, a faction of eristavi, the princely class, insisted on having Tamar re-crowned. In the ceremony, Tamar would be given the sword and scepter by the eristavi, symbolizing that her power derived from the eristavi, and not from God, as all her ancestors had done. This made Tamar dangerously dependent on the eristavi for her power.

The eristavi demanded that a house of lords be formed. The house of lords would take over the governance of Georgia, reducing the monarch to a figurehead, effectively ending Bagratid rule. This went beyond the pale, and Tamar had Qutlu Arslan, the leader of the eristavi arrested, and the rest of the offenders fled. A bitter standoff ensued, with princely houses divided between the monarch and the rebel lords. Eventually, Tamar sent two noblewomen to negotiate with the rebels.

Tamar offered generous terms. She would pardon all of the offenders except for Qutlu, and everything would return to normal. After some negotiation, the rebels surrendered, and all were pardoned, though Qutlu retired from public life.

Nobility now in line, Tamar needed to wed, but a suitable husband was difficult to find. The law declared that the monarch must marry a foreigner, and in addition, Tamar needed to marry a man who would not balk at playing the role of consort. It was a delicate decision, one which her council did not treat as scrupulously as they should. They selected Yuri Bogolubsky, a dispossessed Rus prince. Yuri came with excellent trade connections, but he also came with a nasty temper and an unwillingness to step aside and let his wife rule.

Yuri was summoned to Tbilisi without Tamar’s knowledge, and she was shocked when she was told that she was to marry him. She vehemently objected, protesting that it was dangerous to make a stranger her consort. She pleaded with her council to wait and see what sort of man Yuri was. However, she was overruled, and Tamar and Yuri married in 1185.

Yuri was initially popular, winning land and battles in Armenia, and many of the ruling class were willing to overlook his drinking, fornicating, and verbal abuse of the God-appointed monarch. However, when Yuri began to torture commoners, his abuses could no longer be overlooked. Tamar divorced Yuri, and he was packed off to Constantinople with a generous allowance.

With Yuri far on the horizon, Tamar was faced with remarrying. This time, however, she chose her spouse, and Tamar chose her fifth cousin, the Ossetian prince Davit Soslan.

Davit was not an advantageous choice; he brought no lands, wealth, or new political connections. However, Davit was a skilled military leader, and he and Tamar worked well together. They had known each other since childhood, and they were, if not in love, good friends. Davit had been raised with the expectation that Tamar would take the throne, and could be trusted to not undermine his wife. The couple married in 1188, and quickly produced two children.

As king, Tamar was constantly on the move. Georgia was in the centre of a global religious conflict, and Tamar spent most of her life at war, following her armies across the Caucasus. Officially, Tamar did not lead armies; she accompanied the army, gave rousing speeches, and retired to the nearest monastery to pray for victory while her husband led. However, it has been theorized that she might have had more influence in military matters than official accounts state.

Tamar and Davit had numerous important victories. They defeated two rebellions headed by her ex-husband; battled the dreaded Rum Sultan; “liberated” Armenia; and established an empire in Trebizond. Under Tamar, Georgia expanded to its greatest size, and became the most powerful country in the region.

Whilst there was always fighting on the frontiers, Georgia experienced a renaissance. Art, especially literature, flourished, encouraged by the patronage of Tamar and her court. The biggest work to come out of this era was Shota Rustaveli’s epic poem The Knight in the Panther’s Skin, a work commissioned by and dedicated to Tamar. It tells the story of  the knight Avtandil as he adventures to win the hand of fair Tinatin, the queen regnant of Arabia, and thinly-veiled Tamar stand-in. Though the story focuses mostly on Avtandil, it centralized a powerful female monarch, which, combined with the work’s popularity, provided a boost to Tamar’s authority.

Tamar’s Georgia was incredibly wealthy, and she ensured the wealth was spread around. Tamar cleared debts and allotted 10% of the treasury to the lower classes. During her reign “the peasants were like nobles, the nobles like princes, and the princes like kings.” (Toumanoff, 1966, 611).

It was also a time of mercy; Tamar repealed her father’s harsh criminal penalties; outlawed torture and the death penalty; and refused to use whipping or blinding and castration as punishments. Remarriages were approved and Tamar continued Georgia’s great tradition of religious tolerance.

Tamar died, likely from cancer, on January 18th, 1213 at Agarani fortress, near Tbilisi. Her death was met with intense mourning, and “the sounds of moaning, and mourning was among the Georgian people, as if they had been sucked alive into hell.” (Metreveli and Jones, 2014, 315)

The exact location of her remains is unknown. There are many theories; Svetitskhoveli Cathedral, Gelati monastery, the Monastery of the Holy Cross. One legend even claims that she sleeps in a cave waiting to arise and resume the throne. Wherever she now lies, it is undeniable that she was the most powerful ruler in Georgian history. She built an empire, founded another, and left a legacy of prosperity that still prompts Georgians to look back on her rule as a golden age.

Recommended Reading

Kakabadze, Sargis. Queen Tamar: Her Significance. Translated by Michael P. Willis. Tbilisi, Georgia: Amazon Digital Editions, 2017.

Met’reveli, Roin, and Stephen Jones, eds. Kartlis Tskhovreba. Tbilisi, Georgia: Artanuji Publishing, 2014.

Rayfield, Donald. Edge of Empires: A History of Georgia. London, United Kingdom: Reaktion Books, 2013.

Peacock, A.C.S. “Georgia and the Anatolian Turks in the 12th and 13th Centuries.” Anatolian Studies 56 (2006): 127-146.

Anchabadze, Zaza. European Georgia. Tbilisi: n.p, 2014.

Toumanoff, Cyril. “Armenia and Georgia.” In The Cambridge Medieval History, 593-637. Vol. IV. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1966.

Toumanoff, Cyril. 1940. “On the Relationship between the Founder of the Empire of Trebizond and the Georgian Queen Thamar.” Speculum 15.3 (1940): 299-312.

By Holly Marsden

At 12.45am on 28^th December 1694, Queen Mary II of England died of smallpox at the age of 32. She had suffered for a reasonably short time, only recognising a rash on her arms and chest on December 21^st. However, Mary had not been feeling herself for some time. Around May of 1694 she was treated for exhaustion and directed to drink a course of asses’ milk by her doctor. Throughout the year Mary tried to cheer herself up by shopping, one of her favourite activities, purchasing multiple gowns, jewels, shoes, and accessories. Mary liked all things grand, including visits to the theatre. However, she was so worn out throughout her last year that Mary was unable to complete the public appearances she enjoyed, foregoing her outgoing pursuits for frequent retirements at Kensington Palace.

It is perhaps Mary’s fabulousness in life that encouraged the grandiosity of her death. Despite having written a letter containing wishes of a modest funeral, only to be discovered after the arrangements had been made, the celebration of Mary’s life was one of the largest in British royal history. Her body was embalmed a few hours after her death in December, but she wasn’t buried until 5^th March 1695. Before her funeral, her commemoration was staged through the ritual of the lying-in. Mary’s body was situated in an open casket, dressed in purple and gold and publicly mourned in state at the Banqueting House in Whitehall. For a fee, the public could pay their respects between 12 and 5pm each day. Huge crowds had gathered every morning by 6am, eager to take part in the ritualised spectacle of Mary’s crossing between life and death.

Mary’s physical body was also commemorated in the form of a wax effigy, which still stands in her burial place at Westminster Abbey. The effigy encapsulates the symbiotic relationship between the social and natural body, aiming to offer great likeness to the monarch whilst acting as a lasting public presence. With the Abbey as the end point, Mary’s funeral procession began at Whitehall, passing through St James’ Palace en route. With the drama of a March snowstorm, her Christopher Wren-designed catafalque was followed by the chief mourner, the Duchess of Somerset, important members of London’s local and national government and 400 poor women shrouded in black. Bells from the Tower of London tolled every minute, the same method used to inform the public of Mary’s passing three months earlier.

After the arrival of the procession to music specially composed by Henry Purcell, Mary’s favourite composer and a dear friend, the ceremony was conducted by Archbishop Tenison. His sermons were later published en masse, and the grand funeral was reported in broadsheets and through visual prints after the occasion. The press cashed-in on Mary’s public mourning, adding to her celebrity-like status which was reflected by diarist John Evelyn, who stated that ‘never was there so universal a mourning.’ The glamour and grandiosity of this funeral was yet another performance of a public identity, reflecting how the royal body is greater than the individual. Mary’s life, and death, symbolised a nation in its social function. The cultivation of such a powerful image throughout her life was maybe why Mary was so widely and magnificently mourned, amongst a myriad of reasons, which included both personal attributes and public actions. The fact her young life was so suddenly ravaged by disease evoked an emotional response throughout the nation and beyond.

Bibliography and Recommended Reading

Gargangio, Alex. “William without Mary: Mourning Sensibly in the Public Sphere.” The Seventeenth Century 23.11 (2008): 105-141.

Jenner, Greg. Dead Famous. London: Hachetee, 2020.

Llewellyn, Nigel. The art of death: visual culture in the English death ritual c; 1500-c; 1800. London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1991.

Van der Zee, Henri and Barbara. William and Mary. London: Macmillan, 1973.

By Johanna Strong

Feature Image: Hans Eworth, Mary I, 1556-1558, National Portrait Gallery

The Queen is dead; long live the Queen! Though this phrase has been uttered only once in English history, its context is not as well-known as it should be. Many will be quick to identify that the second queen in question is Elizabeth I, who came to the throne on November 17, 1558. Many, though, might struggle to identify her predecessor: Mary I, England’s first crowned queen regnant.

Mary came to the throne after the death of her brother Edward VI and the ‘Nine-Day-Queen’ Jane Grey in July 1553. Largely hailed as the rightful queen after Edward, Mary began her reign quite popular with her people, but as her rule progressed many became uncomfortable and upset with her decision to marry Philip II of Spain. Anti-Spanish and anti-Catholic sentiment in Marian England reached a peak with Wyatt’s Rebellion in early 1554, though Mary also faced much criticism particularly from English exiles on the Continent.

These anti-Spanish and anti-Catholic sentiments became stronger after Mary’s death on November 17, 1558. Elizabeth’s accession as England’s second queen regnant meant that English people had to find a reason to criticize Mary that went beyond the fact that she was a woman in a traditionally male role. Soon, Mary’s Catholicism and her Spanish heritage were being used as a way to unfavourably compare her to the unmarried and seemingly more ‘English’ Elizabeth. As Elizabeth’s reign progressed, English Catholics became a greater concern to the Crown and Spain became an even larger threat to England’s hopes of empire. By 1588 and the Spanish Armada, Spain had been cemented as an English enemy and therefore so had Mary, by association with Spain through her mother and through her husband Philip II.

Mary’s legacy has largely been a result of these anti-Spanish and anti-Catholic sentiments, a legacy which continues through to the modern period. In recent years, revisionist works by Dr Valerie Schutte, Dr Sarah Duncan, Dr Susan Doran, Dr Thomas Freeman, Dr Anna Whitelock, Dr Linda Porter, and others have begun to change modern perceptions of Mary, eschewing her ‘Bloody’ nickname.

A good case study of the emergence of Mary’s legacy in the Elizabethan period occurs in John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments – better known as Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. Its publication in 1563 created a new English narrative about Protestant martyrdom. Once it was ordered to be placed in all cathedral churches, Foxe’s work became accessible to all English people, solidifying a Protestant narrative for English history. Though Foxe was concerned that writing in English – as opposed to Latin – would make his work seem less respectable academically, it meant that the text was accessible to any literate English person. Those who could read could therefore access the text while the illiterate could still access the many woodcuts which Foxe included. His work and the Bible became staples in cathedral churches and therefore in English theological life.

Acts and Monuments was reprinted multiple times in Foxe’s own lifetime. As editions were produced, Foxe received accounts from those who had witnessed the executions of strangers and from family and friends who had witnessed loved ones die. He edited these accounts to eliminate any inconsistencies which appeared. He had received some criticism from English Catholics about these inconsistencies so he wanted his accounts to be as airtight as possible so that his narrative of Protestant persecution under Mary couldn’t be undermined. Even after Foxe’s death, Acts and Monuments saw many reprints, such as in 1684 when there were rumours that Charles II would order its re-placing in English cathedrals.

Mary’s posthumous legacy has often been unfavourable to her as a queen and as a woman, but with ongoing research building on the strong foundation of recent revisionist works there is hope for significant change in the coming years.

By Holly Marsden

Like many English monarchs, Queen Mary II carefully cultivated a public image through visual and material culture. Through tangible objects and artworks, regnant queens could secure the loyalty of their public whilst strengthening the image of their dynasty. Mary came from the Stuart family, and the visual culture surrounding her reign demonstrates a strategic attempt to hark back to previous Stuart rulers.

One way that Mary did this was through commissioning and sitting for portraits with allegorical subject matters. In art, allegory is when aspects of the artwork are used to symbolise deeper moral or spiritual meanings. Allegorical images are able to illustrate complex thought in a tangible form. Depictions of visual allegories were used by English monarchs to demonstrate their power, often using classical imagery to associate themselves with the empires of Greece and Rome. In seventeenth-century English painting, the tradition of allegorical representation in royal portraiture was transformed by the court painter to Charles I, Netherlandish artist Jan Van Dyck.

Van Dyck painted allegories that did not focus on visual reality, but on possibility. He used a mixture of real and fantasy representation, reducing the extensive number of props and costume previously used in royal images. The re-imaged Stuarts in Van Dyck’s paintings represented the ideas or projections of who their characters should be, rather than the royal figure realistically dressed as an allegorical character. Dress as portrayed in portraiture was a political symbol as much as it was an expression of taste. Through Mary’s display of royal dress, she connects to other Stuart women such as Anna of Denmark, queen consort to James I. Dress in allegorical portraits helped to situate the figure outside of reality.  

A portrait of the Roman goddess Diana by Peter Lely from 1672 is of Mary II when a child, before her engagement to William of Orange. Lely’s painting of Mary as Diana depicts her central to the composition, in front of a plain pastoral background. The lack of extensive props and elements to set the scene is in accordance with the precedent set by Van Dyck. She is dressed in sumptuous fabrics which include a flowing scarf, and Diana’s crescent crown is placed on her head. Her bow and arrow also communicate that the figure is Diana, who is Goddess of the Hunt. One theory of the origin of this image states that this depicts Mary as her character of Diana, whom she performed as in John Crowne’s masque Calisto. Staged in the court of Mary’s uncle Charles II, this image aided the masque in presenting Mary as an eligible marriage match.

Another theory is that this young girl as Diana is not Mary at all, but only later attributed as the young princess. Whatever the origin, both theories beg the question as to why Mary is associated with Diana, especially if the Stuart dynasty attributed her to this figure perhaps later into or after her reign. Diana symbolised the somewhat contradictory virtues of chastity and fertility, meaning she was an appropriate symbol for a queen who was expected to continue the Stuart line whilst promoting sexual and religious piety. Moreover, as a self-sufficient huntress, Mary as Diana may have helped to quell fears over having the first woman on the throne since Elizabeth I.

Van Dyck’s introduction into the Stuart court in the 1640s created a hybrid of a Dutch and English painting style that became characteristic to the Stuart dynasty. The style stressed the social image of the family rather than the political image of the dynasty, like English royal painting had previously. This was influenced by Netherlandish painting traditions and went hand-in-hand with the Protestant move away from the belief and visual portrayal of the Divine Right of Kings. In all, the Stuarts presented themselves, as noted by Simon Schama, as the ‘family of families.’ This cultural exchange was echoed in Mary’s appointment as Dutch consort to her husband William of Orange in 1677, before she travelled back to England to take over from her deposed father James II in 1688. Once again, cultures and fashions were brought from the Dutch court and introduced to England. Consort queens were vital in cross-cultural exchange such as this.  

Allegorical depictions of royals did not always convey the messages they had planned. A medal circulated by William and Mary to celebrate their coronation in 1689, designed by Jan Roettiers, depicts the bust of the royal couple on the obverse. The reverse side portrays the allegorical scene of Roman god Jove (or Jupiter) releasing a thunderbolt from a cloud at Phaeton, who is driving a chariot. As a result, he loses control and falls over the burning world. The allegory at first sight provides a fitting sentiment for the Glorious Revolution: Protestant William is Jupiter, ready to overtake from Catholic James II (Phaeton) who has lost control of power. The allegory used demonstrates that the government aimed to reassure the public that the monarchs’ power is well-placed. It also aimed to settle anxieties over the tumultuous Revolution and affirm loyalty to the crown. By circulating commemorative medals, the monarchy created a physical manifestation of power which could be experienced by the masses.

However, not all of the public read the allegorical message of the medal as the monarchy intended. The Jacobites, followers of James II, interpreted the medal to show Mary as the Roman figure of Tullia driving the chariot to demonstrate their disdain of the so-called Glorious Revolution. In Roman mythology, Tullia urged her husband Tarquin to kill her father to gain his throne. According to Jacobite readings, then, the medal shows Tullia, or Mary, riding over the remains of her father. The lightning bolts were seen as a punishment from God for patricide and for not handing her new-found power entirely to her husband. Images on objects are as important to explore as images in portraiture.

As we have seen, allegory was important in early modern depictions of royalty, conveying coded moral messages through imagery. Despite her short reign, images of Mary II demonstrate careful (but not always successful) image-making by the Stuart family, informed by cultural influences from the Netherlands.

Recommended Reading
Gordenker, Emilie E. S. “The Rhetoric of Dress in Seventeenth-Century Dutch and Flemish Portraiture.” The Journal of the Walters Art Gallery 57 (1999): 87-104.

Roskill, Mark. “Van Dyck at the English Court: The Relations of Portraiture and Allegory.” Critical Inquiry 14, no. 1 (1987): 173-199.

Schama, Simon. “The Domestication of Majesty: Royal Family Portraiture, 1500-1850.” The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 17, no. 1, (1986): 155-183.

Schwoerer, Lois G. “Images of Queen Mary II, 1689-95.” Renaissance Quarterly 42, no. 4 (1989): 717-748.

By Katia Wright

An important aspect of a queen’s power derived from her financial revenue. Throughout the medieval period English queens received income from numerous sources, however the largest of the queen’s revenues were drawn from her vast estates. These properties were granted to the queen by the crown to provide for her household and granted more than just income. As the owner of a large estate the queen’s financial position and political influence were interdependent and enabled the queen to gain substantial economic and political power. As such, these estates were vital for the queen to maintain her own position and status, both as the wife of the king and as the symbolic extension of the king’s royal authority.

By the late medieval period, property was granted to English queens in three distinct ways:

• for life which referred to a lifetime grant
• during pleasure, which was a temporary grant of undetermined length
• and in dower, a grant of property that was traditionally intended for the widow, but during certain periods was also accessed by consort queens.

Queenly dower did not follow the customs of the English nobility, in which dower was intended solely for the widow. Rather, its customs fluctuated across the medieval period. Queens of the early middle ages had access to lands specifically identified as dower as both consorts and dowagers, however by the thirteenth century, the dower lands assigned to queens were explicitly reserved for their widowhood, with other lands and grants providing the necessary income. Yet, by the fifteenth century, dower was clearly provided as a lifetime grant for both the consort and the dowager, highlighting that the custom of queenly dower had changed again. Despite these changes to queenly dower, queens continuously held crown property as a major source of revenue throughout their lives as both consorts and dowagers, across the medieval period.

As both a queen and a landowner of vast estates, the queen was in an incredibly unique position. The queen was a married woman who held her lands outright, unlike any other married aristocratic woman. As the wife of the king, the queen’s legal status was enhanced, granting her a position of power normally only experienced by independent noble women such as an unmarried heiress or a dowager peeress. As such, the queen was unlike her noble counterparts: as a married woman she maintained large estates like any male magnate whilst simultaneously, as the king’s wife, embodied an office and position greater than any other landowner in the country.

Yet, though the queen held these lands outright in truth they were crown property, granted to her by her husband. The queen’s entire position, her financial and political power, was connected to her status as the wife or mother of the king. Therefore, though she fulfilled a uniquely powerful position as a married woman and independent landowner of her estates, she was equally uniquely vulnerable and financially dependent on the generosity of the king. This can be seen clearly in the limitations to the administration of her properties. Unlike other landowners, the queen’s lands could be surrendered at the king’s will, were held solely for her lifetime and were subsumed back into the crown’s larger estates upon her death, as with any dowager peeress. As such, the queen’s properties were inalienable: she could grant property, offices, and keeperships on her estates, but these grants could only be held for the duration of her life and had to be confirmed by the king.

Through the extended study of queen’s lands, it is evident that a queen’s properties frequently fluctuated, and changes to a queen’s estates were common: small groups of her properties were often redistributed, and though intrusive, the queen was generally compensated either through property or a temporary grant of revenue until property could be provided. However, the reasoning behind these changes were rarely noted in the records. They could easily be connected to a need to increase the queen’s income, fulfilling grants to specific magnates, or the need for the king to assert his dominance. Additionally, the political events of the time could equally impact the changes within the queen’s estates. These fluctuations highlight the queen’s potentially precarious financial situation in her reliance on the king’s generosity, and how external influences could impact the estates of each queen across the fourteenth century.

Studying the lands of medieval queens reveals the intricacies in both the queen’s role and position as a landowner, and within her own estates. Though the queen was in a unique position as a married woman and landlord, there were both advantages and limitations to her role as a landowner that could simultaneously benefit her political position or cause extreme financial limitations. The queen’s vulnerability within her lands was unparalleled across the country, and though the king frequently sought to maintain the balance between provisions for the queen and his own political strategy, personal relations and extreme political events could easily result in the loss and seizure of the queen’s property, potentially limiting both the queen’s power and influence. it is evident that though queens held lands as a vital source of income, the detailed study of their estates reveals both the complexities and significance of a queen’s property and her position and status as the wife or mother of the king.

Suggested for further reading

Benz St John, L., Three Medieval Queens: Queenship and the Crown in Fourteenth Century England (New York, 2012).

Crawford, A., ‘The Queen’s Council in the Middle Ages’, English Historical Review, 116.469 (2001), 1193-1211.

Laynesmith, J. L., The Last Medieval Queens: English Queenship 1445-1503 (Oxford, 2004).

Seah, M., “The Material Foundations of Queenship in Late-Medieval England, 1445-1503”, PhD Thesis, University of Newcastle, Australia, 2019. 

Seah, M. and Wright, K., ‘The Medieval English Queen as Landholder: Some Reflections on Sources and Methodology’, in Sarti, C., (ed.)., Women and Economic Power in Premodern Royal Courts (Leeds, 2020), 9-34.

Wright, K., ‘The Queen’s Lands: Understanding the Sources for Fourteenth Century English Queens’, conference paper presented at Kings and Queens 6, Madrid, 2017.

Wright, K., ‘The Transformation of Lands and the Transformation of Power: Isabella of France and the Fluctuations of her Property’, conference paper presented at Kings and Queens 9 E-Conference, 2020.