In honour of International Women’s Day 2022, we wanted to focus on the importance of female friendships for female rulers!
Continue reading “International Women’s Day 2022: Female Friendships”A discussion of LGBTQ+ stories and historical spaces
The material remains of historic houses and the imagining of their past inhabitants enables the concurrent appreciation by their visitors of the historical specificity and otherness of the past, together with those echoes of the familiar which makes them feel real. Making connections with the ghosts of the past will remain an affective and popular approach to the history of sexuality. Lesbian and gay identities continue to be significant in the present day and give resonance to visitors seeking evidence of the dissident sexual past.[1]
– Alison Oram
Continue reading “A discussion of LGBTQ+ stories and historical spaces”‘You spent fifty thousand on shoes!:’[1] power, gender, and sartorial expression in Versailles
Cover Image: BBC Two
Canal+’s historical drama Versailles premiered in the UK in May 2016 on BBC Two. It is set during the building of the palace of Versailles, led by King Louis XIV in seventeenth century France. The is frivolous, dramatic and gripping, portraying Louis in his most power-hungry prime: in an attempt to re-establish his power to the waning and defying masses, the King chooses his father’s old hunting lodge to be a new court of unparalleled opulence. As you can imagine, Madeline Fontaine’s costume styling is equally as extravagant. Clothing during the seventeenth century was a tool for conveying wealth and power, and Louis XIV’s court is the perfect case study to see this in action. Although this blog post is not focusing on queenship as Team Queens usually do, it provides an insight into gender, kingship and clothing in Early Modern France and England.
Continue reading “‘You spent fifty thousand on shoes!:’[1] power, gender, and sartorial expression in Versailles“Book Review: The Favourite, Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough by Ophelia Field
Ophelia Field’s 2002 (revised in 2018) biography of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough is a fascinating insight into the eighteenth-century elite. The biography focuses on the intensity of the relationship between Sarah and Queen Anne, with the two having grown up together in and around the court of Charles II. Sarah was later given two of the highest positions of the early modern court when Anne ascended the throne in 1702: Keeper of the Privy Purse and Groom of the Stool. These positions are just two roles discussed by Field, a focus of her biography being the positions, hierarchies, and structures at play in Anne’s court. Another predominant theme is the writer’s voice. Like in much discussion of queenship, Churchill’s agency and self-fashioning is both emphasised and questioned throughout. Moreover, Field also analyses the use of the spoken word, exploring slander, gossip, and scandal. The depth of Field’s research provides ample background to Sarah’s story, especially for those who enjoyed Yorgos Lanthimos’s 2018 film of the same title. Field explores shared desire, passion and love as suggested by existing historical sources including correspondence between the two women. This part of Sarah’s life, and indeed Anne’s, had not yet been explicitly researched and discussed by scholars, who had previously focused on Churchill’s political ambition and patronage. In all, Field demonstrates that Sarah wielded great power, painting a portrait of an ambitious, intelligent, and passionate woman.
Continue reading “Book Review: The Favourite, Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough by Ophelia Field”Mater Dolorosa: Elisabeth in the Aftermath of Mayerling
By Lucy Coatman
Cover Image: Empress Elizabeth at Corfu by Friedrich August von Kaulbach, after 1898, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Friedrich_August_von_Kaulbach_-_Sisi_auf_Korfu.jpg
This blog post complements Lucy’s post published earlier this month, and we highly recommend reading it before delving into Elisabeth here.
Continue reading “Mater Dolorosa: Elisabeth in the Aftermath of Mayerling”Exhibition Review: ‘Elizabeth and Mary: Royal Cousins, Rival Queens’ at the British Library
All images unless otherwise indicated were photographed at the British Library by Johanna Strong.
Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots, form one of the most popularly famous – or rather, infamous – female partnerships of the early modern European world. While most historians of early modern England could provide more detailed accounts of Elizabeth and Mary’s relationship, most outside academic circles remember only that it was on Elizabeth’s orders that Mary faced her fate, ascending to the scaffold on 8 February 1587 at Fotheringhay Castle. The British Library’s ‘Elizabeth and Mary: Royal Cousins, Rival Queens’ exhibition is the first to examine the personal and political relationship between Elizabeth and Mary and is a timely addition to the sphere of public history. Bringing together portraiture and visual components, contemporary documents, and expert historical interpretations, this exhibition provides an intimate look at the rival queens who shared an isle.
Continue reading “Exhibition Review: ‘Elizabeth and Mary: Royal Cousins, Rival Queens’ at the British Library”Stéphanie: A Life in the Shadow of Mayerling
By Lucy Coatman
Cover Image: Crown Princess Stéphanie, mid-1890s, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:St%C3%A9phanie,_Crown_Princess_of_Austria-Hungary.jpg
‘Dear Stéphanie,
Continue reading “Stéphanie: A Life in the Shadow of Mayerling”‘Dear Stéphanie,
Continue reading “Stéphanie: A Life in the Shadow of Mayerling”‘Dear Stéphanie,
Continue reading “Stéphanie: A Life in the Shadow of Mayerling”