Parergon

Growing out of ‘The Routledge History of Monarchy’ (2019) project, this collection brings together a variety of queens’ consort who have ‘disappeared from history or have been deeply misunderstood in modern historical treatment’ (book cover). As the editors acknowledge in their introduction, queens were more than simply mothers and wives; they were influential politically and culturally, and often wielded significant power. The chapters that follow present a variety of case studies that attempt to both undo some of the blatant lack of historiographical attention from which non-regnant queens (barring a few notable exceptions) have suffered, and shed ‘light on queens who have remained in the shadows of others for too long’ (although they do perpetuate the Eurocentric view of queenship that the editors criticize other volumes for similarly doing) (p. 2).

Some of the chapters provide largely narrative biographies of forgotten queens. Gabrielle Storey offers an interesting study of Berengaria of Navarre (wife [End Page 246] of Richard the Lionheart) and Joanna of Sicily (wife of William II of Sicily), using three different chronicles to show that queens did exert political agency, despite the chroniclers’ attempts to erase them from history.

Likewise, Sybil Jack provides a comparative biography of two contemporary queens, Katarina Jagiellonica (consort of John III of Sweden) and Sophie of Mecklenburg-Güstrow (consort of Frederick II of Denmark), analysing their various strategies for exercising political power.

Some of the chapters use textual sources as a way to analyse a queen’s life. Valerie Schutte offers an interesting discussion of Richard Jonas’s The Byrth of Mankynde, the only book dedicated to Katherine Howard, the fifth consort of Henry VIII, showing how a desire for patronage could also serve as pointed counsel. Conversely, Andrea Nichols discusses the textual history of one of Britain’s founding myths, namely the Albine legend and the regency of Queen Gwendolen, focusing on the survival and then decline of the myth of an almost certainly apocryphal queen.

The remaining chapters more overtly engage with the themes of the collection. Lois Huneycutt provides a masterful study of the various queenly descendants of St Margaret of Scotland (including Empress Matilda), demonstrating the importance of myth-making to monarchical power, and arguing that these queens remembered or forgot their Wessex ancestry according to contemporary need.

Maria of Navarre, the first consort of Pedro IV of Aragon, is often relegated to cursory mentions, but Lledó Ruiz Domingo’s chapter offers a fascinating study of a woman who was able to quickly cement her position through patronage and piety, and who gave birth to four children before her death at the age of eighteen.

Considering the vital role of dynastic unions, Estelle Paranque’s chapter focuses on Elisabeth of Austria, consort of Charles IX, and their daughter, Marie-Elisabeth. Admired and loved in their own lives, Paranque suggests that their ‘flawless’ lives caused them to subsequently be overlooked in a period full of larger-than-life figures (p. 122).

Arguably one of the most forgotten early modern English queens, Catherine of Braganza, consort of Charles II, is the subject of Eilish Gregory’s chapter. Gregory’s study of Catherine’s relationship with the Catholics in her household provides a fascinating examination of the way the Portuguese queen successfully patronized Catholics in a dangerous and shifting religio-political period.

Jennifer Germann provides a fascinating account of the various adaptations of Jean-Marc Nattier’s 1748 portrait of Marie Leszczinska, consort of Louis XV. The chapter—sadly the only one to contain images—emphasizes how this one painting shaped the Queen’s memory, and that its myriad of meanings allowed it to become a ‘touchstone for women in the later eighteenth and nineteenth centuries’ (p. 167).

Cinzia Recca analyses the political agency of Maria Carolina of Austria, consort of Ferdinand IV of Naples, focusing...