I love this regal statue of Queen Victoria in Hyde Park, which a cheeky soul dressed up with a pair of sunglasses. It sums up why I study queens: sunglasses or not, they matter. Even when not cast in stone, they are visible signs of women and power. They matter more now than ever when women are still, frustratingly, struggling to be taken seriously. Queens are living proof that reveals the lie that women cannot govern, cannot rule even their own bodies. This makes them such a valuable lesson to people today, people of all races and ethnicities and of all regions of the world: Once considered ancillary to the world of men, queens have taken their rightful place in the political, social, cultural, economic, and religious histories of medieval and early modern Europe. As we ponder the implications and ramifications of #MeToo and whether leaning in is enough to counteract the sexism of the workplace, we can learn a lot from queens.

This is clear when looking at an impressive body of new work in new directions as well as a much-needed overview and review of three decades of work on queenship. Lois Huneycutt put it best when she took stock of the field in “Queenship Studies Comes of Age,” Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality 51:2 (2016): 9-16. Queenship studies have come of age, which for people of my generation, this means we see our students publishing and teaching and expanding the field in ways we could only imagine. Keep an eye out for work by medieval historians with recent doctorates:

• Jane Clay, “Performing Queenship in premodern England: Gender, politics, and drama.” PhD dissertation, St. John’s University, New York, 2016.
• Gillian Lucinda Gower, “The Iconography of Queenship: Sacred Music and Female Exemplarity in Late Medieval Britain.” PhD dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, 2016.
• Claire Louise Harrill, “Politics and sainthood: literary representations of St Margaret of Scotland in England and Scotland from the eleventh to the fifteenth century.” PhD dissertation, University of Birmingham, 2017.
• Amy Victoria Hayes, “The late medieval Scottish Queen, c.1371–c.1513.” PhD dissertation, University of Aberdeen, 2016.
• Anne-Marie Strohman, Kathleen. “A more natural mother”: Concepts of maternity and queenship in early modern England.” University of Massachusetts Amherst, 2014.
• Laura Tompkins, “The uncrowned queen: Alice Perrers, Edward III and political crisis in fourteenth-century England, 1360-1377.” PhD dissertation, University of St Andrews, 2013.

One significant trend over the past 30 or so years is the growing emphasis on rethinking chronological continuity. With this in mind, this blog and the accompanying bibliography has added a new section—still a work in progress—on sixteenth-century queens to take into account the importance of continuity of the ideologies and practices of queenship. This trend is evident in “Renaissance Queenship: A Review Article,” in which Tracy Adams surveys ten recent works that spans the wonderfully nebulous late medieval and early modern Europe.

Collections of essays have also dismantled the older notions of a clean break at 1500, or so. Even saying that with an “or so” qualifier signals just how uncomfortable we are with assigning a date alongside which we can hang “medieval” and “early modern.” Essays in Queenship, Gender, and Reputation in the Medieval and Early Modern West, 1060-1600 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), edited by Zita Rohr and Lisa Benz demonstrate well this continuity across centuries with a focus on the gender of reputation and its effects on the power of a queen.

 

Studies on Tudor-era queens dominate the sixteenth-century, due in large part to the tremendous influence of Carole Levin whose work on Elizabeth I dominates my bookshelves on queens. Her work has been instrumental in guiding both a methodology for research and a theoretical framework for the study of queens. As Willa Cather Professor of History and Director of the Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program at the University of Nebraska, she has guided the future of the field by her mentorship of graduate students who are now working in teaching and research positions in colleges and universities. Most relevant to a bibliography, the Queenship and Power series at Palgrave Macmillan Press, the brainchild of Levin and Charles Beem, has provided a highly respected venue for innovative studies on queenship. It is fitting, then, that she be honored with an impressive collection of essays entitled Queens Matter in Early Modern Studies, edited by Anna Rielh Bertolet (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). A glance at her CV (https://history.unl.edu/carole-levin) makes me wonder how she ever found time to cook dinner or post updates on social media!

But Levin shares space on my bookshelf with new monographs and collections of essays on medieval and early modern queens and queenship:

• Carlo Bajetta, Guillaume Coatelen, and Jonathan Gibson (eds), Elizabeth I’s Foreign Correspondence (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).
• Ilona Bell, Elizabeth I: The Voice of a Monarch (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).
• Sarah Duncan and Valerie Schutte (eds), The Birth of a Queen: Essays on the Quincentenary of Mary I, (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).
• Gaude-Ferragu, Murielle. Queenship in Medieval France, 1300-1500 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).
• Murielle Gaude-Ferragu, Queenship in Medieval France, 1300-1500 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).
• Marguerite Keane, Material Culture and Queenship in 14th-century France: The Testament of Blanche of Navarre (1331-1398) (Leiden: Brill, 2016).
• Simon MacLean, Ottonian Queenship. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.
• Penelope Nash, Empress Adelheid and Countess Matilda: Medieval Female Rulership and the Foundations of European Society, Queenship and Power(Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017).
• Estelle Paranque, Nate Probasco, and Claire Jowitt (eds). Colonization, Piracy, and Trade in Early Modern Europe: The Roles of Powerful Women and Queens (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017).
• Zita Rohr and Lisa Benz (eds), Queenship, Gender, and Reputation in the Medieval and Early Modern West, 1060-1600 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).
• Valerie Schutte. Mary I and the Art of Book Dedications: Royal Women, Power, and Persuasion (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).
• Valerie Schutte (ed). Unexpected Heirs in Early Modern Europe: Potential Kings and Queens (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017).
• Warnicke, Retha M. Elizabeth of York and Her Six Daughters-in-Law: Fashioning Tudor Queenship, 1485–1547 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017).

Here’s the full list of works I’ve added to the bibliographies. Please let me know what I have missed. I’ll be sure to add it to the bibliographies:

• Adams, Tracy. “Gender, Reputation, and Female Rule in the World of Brantôme.” In Rohr and Benz (eds), Queenship, Gender, and Reputation in the Medieval and Early Modern West, 1060-1600, pp. 29-49.
• Adams, Tracy. “Renaissance Queenship: A Review Article.” Explorations in Renaissance Culture 42, no. 1 (2016): 87-107.
• Bagerius, Henric and Christine Ekholst. “The Unruly Queen: Blanche of Namur and Dysfunctional Rulership in Medieval Sweden.” In Rohr and Benz (eds), Queenship, Gender, and Reputation in the Medieval and Early Modern West, 1060-1600, pp.99–118.
• Carlo Bajetta, Guillaume Coatelen, and Jonathan Gibson (eds), Elizabeth I’s Foreign Correspondence (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).
• Barrow, Lorna G. “Queenship and the Challenge of a Widowed Queen: Margaret Tudor Regent of Scotland 1513–1514.” Journal of the Sydney Society for Scottish History 16 (2016): 23–42.
• Beem, Charles. “Princess of Wales? Mary Tudor and the History of English Heirs to the Throne.” In Duncan and Schutte (eds), The Birth of a Queen: Essays on the Quincentenary of Mary I, pp. 13–30.
• Bell, Ilona. Elizabeth I: The Voice of a Monarch (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).
• Bell, Ilona. “Queen of Love: Elizabeth I and Mary Wroth.” In Bertolet (ed.). Queens Matter in Early Modern Studies, pp. 287–306.
• Benz, Lisa. “Conspiracy and Alienation: Queen Margaret of France and Piers Gaveston, the King’s Favorite.” In Rohr and Benz (eds), Queenship, Gender, and Reputation in the Medieval and Early Modern West, 1060-1600, pp.119–41.
• Bertolet, Anna Rielh (ed.). Queens Matter in Early Modern Studies. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.
• Bertolet, Anna R. “Doppelgänger Queens: Elizabeth Tudor and Mary Stuart.” In Bertolet (ed.). Queens Matter in Early Modern Studies, pp. 223–45.
• Carney, Jo Eldridge. “The Queen’s Deathbed Wish in Early Modern Fairy Tales: Securing the Dynasty.” In Bertolet (ed.). Queens Matter in Early Modern Studies, pp. 123–37.
• Cerda, Jose Manuel. “Marriage and Patrimony: The Dower of Leonor Plantagenet, Queen Consort of Castile.” Anuario de Estudios Medievales 46:1 (2016): 63-96.
• Clay, Jane. “Performing Queenship in premodern England: Gender, politics, and drama.” PhD dissertation, St. John’s University, New York, 2016.
• Codet, Cecile. “Defining the virtues of a queen: mirrors for Isabelle I-era of Castile.” E-Spania-Revue Electronique d’Etudes Hispaniques Medievales 22 (2015).
• Colbert, Carolyn. “‘Well, then . . . Hail Mary’: Mary I in The Famous History of Sir Thomas Wyatt (1607) and Lady Jane (1986).” In Duncan and Schutte (eds), The Birth of a Queen: Essays on the Quincentenary of Mary I, pp. 215–32.
• Cole, Mary Hill. “The Half-Blood Princes: Mary I, Elizabeth I, and Their Strategies of Legitimation.” In Duncan and Schutte (eds), The Birth of a Queen: Essays on the Quincentenary of Mary, pp. 71–88.
• Dahlinger, James H. “Etienne Pasquier on French History and Female Strategies of Power.” In Rohr and Benz (eds), Queenship, Gender, and Reputation in the Medieval and Early Modern West, 1060-1600, pp. 77-95.
• Doda, Hilary. “Lady Mary to Queen of England: Transformation, Ritual, and the Wardrobe of the Robes.” In Duncan and Schutte (eds), The Birth of a Queen: Essays on the Quincentenary of Mary I, pp.49–68.
• Donawerth, Jane. “Elizabeth I and the Marriage Crisis, John Lyly’s Campaspe, and the Politics of Court Drama.” In Bertolet (ed.), Queens Matter in Early Modern Studies, pp. 83–102.
• Doran, Susan. “Did Elizabeth’s Gender Really Matter?” In Bertolet (ed.), Queens Matter in Early Modern Studies, pp. 31–52.
• Duncan, Sarah. ““Bloody” Mary? Changing Perceptions of England’s First Ruling Queen.” In The Name of a Queen (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), pp. 175-191.
• Duncan, Sarah, and Valerie Schutte, eds. The Birth of a Queen: Essays on the Quincentenary of Mary I. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.
• Earenfight, Theresa. “Medieval Queenship.” History Compass 2017 (https://doi.org/10.1111/hic3.12372)
• Garcia Herrero, Maria del Carmen, and Angela Munoz Fernandez. “Queenship and Monastic Foundations in the Crowns of Castile and Aragon. An Approach to the Topic.” Edad Media: Revista de Historia 18 (2017): 16-48.
• Gaude-Ferragu, Murielle. Queenship in Medieval France, 1300-1500. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.
• Gibbons, Rachel C. “Isabeau of Bavaria, Queen of France: Queenship and Political Authority as “Lieutenante-Général” of the Realm.” In Rohr and Benz (eds), Queenship, Gender, and Reputation in the Medieval and Early Modern West, 1060-1600, pp. 143-160.
• Gibbs, G. “The Queen’s Easter Pardons, 1554: Ancient Customs and the Gift of Thucydides.” In Duncan and Schutte (eds), The Birth of a Queen: Essays on the Quincentenary of Mary I, pp. 113–33.
• Gibson, Jonathan. ““Dedans la plie de mon fidelle affection”: Familiarity and Materiality in Elizabeth’s Letters to Anjou.” In Carlo Bajetta, Guillaume Coatelen, and Jonathan Gibson (eds), Elizabeth I’s Foreign Correspondence (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) , pp. 63-89.
• Gower, Gillian Lucinda. “The Iconography of Queenship: Sacred Music and Female Exemplarity in Late Medieval Britain.” PhD diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 2016.
• Grana Cid, Maria del Mar. “Catherine of Lancaster, the Order of Preachers, and Queenship: Monastic Policies.” Edad Media: Revista de Historia 18 (2017): 75-100.
• Hackett, Helen. “Anne Boleyn’s Legacy to Elizabeth I: Neoclassicism and the Iconography of Protestant Queenship.” In Bertolet (ed.), Queens Matter in Early Modern Studies, pp. 157–80.
• Harrill, Claire Louise. “Politics and sainthood: literary representations of St Margaret of Scotland in England and Scotland from the eleventh to the fifteenth century.” PhD diss., University of Birmingham, 2017.
• Hayes, Amy Victoria. “The late medieval Scottish Queen, c. 1371-c. 1513.” PhD diss., University of Aberdeen, 2016.
• Huneycutt, Lois L. “Queenship Studies Comes of Age.” In Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality 51:2 (2016): pp. 9-16.
• Keane, Marguerite. Material Culture and Queenship in 14th-century France: The Testament of Blanche of Navarre (1331-1398). Leiden: Brill, 2016.
• Kruse, Elaine. “‘A Network of Honor and Obligation’: Elizabeth as Godmother.” In Bertolet (ed.), Queens Matter in Early Modern Studies, pp. 181–98.
• Lamb, Mary Ellen. “Dressing Queensn (and Some Others): Signifying through Clothing in Wroth’s Countess of Montgomery’s Urania.” In Bertolet (ed.) Queens Matter in Early Modern Studies, pp. 307–21.
• Levin, Carole. “Pregnancy, False Pregnancy, and Questionable Heirs: Mary I and Her Echoes.” In Duncan and Schutte (eds), The Birth of a Queen: Essays on the Quincentenary of Mary I, pp. 179–93.
• Levin, Carole, and Cassandra Auble. ““I would not have given it for a wilderness of monkeys”: Turquoise, Queenship‚ and the Exotic.” In Paranque, Probasco, and Jowitt (eds), Colonization, Piracy, and Trade in Early Modern Europe: The Roles of Powerful Women and Queens, pp. 169–94.
• Lin, Chi-I. “Maternity and Mourning with Queenship in Shakespeare’s” Henry VI”.” Tamkang Review 44:1 (2013): 25-46.
• Liu, Sophia Yashih. “The Jewel for the Crown: Reconsidering Female Kingship and Queenship in the Galfridian Historiography.” In Francis K. H. So (ed.), Perceiving Power in Early Modern Europe (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), pp. 69-84.
• Loomis, Catherine. “A Great Reckoning in a Little Room: Elizabeth, Essex, and Royal Interruptions.” In Bertolet (ed.), Queens Matter in Early Modern Studies, pp. 53–66.
• MacLean, Simon. Ottonian Queenship. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.
• Mearns, Anne. “Unnatural, Unlawful, Ungodly, and Monstrous: Manipulating the Queenly Identities of Mary I and Mary II.” In Duncan and Schutte (eds), The Birth of a Queen: Essays on the Quincentenary of Mary I, pp. 197–214.
• Meyer, Allison Machlis. “The Politics of Queenship in Francis Bacon’s The History of the Reign of King Henry VII and John Ford’s Perkin Warbeck.” Studies in Philology 111: 2 (2014): 312-45.
• Moore, Gaywyn. ““You Turn Me into Nothing”: Reformation of Queenship on the Jacobean Stage.” Mediterranean Studies 21: 1 (2013): 27-56.
• Nash, Penelope. Empress Adelheid and Countess Matilda: Medieval Female Rulership and the Foundations of European Society, Queenship and Power (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017).
• Nash, Penelope. “Demonstrations of Imperium: Byzantine Influences in the Late Eighth and Tenth Centuries in the West.” Australian Association for Byzantine Studies, 7(2011): 159–172.
• Nash, Penelope. “L’Imperatrice e la Contessa: Adelaide di Borgogna modello per Matilde di Canossa?” In P. Golinelli (ed.), Matilde nel Veneto (Bologna: Pàtron, 2016).
• Nash, Penelope. “The Ottonians Turn their Gaze West to the Court of al-Andalus.” Journal of the Australian Early Medieval Association 12 (2017): 51–66.
• Nash, Penelope. “Perceptions of Tenth-Century European Elites by Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim, Thietmar of Merseburg, Odilo of Cluny, the Quedlinburg Annales, and other Contemporary Chroniclers.” Journal of the Australian Early Medieval Association 10 (2014): 77–95.
• Nash, Penelope. “Reality and Ritual in the Medieval King’s Emotions of Ira and Clementia. In M. Champion and A. Lynch (eds), Understanding Emotions in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), pp. 251–71.
• Nash, Penelope. “Shifting Terrain – Italy and Germany Dancing to their Own Tapestry.” Journal of the Australian Early Medieval Association, 6 (2010): 53–73.
• Nash, Penelope. “Women and Power: Thoughts Arising out of the Roundtable ‘Debating Women and Power in the Middle Ages.” Medieval Feminist Forum 51:2 (2015: 39–60.
• Paranque, Estelle. “Queen Elizabeth I and the Elizabethan Court in the French Ambassador’s Eyes.” In Bertolet (ed.), Queens Matter in Early Modern Studies, pp. 267–84.
• Paranque, Estelle, Nate Probasco, and Claire Jowitt (eds). Colonization, Piracy, and Trade in Early Modern Europe: The Roles of Powerful Women and Queens (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017).
• Paul, Joanne. “Sovereign Council or Counseled Sovereign: The Marian Conciliar Compromise.” In Sarah Duncan and Valerie Schutte, eds, The Birth of a Queen: Essays on the Quincentenary of Mary I. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, pp. 135–53.
• Percec, Dana. “Queenship, Power, and Elizabethan Mentalities in Shakespeare’s Histories.” Romanian Journal of English Studies 10, no. 1 (2013): 253-262.
• Robinson, William B. “Marrying Mary to the Black Legend: Anti-Catholicism and Anti-Marian Messages in Anglo-American Films about Philip II of Spain.” In Duncan and Schutte (eds), The Birth of a Queen: Essays on the Quincentenary of Mary, pp. 233–54.
• Rohr, Zita. “True Lies and Strange Mirrors: The Uses and Abuses of Rumor, Propaganda, and Innuendo during the Closing Stages of the Hundred Years War.” In Rohr and Benz (eds), Queenship, Gender, and Reputation in the Medieval and Early Modern West, 1060-1600, pp. 51–75.
• Rohr, Zita Eva, and Lisa Benz, eds. Queenship, Gender, and Reputation in the Medieval and Early Modern West, 1060-1600 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).
• Samson, Alexander. “Culture under Mary I and Philip.” In Duncan and Schutte (eds), The Birth of a Queen: Essays on the Quincentenary of Mary I, pp. 155–78.
• Schutte, Valerie. “Under the Influence: The Impact of Queenly Book Dedications on Princess Mary.” In Duncan and Schutte (eds), The Birth of a Queen: Essays on the Quincentenary of Mary I, pp. 31–47.
• Schutte, Valerie, ed. Unexpected Heirs in Early Modern Europe: Potential Kings and Queens. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.
• Schutte, Valerie. Mary I and the Art of Book Dedications: Royal Women, Power, and Persuasion. Springer, 2016.
• Shadis, Miriam. “‘Received as a woman;: rethinking the concubinage of Aurembiaix of Urgell.” Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies 8:1 (2016): 38-54.
• Shenk, Linda. “Elizabeth I and the Politics of Invoking Russia in Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost.” In Bertolet (ed.), Queens Matter in Early Modern Studies, pp. 247–65.
• Siegfried, Brandie R. “Conjuring Three Queens and an Empress: The Philosophy of Enchantment in Margaret Cavendish’s Blazing World.” In Bertolet (ed.), Queens Matter in Early Modern Studies, pp. 323–45.
• ​Silleras-Fernández, Núria. “Versión (no) original: Isabel y Carlos, Rey Emperador frente al multilingüismo y la diversidad cultural.” Miríada Hispánica. Hispanic Studies Journal 12 (2016): 41–56.
• Silva, Manuela Santos. “Philippa of Lancaster, the English Lady Who Was a Queenship Role Model in Portugal (1387-1415).” Anuario de Estudios Medievales 46:1 (2016): 203-30.
• Stavrena, Kirilka. “’We Are Such Stuff’: Absolute Feminine Power vs. Cinematic Myth-Making in Julie Taymor’s Tempest (2010).” In Bertolet (ed.), Queens Matter in Early Modern Studies, pp. 67–80.
• Strohman, Anne-Marie Kathleen. “A more natural mother”: Concepts of maternity and queenship in early modern England. University of Massachusetts Amherst, 2014.
• Stump, Donald. “Spenser’s Dragon Fight and the English Queen: The Struggle over the Elizabethan Settlement.” In Bertolet (ed.), Queens Matter in Early Modern Studies, pp. 141–56.
• Tompkins, Laura. “The uncrowned queen: Alice Perrers, Edward III and political crisis in fourteenth-century England, 1360-1377.” PhD diss., University of St Andrews, 2013.
• Watkins, John. “Lesbianism in Early Modern Vernacular Romance: The Question of Historicity.” In Bertolet (ed.), Queens Matter in Early Modern Studies, pp. 201–21.
• Warnicke, Retha. “Mary I, Queen of England: Historiographic Essay, 2006 to Present.” In Duncan and Schutte (eds), The Birth of a Queen: Essays on the Quincentenary of Mary, pp.255–72.
• Warnicke, Retha M. “Tudor Consorts: The Politics of Matchmaking, 1483–1543.” In Bertolet (ed.), Queens Matter in Early Modern Studies, pp. 103–121.
• Warnicke, Retha M. Elizabeth of York and Her Six Daughters-in-Law: Fashioning Tudor Queenship, 1485–1547. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.
• Whitelock, Anna. “’A queen, and by the same title, a king also’: Mary I, Queen-in-Parliament.” In Duncan and Schutte (eds), The Birth of a Queen: Essays on the Quincentenary of Mary I, pp. 89–112.
• Wilkinson, Louise. “Queenship in Medieval England: A Changing Dynamic?” Historian 119 (2013): 6–11.
• Woodacre, Elena. “Leonor of Navarre: The Price of Ambition.” In Rohr and Benz (eds), Queenship, Gender, and Reputation in the Medieval and Early Modern West, 1060-1600, pp. 161-182.
• Vejrychová, Věra. “The Depiction of Queens in Fourteenth Century Czech Chronicles: Ideal, Power, Transgressions.” Médiévales 2 (2014): 31-48.
• Vitiello, Massimiliano. Amalasuintha: The Transformation of Queenship in the Post-Roman World. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017.