Pick and mix Queens of England

Baby Cambridge is imminent - mid July is here and about to turn into the later half of the month so we can confidently expect a third in line to the throne any moment now.  And that leaves just enough time to have a quick look at the names only ever used by one queen consort of England, a kind of pick and mix of royal peculiarities.  And several of them were very peculiar.

House of Norman - Adeliza

 

Adeliza of Louvain - no babies with her elderly king but a whole castle full with hubby number two

 

Adeliza of Louvain - another Adela/ Adelaide/ Adelheid type name that crops up far more than imagined in royal history.  This one was wife number two of Henry number one and the first proper royal baby making machine.  Henry married her in 1121 just after the death of his only male legitimate heir, William, in the White Ship disaster.  The great king only had a daughter to leave his crown to so within months of William's loss, he had married young, pretty, healthy Adeliza.  And for the next fourteen years they tried to provide England with another heir.  But although Henry had had at least three children with his first wife and dozens of illegitimate children, no royal babies arrived. 

 

He died in 1135 and had that been the end of the story everyone could have blamed Adeliza and that would have been that.  But Adeliza claimed another first.  She was the first queen consort of England to remarry and in 1138 she married William d'Aubigny, one of Henry's main advisers.  The couple had seven children, the last born when the queen dowager was in her early forties.  She died in a convent in 1151.

 

 

House of Lancaster - Joanna of Navarre

 

 

 

Joanna of Navarre married Henry IV when they were both middle aged and he had three adult sons to inherit his crown.  She was the first queen of England to have absolutely no pressure on her to produce children.

 

 

Joanna of Navarre is unique in English royal history.  By the time she married her king both of them had been married before and both had provided a long line of heirs for their respective titles.  So Joanna had no pressure to produce babies, no worries about giving her king a son to wear his crown.  Hers was a second marriage made in royal heaven and she seems to have thoroughly

 

enjoyed it.

 

She met the man who would make her a queen when he was still trying to be a king and she was married to someone else.  Henry Bolingbroke was in exile in France and ended up at the court of the Duke of Brittany where Joanna was in charge as the ducal consort.  In 1399 Henry returned to England to battle for the crown and by September he had won it.  Joanna's husband died two months later, leaving her regent for their ten year old son.  But in 1402 the new king and the dowager duchess married by proxy and a year later Joanna left her now fourteen year old son as Duke of Brittany and headed across the Channel to become Queen of England.

 

There she found a court with four princes in their early teens ready to inherit their father's throne and Joanna, now 37, set about enjoying being queen.  She also enjoyed a good relationship with the four boys so it must have been a surprise to say the least when, after Henry IV's death in 1413, the eldest of them had her arrested on suspicion of witchcraft.  Joanna ended up being locked away in Pevensey Castle and deprived of the rich lands which were hers by right as queen dowager.  She was finally released and died in 1437 in Essex.

 

House of Stuart - Henrietta Maria



 

 

Henrietta Maria of France was daughter of a king, sister of a king, wife of a king, mother of two kings and grandmother of two queen regnants and another king

 

 

Henrietta Maria had one of the most unusual names in British royal history but was always known as Mary, one of the most ordinary in the land.  And yet her life story is anything but ordinary.  She had royal pedigree and royal progeny that remains unmatched and yet her reign was unhappy and her life as dowager perhaps even sadder.  And despite counting five monarchs among her children and grandchildren, her line lost the crown of England within fifty years of her death.

 

Henrietta Maria was the daughter of Henri IV of France and his wife Marie - one of the Medicis.  But she was only about one when her father was assassinated and her brother became Louis XIII.  Marie de Medici was regent of France for the next seven years but by then she was deeply unpopular and Louis was deeply unhappy with her and she was banned from court.  Two years later Henrietta's elder sister married leaving her as the top woman in the French court.  And within a few years Louis' little sister had nabbed a crown of her own when she married England's new king, Charles I.

 

But Henrietta was never popular at her new court.  Xenophobia led to this French queen beginning her reign on a sticky wicket and her cold personality and devotion to her Catholic faith only made her more unpopular.  Charles' reign descended into civil war and in 1649 Henrietta lost her husband when he was executed.  She was said to be devastated despite a frosty and difficult relationship with her king.

 

She had gone into exile in France years before Charles' death and from there she witnessed her eldest son, Charles II, become king when the monarchy was restored in 1660.  She returned to England and played an unhappy part in the marriage of another son, the future James II, to his first wife, Anne.  She didn't live to see James become king, dying in France in 1669.

 

 

House of Hanover - Sophia Dorothea

 

 

Sophia Dorothea of Celle, married to a king but never queen and kept in a tower throughout his reign

 

 

Sophia Dorothea was the wife of a king of England but was never queen and was kept in a tower hundreds of miles away while her husband ruled his kingdom.  Whether we can even count her as a consort is still up for debate but she is as fascinating as any woman who has worn the queen's crown.

 

Sophia Dorothea of Celle married George of Hanover in 1682 when she was just 18 and after she had come close to marrying the future king of Denmark and a German duke who was dumped by her family as a prospective bridegroom on the day the engagement was due to be announced.  Sophia Dorothea didn't want to marry George any more than he wanted to marry her and the bride to be had a series of fainting fits including a swoon of non romantic origin when she first met her future husband.  But marry they did, he encouraged by her gigantic dowry and she forced into it by her family.

 

They were miserable together, rowed constantly and only stopped shouting long enough to have a son and a daughter.  Soon after the birth of their youngest child George began a new affair and reveled in showing off his mistress to such an extent his family told him to reign in his bad behavior but he refused.  Sophia then formed a friendship with Philip Christoph von Konigsmarck, a Swedish count, which intensified into a romantic relationship which led to him being barred from Hanover.  She attempted to escape her husband's country in 1694 and the count died soon afterwards, presumed murdered.

 

But poor old Sophia Dorothea had worse to come.  Hubby was not happy despite his own infidelities and divorced her before locking her up in the Castle of Ahlden where she lived for the rest of her days.  When he became king of England in 1714, Sophia Dorothea stayed put in her tower and there she remained.  She died in 1726, a year before her husband.  Their son became George II.

 

So there we are - a real pick and mix of one use only names for queen consorts of England.  None of them are likely to be chose by the Cambridges if they do have a girl but for romance, intrigue and a bit of individuality these four queens take some beating.