The first royal sign of summer

The weather has been heating up, the sun has been shining and there's even been the odd thunder shower.  But while they may be indications that summer is on its way, there's an even clearer sign that the dark days of winter are gone and that spring is making way for the splendour of the middle of the year.  The Queen has held a garden party at Buckingham Palace.

The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh step into summer as the first garden party of the year takes place at Buckingham Palace

On May 21st 2014, the palace gates were thrown open to hundreds of invited guests who drank tea, ate sandwiches and cakes, indulged in strawberries and cream and spent time seeing and meeting the Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh and Princess Beatrice who accompanied her grandparents on this first big summer event of the year.

Princess Beatrice at the Buckingham Palace garden party that started the summer season on May 21st 2014

The tradition was started by Queen Victoria in the 1860s and every year there are at least three garden parties at Buckingham Palace and one at Holyrood House, the Queen's official residence in Scotland.  Guests come from all walks of life and are treated to cake, tea and a chance to look at the gardens of the palace which are usually out of bounds.  The weather stayed warm and dry for the first event of 2014.  And with the Queen having already attended the Chelsea Flower Show earlier this week, this garden party really is a royal sign that summer is on its way.

A third Queen Jane for England?

With less than a week to go until the royal baby is due, what about a look at some of the names of previous Queen Consorts that just really aren't going to make it.  OK, it's a risk.  In the next month there could well be a humble pie eating entry on why Jane or Berengaria or Adeliza was always going to be the name of a Cambridge princess but for now, they're definitely on the unlikely list.

Jane isn't the most auspicious name a queen of England has ever had.  It's a very English name which is probably why it's not been that common among queen consorts who were usually picked from European royalty.  But at some point that all changed when Henry VIII took a fancy to the second daughter of an extremely ambitious family.  Jane Seymour then became caught up in one of the most dramatic stories in royal history. 

 

Jane Seymour is a divisive figure among historians seen as either an obedient, gentle wife or a schemer who used mild manners to dispose of Anne Boleyn

There is nothing from her early life to suggest she sought or craved drama, power or the queen's crown.  And yet opinion on this third queen of the eighth Henry is as divided now as it was in her own time.  When Jane emerged as the king's favourite some commentators described her a plain, pale, almost insipid looking.  Others called her the prettiest of his wives.  All agreed that she wasn't particularly well educated or interested in books or learning, preferring the more stereotypically female pursuits of sewing and looking after the home.  But while some saw her as a gentle, genteel antidote to the ferociously determined and aggressively ambitious second queen that had turned Henry and his kingdom upside down, others perceived a ruthless manipulator who worked with her equally unscrupulous family to grab the throne at the first opportunity.

 

Savernake Forest - Jane Seymour grew up in Wulfhall, Savernake in Wiltshire

(photo Brian Robert Marshall)

Jane was born around 1508, the second daughter of John Seymour and Margery Wentworth.  She served at court and was a lady in waiting to Queen Catherine, most likely entering her service just before Henry VIII divorced her.  The fall of Anne Boleyn is so dramatic and still so poorly understood that it's not clear when Jane entered royal affections.  We do know that she was well in place in Henry's heart by the beginning of May 1536 when Anne was arrested.  In fact, even by Henry's standards his decision to become betrothed to Mistress Seymour within a day of Anne's execution was seen as shocking.  Jane became Queen Consort number three on May 30th 1536 after a quiet wedding at Whitehall Palace.

Another image of Jane Seymour - some contemporaries called her plain, others beyond beautiful but in the heavily political world of Henry VIII's court every description was laden with side taking and points scoring

Jane was never crowned queen of England, possibly because there was an outbreak of plague in London at the time of her marriage or possibly because it was only three years since Henry had spent a fortune on a massive and elaborate coronation for Anne Boleyn which proved unpopular and led to the king and his second queen being laughed at as they processed through the streets of the capital.  Instead, Jane confined herself to courtly and queenly duties.  Her main preoccupation seems to have been to restore the fortunes of Mary, the only child of Catherine of Aragon.  Henry's first queen had died at the beginning of 1536 and Jane argued for her daughter to be restored to the line of succession - behind any of her own children.  She failed in that but did bring Henry and his eldest daughter back together.

 

Mary Tudor, later Mary I, as a young girl.  She was18 when her mother died and had been excluded from the line of succession for three years.  Queen Jane Seymour argued loudly for her restoration and secured a reconciliation between Henry VIII and his eldest daughter

Her pregnancy in 1537 led to her withdrawal from public life and she gave birth to Henry's longed for son in October that year but died of complications less than two weeks after the delivery.  She was the only one of Henry's consorts to be given a queen's funeral and when the king died he asked to be buried next to her.  Their grave can still be seen in St George's Chapel, Windsor.

 

Queen Jane Seymour takes pole position in this portrait commissioned by Henry VIII showing the origins of the House of Tudor.  The king stands at the front with his third wife.  Behind them are his parents, Henry VII and Elizabeth of York

So was Jane a saint or a schemer?  Her family was certainly ambitious even by Tudor standards.  While Henry VIII was still alive they kept their ambitions in check although the king clipped the wings of one brother, Thomas, by sending him overseas when he heard of a growing attraction between him and a certain Catherine Parr who became wife number six soon afterwards.  But following Henry's death and the accession of Edward VI, the Seymours ran out of control.  Thomas Seymour married Catherine Parr but soon made advances towards Henry's daughter, Elizabeth, which he increased when Catherine died in childbirth only 18 months after the king's death.  His plotting to gain more influence over Edward VI cost him his life.  His brother, Edward Seymour, gained enormous power on Henry's death and ruled for the boy king Edward VI for a while but he was executed in 1552 in another power struggle over the young king.

Edward VI, Jane's son.  He reigned for 6 years - and lost two of his maternal uncles to the executioner in that time

 

Whether Jane shared these ambitious or unwittingly found herself caught up in her family's determination to win power remains unknown.  She left no writings and her reign was so brief that there was little time for chroniclers to assess her personality or her influence over the king.  In 1536, soon after her marriage, the new queen asked her husband to parson some involved in the Pilgrimage of Grace but he refused and warned her not to interfere again with a subtle hint about what had happened to his previous wife who had meddled quite considerably in politics.  Jane was queen for just 17 months and provided the longed for male heir.  As far as the Tudor chroniclers were concerned, she was untouchable and her true character remains shrouded in mystery as a result.

Another famous portrait of Henry VIII and his family.  It's widely thought that the woman on his left hand side is Queen Jane Seymour, the wife who gave him the son he craved.

 

 



After the death of Jane Seymour, the name took a rather unfortunate turn as far as royal women were concerned.  In either 1536 or 1537 Henry VIII's niece, Lady Frances Grey, gave birth to a little girl.  Frances obviously had the sharp eye for politics that served the Tudors well because she named her daughter Jane, most likely after the queen.  Some chronicles state Lady Jane Grey was born on the same day as Edward VI but he exact date just isn't clear.  What is clear is that Jane was clever, precocious and loved to learn.  She enjoyed an amazing education for a girl at that time, with humanist teachings a mainstay of her upbringing.  As a result she was a staunch Protestant and her religion would cost her her life.

Lady Jane Grey was briefly proclaimed Queen Regnant of England.  As a ward of Thomas Seymour she was being lined up as a Queen Consort as he tried to arrange her marriage to Edward VI

 

Jane Grey became the ward of Jane Seymour's ultra ambitious and super suave brother, Thomas, just after the death of Henry VIII.  Within months he had married the king's widow and Jane now belonged to the household of the Queen Dowager, Catherine Parr, another staunch Protestant.  Princess Elizabeth came to live with them and while Seymour focussed his amorous intentions on the young princess, he tried to arrange a marriage between Jane and Edward VI.  Seymour was desperate for power but neither plan came to anything. Jane was questioned in the investigations into Seymour in 1549 that led to his execution for treason.  By then, Catherine was dead and Jane had been her main mourner.  The funeral was the first Protestant funeral for a public figure in English history.

 

 

 

 

Queen Catherine Parr, the last consort of Henry VIII, and a major influence on Lady Jane Grey

 

 

Jane's religion came to the fore again in 1553 when Edward VI lay dying.  He couldn't restore his Protestant sister, Elizabeth, to the succession without bringing back the older and Catholic Mary so he chose to leave his throne to Jane.  But Mary was hugely popular and within days had roused support and rode triumphantly to London where she deposed Queen Jane after nine days on the throne.

 

There's no doubt that Jane didn't want to be queen and was just a puppet of ambitious men who saw a chance to grab a throne that seemed in grave peril with no male heir to take it.  More plots followed and Jane was convicted of treason in November 1553 but it was thought her life would be spared.  However another revolt, again in her name but without her backing, in January 1554 sealed her fate and she was executed in February 1554 aged just 17.

 

So a queen who was either a murderous minx or a pawn and a tragic girl who just wanted to learn but who ended up losing her life because of the machinations of others.  I can't seen either of them inspiring the name for the first girl guaranteed to be Queen Regnant.



Belgian abdication brings the monarchy back home

How important is it for a Queen Consort to be born in the country she will rule?  When Mathilde, Duchess of Brabant becomes Queen of the Belgians on July 21st she'll be the first home bred consort since the country got a monarchy in 1831. 

It's taken them almost two hundred years to get a Belgian girl on the throne.  Mathilde is hugely popular and while her place of birth may have helped to start off with, she's built on that herself to win respect at home and abroad. 

Mathilde will be a home grown queen for Belgium - the first since the beginning of its modern monarchy

 

 

In modern times nearly all European heirs have married people from their homelands.  In Sweden, Norway, Belgium and the United Kingdom the future kings have all chosen brides of the same nationality.  In Spain, Crown Prince Felipe went one better - his wife, Letizia, hails from Asturias, the area of which he is prince as heir to the throne.

 

 

Letizia Ortiz was born in Asturias and in 2004 became its princess on her marriage to Prince Felipe

(photo Luis Carlos Diaz)

 

But finding English born queens in English history is a harder job. The first homegrown queen was, wait for it, Elizabeth Woodville.  The girl who seemed to break the mould with her marriage claimed another first by becoming the first English woman to wear the crown of Queen Consort.  Anne Neville was another homegrown queen but if we put Henry VIII's marrying spree of 1533 - 1543 there are just two other queens of England born in that country.  One was the Queen Mother and the other her predecessor as Queen Consort, Mary of Teck.

 

 

Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother was just one of a handful of English born women who have been queen of their country

 

But did it really make that much difference?  Tomorrow we'll look at the Eleanors - the women who conquered English kings in the 12th and 13th centuries but who suffered a lot of hatred along the way...and part of that was because they just weren't English.

 

'Anne' outside bet - the most favoured name for a royal princess?

It means favoured and it's certainly that when it comes to Queens of England.  The name Anne has been used for more queens, regnant and consort, than any other.  But it's not been borne by a monarch for almost 300 years now - could this be its moment to take the throne again?

 

Anne

 

There have been one Queen Regnant and five Queen Consorts called Anne.  But like Elizabeth, most of the royal holders of the name have made some kind of mark on history and there are very few royal Annes we don't know about.  Aside from our six queens, there have been four royal princesses with the name - a grand total of ten - so although it was one of the most used names for women in England for centuries it's never been an all conquering royal favourite.  Perhaps because the six women who have worn the crown were encountered more than their fair share of tragedy.  Here's a run down of the queens called Anne.

 

 

Anne Boleyn

 

Let's get the most famous one out of the way.  The rise, fall and continuing fascination with Anne Boleyn is among the best documented tales in English history.  Other queens are talked about in terms of marriage contracts or romances but Anne was a career woman and she made a pretty good job of her ambitions and desires until 1536 and historians still don't really understand why the dynamic duo of Henry and the Boleyn Girl fell apart then.  Was it the lack of a male heir - after all, Anne had been pretty invincible until she failed to fill the nursery with princes?  Or was it something deeper?  Through their six year courtship and most of Anne's three year tenure as Queen of England, she and Henry had worked closely together and she was one of his chief advisers.  Several of his other closest confidantes went the way of the axe - was Anne just more political capital?

 Anne Boleyn - one of the most famous people in British history. 

 

Anne was the second child of Sir Thomas Boleyn and his wife, Elizabeth Howard, and she had two paternal great grandmothers called Anne - possibly the reason she was given the name.  The controversy caused by her relationship with Henry and the long and public battle he fought to divorce his first wife, Katherine of Aragon, to marry Anne meant she was never popular - even complaining to Henry on the day of her coronation that there were too many caps still on heads and not much noise as she made her way through the City of London.  To highlight their dissatisfaction with their new queen, many called her Nan Bullen.  Nan was a common abbreviation of Anne and Bullen the original form of her surname.  While her family gained power at court and she ruled Henry's heart, she ignored the sniping and reveled in being Queen Anne.

Natalie Dormer as Anne Boleyn in The Tudors - almost 500 years after her death, Anne's story continues to fascinate

 

In fact, Anne's end was the beginning of the restoration of her reputation.  She was queen for three years but the lack of a son and continued machinations at court pulled apart her relationship with the king.  However, his decision to try her on charges of adultery, treason and witchcraft and her execution were truly shocking events.  She was beheaded on May 19th 1536 at the Tower of London and for the next twenty two years her daughter, Elizabeth, lived in the shadow of her siblings while trying to avoid plots that could lead to her own death.  But Anne's daughter went on to be one of England's most famous monarchs and Anne continued to cast her fascination as the centuries drew on.  The first woman to be elevated to the peerage in her own right, as Marquess of Pembroke, she is now credited with far more political involvement in Henry's reign than ever before.

Anne of Cleves

 

The next queen with the name, Anne of Cleves, had an almost subliminal reign so short was her marriage to the much married Henry VIII.  But she certainly made an impression, albeit a negative one.  Like Henry's first Queen Anne, she had two great grandmothers called Anne or Anna and was most likely given the name in their honour.  But that is where the similarities end.  The first Anne had a powerful hold over Henry.  The second one barely held his hand.

We only have one image of Anne and that's what caused all the problems.

 

 

 Anne of Cleves looking rather jolly in a picture that won her a king's hand in marriage

 

Henry gambled on making her Queen number four because of Hans Holbein's famous portrait of her.  Sadly for Anne, Hans and most of all, Thomas Cromwell, Henry far preferred the picture to the real thing.  When she arrived in Rochester at the start of 1540 to marry the king he declared 'I like her not'.  We do know that wife number five, Catherine Howard, was also there as a lady in waiting to the queen.  Whether or not Henry had already caught sight of a woman who would obsess him we don't know.  We do know that he said he liked wife number four even less after their wedding night and that he himself declared the marriage was never consummated with all blame being heaped on Anne's lack of physical attraction for the king.  The marriage was annulled at the beginning of July that year with Anne receiving a rather nice settlement in return for her relegation to the role of King's Sister.  Cromwell's enemies took their chance to plot against him and just weeks after his choice of royal bride was divorced, he was executed.

 

So far we have the sexiest and the least sexy queens of England as arguments for the name, Anne.  The other three queen consorts with the name aren't nearly as exciting. 

Anne of Bohemia

The first with the name was Anne of Bohemia who came to England in 1382 to marry the still teenage king, Richard II.  She had no grannies, great grannies or aunties with the name but interestingly her father's two previous wives had been called Anne or Anna.  And dad was very influential.  He was pretty powerful in Europe at the time and Richard ended up paying him a dowry as part of a complex power trade off that resulted in the choice of royal bride being very unpopular.  To her credit, Anne turned public opinion around and she's recorded in the chronicles as being kind and generous, interceding for the common people on many occasions.  Poignantly, she is noted as being kind and concerned about pregnant women despite never having a child of her own.  Anne is credited with introducing horned headdresses to England and popularizing riding side saddle.  Given her short reign and lack of heir, she made a fairly big impression in her time.  She died in 1394 of the plague, leaving her husband devastated.  Some historians point to her death as a crucial moment in Richard's reign.  Losing his sensible, good hearted first wife is seen as turning point in his rule - from there on, he lost some of his grip on reality.  Less than five years after Anne's death, he had lost his throne.

 

 

 Anne of Bohemia and her husband, Richard II, who is said to have lost his way after losing his youg wife to the plague in 1394

 

 Anne Neville 

 



The next Queen Anne was the wife of the next King Richard and again the daughter of a powerful man who was used to getting his own way.  Anne Neville was the youngest child of the most powerful man in England, the Earl of Warwick.  Sadly for dad, another Richard by the way, he didn't have any sons so had to use the marriages of his two daughters to solidify his hold on the throne. 

Anne was named after her mother, Anne de Beauchamp, who had actually inherited the tile of Earl of Warwick but who was barred from bearing it because she was a woman and had to make do with letting hubby be earl while she was countess.  Anne de Beauchamp was one of the wealthiest women in England and her inheritance, to be shared between her daughters, was one of the reasons her girls were so highly sought after on the marriage market.

 

Daughter number one, Isabel, wed the middle York brother.  George, Duke of Clarence was next in line to the throne of Edward IV for almost a decade until the birth of the king's son, another Edward.  Isabel came close to being queen on more than one occasion before dying in mysterious circumstances.  Daddy Warwick liked to back his horse both ways and married his youngest girl to another claimant of the crown. Anne's first husband was Edward, Prince of Wales - a title he held because he was the eldest and only son of the deposed Lancastrian king, Henry VI.  When Warwick decided to try and get back the power he had lost as Edward IV's confidence as king grew, he joined forces with the Lancastrians and Anne cemented the alliance.  But it was short lived as was Edward - killed in the Battle of Tewkesbury six months after their marriage.  Warwick had died at the Battle of Barnet two months earlier and Anne was now the widow of a traitor.

 

 

Anne Neville, Queen Consort of England 1483 - 1485.  She packed a lot into her short life but it was littered with tragedy throughout.

 

She was rescued by a man who went on to be one of the great villains of English history.  But for Anne he was a real knight in shining armour, saving her from a long widowhood in disgrace.  Richard III was the plain old Duke of Gloucester and the youngest brother of Edward IV when he married Anne in 1472, around a year after her first husband had been killed.  They had a son, another Edward and presumably named after the duke's brother rather than the now duchess' dead hubby.  But Anne's life took another tragic turn in 1483.  Her brother in law died and Richard seized power claiming that he dead king's wife was trying to rule the country along with her family, the Woodvilles.  But his early protestations of trying to protect the inheritance of his nephew, the boy king Edward V, soon faded away and in the summer of 1483 the boy and his brother disappeared I the Tower of London. Anne had seen her husband turn from romantic hero to alleged king killer.

 

Her own son died the next year and in 1485 Anne became ill - she was 29 years old.  And even in her dying days life became harder still.  Her husband, by now mistrusted and disliked in equal measure, was said to be lining up his own niece to replace his wife.  When Anne died in March 1485 Richard III is said to have wept at her funeral.  He was forced to deny any plans to marry his brother's daughter.  But his queen passed unnoticed into history - she was buried in Westminster Abbey but no memorial was erected there until 1960.

 

 

A romantic interpretation of Anne Neville - her own life story had a less than happy ending

 

 



 Anne of Denmark

 

Last on the list of Queens called Anne is the consort of James I of England.  And like Henry VIII's two Annes, she had two great grandmothers called Anne before her.  She is a pretty much forgotten queen, dismissed by some as frivolous and passed over in the history books for the more dramatic sagas of her son and daughter in law, Charles I and Henrietta Maria.

 

Anne was the daughter of the king of Denmark and apparently thrilled by the prospect of marrying James when the wedding was proposed in 1589.  That was despite the rumours that James had male lovers - something the then fourteen year old Anne was not aware of.  She is said to have embroidered shirts for her future husband as a token of love.  On her marriage she became Queen of Scotland and fifteen years later, Queen of England, when the childless Elizabeth I named James as her successor.

 

 

Anne of Denmark nagged her husband and staged sit ins when she didn't get her own way

 

As a queen Anne was a great patron of the arts and commissioned plays as well as expanding the royal art collection.  She also liked to throw her weight about at home, once refusing to get out of bed for two days after her husband dismissed some favourite ladies in waiting and writing to a French envoy that the king was a bit too partial to a drink or three for her liking.

 

Her legacy is largely over shadowed by the sad story of the House of Stuart and the execution of her son, Charles I, in 1649.  By then, Anne was dead.  But through her daughter, Elizabeth, she secured the British throne once more when a lack of heirs threatened it.  Elizabeth's descendants were the Hanoverian kings of England.

 

Queen Anne

 

Just one Queen Regnant has been called Anne.  Queen Anne came to the throne in 1702 after the death of her brother in law, William III.  He had ruled alongside her sister, Mary II, and the couple had been childless.  Anne had seventeen children but none lived to adulthood and she was without an heir at the time of her own death in 1714.

 

Queen Anne was named after her great grandmother, Anne of Denmark, and her mother, Anne Hyde. Anne Hyde was the daughter of prominent politician Edward Hyde and his second wife, Frances.  They named their little girl after Edward's first wife, Anne. 

 

The woman who would be queen of England was the youngest daughter of James II but for most of her early adult life she was a royal accessory and never expected to be Queen.  She married Prince George of Denmark in 1683 when she was third in line to the throne and confidently expected to remain a Princess of Denmark all her life.

 

 

Queen Anne while Princess of Denmark

 

 

The birth of a male heir to her father, James II, in 1688 and his determination to bring the child up as a Catholic led to the Glorious Revolution which put Mary and William on the throne and made Anne their heir. 

 

When she took power in 1702 she proved popular and able but was always under a shadow of possible over influence from her friends and advisers, particularly the Duchess of Marlborough.  In her reign, Britain enjoyed some of its greatest success on the battlefield in Europe and a renaissance in arts and culture.  But Anne is perhaps best known for the tragedy of her family life.  She had seventeen pregnancies but only one child lived beyond infancy and he died aged eleven, before his mother ever became Queen.

 



Other royal Annes

 





The Queen's decision to use the name for her only daughter in 1950 was a surprise and although Anne's own daughter and eldest granddaughter have it as a middle name it's not caught on in royal circles since.  The Princess Royal's daughter, Zara, has it as a middle name as does the princess' eldest grandchild, Savannah Phillips.  And that's it. The three other princesses called Anne, out of interest, were Queen Anne's second daughter who lived for nine months after her birth in 1686, a daughter of Charles I who died aged three and the eldest daughter of George II who became Princess Royal.

 

 

 

Princess Anne, the Princess Royal and aunt of William, Duke of Cambridge

(photo Graham Grinner Lewis)

 

Anne - the case for

 

• It's been the name of more Queens in English history than any other
• It's not been used by a queen for over 300 years
• Princess Anne is regarded as one of the hardest working members of the Royal Family - a good role model for the future queen

 

And against

 

• All the queens called Anne have had their fair share of tragedy
• Queen Anne is best known now as a style of furniture
• And there is a Queen called Anne already in Europe - Anne Marie is the wife of the ex king of Greece, Constantine

 

Anne-Marie of Greece

(photo Allan Warren)

 





More power as a queen than as a mother?

Today marks the anniversary of the death of George IV, at one time Prince Regent, and best known for his love of extravagant clothes and his hatred of his extravagant wife, Queen Caroline.  Caroline is a marvellous Queen of England.  On paper, she had nothing going for her at all.  But she ended up far more popular than her husband and she's one of the most recognizable of all the English consorts.

Caroline was hardly romantic queen material.  She wasn't a looker and let's face it, the pretty princesses always seem to be more popular than their uglier royal sisters.  She was reported to have a distant relationship with her bathroom and rarely changed her clothes.  Not keen on education or culture, she had little conversation.  And just like her husband, she seemed to prefer the charms of people she wasn't married to.

The Prince got married because Parliament wouldn't give him any more money unless he found a wife.  And nabbing the heir to the throne of England was a pretty good deal for a princess from the remote German principality of Brunswick.  It was all going so well until they actually met and got married.

From that moment, they hated one another.  Some estimates put their total time together as man and wife at three days.  However long it was, it was enough to produce a little girl called Charlotte who became heiress to the throne.  When the little princess was around nine her parents indulged in a proper marital ding dong, played out in the courts, as the future king had his wife investigated after rumours emerged she had had a son with another man.  Desperate for a divorce, he dragged his wife's name and reputation through the mud but not enough of it stuck to prove she had produced an illegitimate child and his poor treatment of her only added to her growing popularity.  By the time he became king in 1820 his spending had taken any gloss off the gorgeous George of his youth while his wife's down to earth nature and humiliation at the hands of her royal husband made her an unlikely heroine for many.

Caroline faced the problem that many queens had encountered - once the heir was in the nursery, what should the mother's influence be?  The crown nearly always went to a man because of primogeniture meaning, unlike most other families, a royal baby's mother and her relatives weren't as important in the child's upbringing.  Queens like Eleanor of Aquitaine retained control because they were important politically.  But women like Caroline or her predecessor as Hanoverian consort, Sophia Dorothea of Celle, were excised from their children's lives when their marriages broke down even if their husbands were as keen on extramarital affairs as the royal women involved.

 

No wonder Caroline looked so annoyed in this portrait from the end of her life, her time as princess and queen had been pretty hard going

Even today, there is much debate about the influence the family of the future Queen of England should have on the royal baby due in July.  The Duchess of Cambridge is reported to want her mother and sister in the delivery room with her leading to heated discussion about whether the Middleton family should have such a major role at the beginning of a new monarch's life.  While other women in their early thirties are almost expected to have a gaggle of family members supporting them during labour and birth, Kate Middleton is criticized by some for doing what comes naturally for thousands of others.

Nearly every other Queen of England found that royal babies, from the very beginning, were state matters with rules and regulations beyond her control and little room for her influence when it came to their upbringing.  In any other modern marriage, we'd be horrified if the wife was expected to take a backseat and only allow her family in when it suited the inlaws.  I hope that this future Queen of England gets a fairer deal in that regard than her predecessors.

Pushy relatives

Tonight on The White Queen we'll see Elizabeth Woodville's family start to reap the rewards of having a sister on the throne of England.  It was one of the reasons Elizabeth never really won the hearts of her people - they saw the whole family as making far too much out of the whole marriage.

She wasn't the first queen to face the accusation but it seemed to stick to her far more.  Eleanor of Provence and Eleanor of Castile were both accused of bringing friends and relations to court in unreasonable numbers and rewarding them with things like titles, land and money that should have gone to other, older families.

But they both had the advantage of being royal - even if they were members of foreign ruling families.  Elizabeth Woodville's family were seen as the ultimate leeches because they relied totally on their royal connections for their advancement.  The same criticisms were leveled at the families of other commoner queens - the Boleyns, the Seymours and the Howards.  Of Henry VIII's wives, only Catherine Parr's family escaped so much censure but they were very discreet in their self advancement and were happier to settle for more money and status rather than looking to control the kingdom itself.

It will be interesting to see how the programme handles the issue of the Woodvilles' epic social climbing....whether it will be seen as self made men and women doing well for themselves or a greedy landgrab that went too far. 

Queens of England

I've always been fascinated by the Queens of England. Not just the six women who have worn the Crown in their own right but the women who have played the part of consort to a king. 

Their stories are nearly always more interesting to me than those of the men who gave them power, wealth and prestige beyond anything they'd known before.  From the princesses used as pawns in power games to the ambitious women who won hearts and snatched a crown in the process, their tales have always seemed to be more human and more alive. 

Through the tales of lives lived in dusty palaces or cramped castles, I always gained more of a sense of how the struggles for supremacy and the political manoeuvring that changed the lives of individuals and nations actually played out.

That will become clear, I'm sure, this Sunday, with the start of the major TV adaptation of The White Queen.  The stories of Elizabeth Woodville, Margaret Beaufort and Anne Neville are at the heart of England's bloodiest war and these three women did more to change the country from medieval to modern than any of the men involved.

And so I decided to create this blog as a place to write and talk about these fascinating women.   I hope others will join me to talk about all these women and compare thoughts and opinions on the parts they played in history, the way they are portrayed now in literature, film and TV and radio and the legacy they have left behind them .