Queenship in the Mediterranean: Negotiating the Role of the Queen in the Medieval and Early Modern Eras (Queenship and Power)

This groundbreaking collection explores the key roles that Mediterranean queens played as wives, as mothers, and above all as political actors. Ranging from Byzantine empresses to regnants and consorts in the Italian peninsula, they offer a bracing new perspective queenship in the medieval and Early Modern eras. Drawing on innovative research in the rapidly growing field of Mediterranean studies, this groundbreaking collection explores the key roles that Mediterranean queens played as wives, as mothers, and above all as political actors. Taken together, they form a varied and comprehensive account of the ways in which these royal women negotiated their positions within the context of the court, how they responded to widowhood and other challenging circumstances, and reactions to queens who exercised political power in ways considered to be beyond their accepted roles. Ranging from Byzantine empresses to the consorts of Moroccan sultans to queens regnant and consort in both the Italian and Iberian peninsulas, these remarkable studies offer a bracing new perspective on the concepts and practice of queenship more generally in the medieval and Early Modern eras Front Matter....Pages i-x Introduction: Queenship in the Mediterranean....Pages 1-7 Female Monarchs in the Medieval Byzantine Court: Prejudice, Disbelief, and Calumnies....Pages 9-25 To Have and Have Not: The Dower of Joanna Plantagenet, Queen of Sicily (1177–1189)....Pages 27-50 The Final Testament of Violante de Aragón (c. 1236–1300/01): Agency and (dis)Empowerment of a Dowager Queen....Pages 51-71 Lost and Found: Visualizing a Medieval Queen’s Destroyed Objects....Pages 73-96 The Political Role of a Portuguese Queen in the Late Fourteenth Century....Pages 97-123 Philippa of Lancaster: The Memory of a Model Queen....Pages 125-144 Not Lost in Translation: Aragonese Court Culture on Tour (1400–1480)....Pages 145-168 Queenly Time in the Reign of Juan II of Castile (1406–1454)....Pages 169-190 Princess Isabel of Portugal: First Lady in a Kingdom without a Queen (1415–1428)....Pages 191-205 Blanca, Queen of Sicily and Queen of Navarre: Connecting the Pyrenees and the Mediterranean via an Aragonese Alliance....Pages 207-227 Consorts of Moroccan Sultans: Lalla Khnata Bint Bakkar “A Woman with Three Kings”....Pages 229-245 The Sovereign and His Wife “Minister”: Charles Emmanuel IV and Marie Clotilde Adélaïde Xavière of France. Interpersonal and Political Relations between the Sovereigns of Sardinia....Pages 247-264 Queenship and Family Dynamics through the Correspondence of Queen Maria Carolina of Naples....Pages 265-286 Back Matter....Pages 287-302