Why, when I look back to the points in history that appeal to me, do I always find myself inexorably drawn to the women in the story?
England’s medieval monarchy has always been a corner of history that excites me. If you wanted me to be even more specific, it would be the Plantagenet dynasty that really sets my imagination racing. But for all your Henrys, your Richards, your Geoffreys and your Johns, it’s the Mauds, the Matildas and of course the Eleanors who leave their burnished mark upon me.
When people speak of Henry II – the first Plantagenet King (1133-1189) they talk of a ruthlessness, a passion and a hot-headedness inherited from his Angevin father, Geoffrey. His intelligence, they say, he inherited from his mother, Matilda.
Wasn’t it always thus?
Matilda was England’s first ever Queen – in all but name. She was the only surviving legitimate child of King Henry I, following the disastrous sinking of the White Ship off rocks at Barfleur in 1120, where her brother, heir to the throne, perished. Her father, Henry even went as far as proclaiming her next in line to rule. But she was never crowned and is normally excluded from the list of English monarchs. Upon Henry’s death, and while pregnant with her third child, Matilda’s cousin Stephen of Blois laid claim to England’s throne before she could reach London. It was this act of betrayal which threw the whole country into a succession crisis. With the lords, barons and bishops split firmly down the middle, England entered a period of bloody civil war. It was a time that would become known as The Anarchy.
It won’t surprise you to know that a woman’s lot in 12th Century England was not exactly what we would consider equal, even for those of high birth. Choices were slim. Generally, women were considered completely unintelligent and base, fit for either bearing children, whoring or (if born into nobility) working at needlepoint. Should a woman of rank become widowed, their sole decision was to either re-marry (as quickly as possible) or to retire to a nunnery. What is remarkable about Matilda is that despite being widowed (at the age of 23) and being forced by her father into a violent, loveless marriage to Geoffrey of Anjou, she took an active role in all military campaigns against the usurper, Stephen. She is even recorded as being present (albeit from a distance) on the battlefield – something unheard of for a woman. Her greatest triumph came in February 1141 when Stephen was captured and effectively deposed at the Battle of Lincoln. Unfortunately for Matilda however, she never consolidated her advantage and ultimately failed in her bid to become (crowned) England’s queen.
On the one hand, there was Matilda and on the other Stephen of Blois, and his wife – the Queen consort, Maud.
Stephen is generally considered to have been pious, modest and very rash – thoroughly unsuited to the harsh realities of the role of Medieval monarch. Bedeviled by rumours of his father’s cowardice his whole life, it remains debatable whether he would have ever seized the crown at all were it not for the stronger will and personality of his wife, Maud.
Maud was in fact Matilda’s first cousin, and that she was her husband’s strongest supporter there is no doubt. Following Stephen’s capture at the Battle of Lincoln on 2 February 1141, Maud hit back, first journeying north to treat with David I of Scotland, then returning south where she besieged and routed Winchester, ultimately capturing Matilda’s half-brother, Robert of Gloucester. In the end, on 14 September 1141, it was the two women who met and negotiated an exchange of prisoners – Stephen for Robert.
So much for needlepoint.
It was after Winchester that Matilda finally accepted Stephen’s governance and, realising her moment had passed, began to sink all her efforts into ensuring her son, Henry ascended to the throne after Stephen’s death. And in this, she was utterly and completely successful. Maud may have been victorious in safeguarding her husband’s reign come the end of The Anarchy, but the continuation of the House of Blois would not, ultimately come to pass.
What’s my point?
It is simply this.
Men may be the ones who bluster about with their swords sheathed in blood, claiming victory and the glory for themselves, but it is the women behind them and beside them who build dynastys. They are the progenitors of our societies.
For proof, one need only look to Eleanor of Aquitaine – Henry II’s one and only wife. She was Duchess of Aquitaine in her own right before marrying Henry, having also been Queen of France following her first marriage to Louis VII. It was during this marriage that she journeyed to the Holy Land to participate in the unsuccessful Second Crusade.
Let’s just consider that for a moment. A 12th century woman travelling from Paris to Jerusalem and back , on horseback!
She bore 10 children in all – 7 with Henry. She survived a succession of uprisings and revolts against him – on occasion she even instigated them herself. She lived through her two tempestuous marriages, all the while contending with her sons shifting loyalties and their constant brinkmanship over land, titles, fiefdoms and ultimately, the throne. In no uncertain terms, Eleanor was the glue which held together all of that which Henry considered his – his family, his lands, and his throne. While he, it could be argued, was busy amusing himself with an invasion of Ireland, Eleanor was literally holding the fort in Aquitaine, doing the difficult job of placating her southern French barons, most of whom were hardly Henry’s staunchest allies. Her husband and her sons may have laid claim to each of the lands of the Angevin Empire as over-lord at one time or another, but in the end, she outlived all but the last, John.
For the likes of Maud, Matilda and Eleanor to succeed in overcoming the disadvantage in being (of all things) a woman in Medieval Europe, cannot be underestimated. This, at a time when it was common knowledge that all women were directly descended from Eve and therefore personally responsible for all Sin. To bear this unchallenged misogyny while providing an inexhaustible amount of children, travelling the length and breadth of the known world, all the while managing the affairs of state while their husbands either hunted, squabbled or bedded concubines leaves me aghast with awe.
No man could ever do what they did.
Eleanor was a remarkable 82 years old when she died on 1 April 1204.
Through her (and Henry), the House of Plantagenet bore a total of 14 other monarchs, the line only ending 280 years after Eleanor’s death with Henry Tudor’s victory over Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field on 22 August 1485.
In today’s Britain, the descendants of the Plantagenet dynasty (legitimate or otherwise) are some of the wealthiest landowners in the country, including the current 11th Duke of Beaufort, David Somerset – descendant of Edward III, Eleanor’s great, great, great grandson.
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Aren’t you gonna stop and help that poor guy pick up what he dropped when you barged past him? It was your fault, lady. Perhaps you should spend more time looking where you’re going and less time making kissy faces at that blasted camera. Honestly! And as for the petty theft of that guy’s phone, I’m sure that lip-synching snippet you left on the memory card will spare the police no end of hassle tracking you down and hurling you, hot pants-first into a urine-sodden holding cell. It’s no less than you deserve. Still, by the look of the rest of those reprobate mutants stacked ear to nipple in that sweaty holocaust shelter, a night in the cells is the least of your worries. Thank heavens you’re not given to tart yourself up in one of those meat dresses – all those docile, starstruck pedestrians dribbling and salivating into their cups would rip you to shreds before you’d strutted even halfway down Old Compton Street (in those ridiculously sexy heels). Just please, do me one favour sweetheart, next time you hop into a waiting convertible with a stranger at the wheel and Rohypnol in the glove compartment, put your feckin seatbelt on woman, for the love of disco! Do you really want to end up through the windscreen and under one of those London buses (thrown in to let the foreigners know where you’re supposed to be).
Oh to hell with it. I’m done worrying about you. Stay out as late as you like. I’m just going to put your egregious errors in judgement and blinkered insensitivity towards everyone else who happened to be sales shopping that day down to your pampered lifestyle and plastic, tupperware skin-tone. I’ll be honest, if I could fit my hips into an Edward Scissorhands original the way you do, burp out an epically infectious, erogenic ditty like this, and conduct it all without the meerest hint of pretension, I’d probably have an honest A-list swagger in my step and playful larcenous tendencies too.
