We tend to consider monarchy as the rule of one. Our popular beliefs about queens often come from fairy tales we were told as children. However, history shows that monarchy and queenship are much more complex than we might expect. Did the monarch truly rule alone? What roles did the queens really play as rulers and co-rulers? What were they expected to be or to do - and what if they acted outside the boundaries? - It is kind of an irony that the queens who are just doing a really good job often get unnoticed - said prof. Elena Woodacre during her visit at the Faculty of History at the University of Gdańsk. We asked her to shed some light on medieval monarchy and the role of female rulers in it.

Karolina Żuk-Wieczorkiewicz: - First of all, why this subject? What is so fascinating in the history of monarchy and the role of women in it?

Prof. Elena Woodacre: - I’ve been working on queenship and royal studies for my whole career, and it’s something I’ve been interested in since I was young. When I was a little girl, I was a big reader. I remember one day when I was bored and I had nothing to read. My mom said, ‘Read about Cleopatra’ - and it started my fascination with queens and royal women. I think the question that really got me interested in queenship is ‘How do these women get to the throne?’. First, I was interested in female monarchs and how women claim a crown, considering that monarchy tends to be patriarchal, tends to favour men coming to the throne rather than women, so how does a woman do that? Over time, these questions changed. I was asking questions like: ‘How does a female monarch rule with a male consort, and how does that work?’. And that led me to think about co-rulership. So, it’s really about understanding how many women ruled together with their male consorts, not just as husband and wife. I’ve also been thinking about global queenship, which is often in a polygamist scenario, about how kings ruled with their mothers, how mothers and children ruled together, but also how brothers and sisters ruled together - about that mechanism of rule.

- So, monarchy is not only a matter of one person, but also cooperation?

- Exactly. I talk about 'corporate monarchy', which is an important theory in the field of royal studies right now: that rule is not by one person, but it is a collaborative process that can include several people. One person cannot do all the jobs of ruling. When we think about monarchy, we tend to think of it as the work of a monarch or the rule of one. But it is a collaborative process.

- It’s quite different from what we were taught as children from fairy tales and popular culture. These popular beliefs differ from what history says.

- People often think about queens and princesses in a way they were taught in fairy tales. We tend to think of queens being decorative, pretty, a kind of love interest if you like. But queens were so much more than decorative! They had political roles to play. They were part of this ruling partnership, and some of them were monarchs as well. These women were political players, really. And so, understanding their role, function, and the power of the authority they yielded, and what was expected of them as part of their role has really helped us illuminate how monarchy itself functioned - looking at the idea of a single monarch or king doesn’t really help us understand the whole framework of monarchy which is so much more complex. So it’s thinking about the ‘queen’s office’, all the different roles she inhabited, how she acted as a patron, how she acted as a lord administering lands and territories, her financial aspects, political dealings, diplomatic dealings. We should really go away from the idea of queens being just pretty or just broodmares producing heirs for the dynasty. The queens actually had very multifaceted roles, and they were co-rulers at the heart of power.

- Were these roles rather social expectations or the queens’ acting to get some power?

- I have looked a lot at the expectations of queenship. When I started to look at queenship globally, I realised that these expectations were universal across different places, cultures, and periods. I’d like to summarise these expectations in ‘four perfects’, and 'three Ps': queens were expected to be perfect women, perfect wives, perfect mothers, and perfect rulers. And they were also expected to be pious, to be pretty, and to be peacemakers. These were universal expectations of the role of royal women. But in terms of the boundaries of their role, they changed over time, and certainly, we see some queens who went beyond what was expected to be their role. They were sometimes criticised for that, for being too power hungry or taking up too much of a king’s role.

- So they were imperfect in some ways?

- Yes, exactly! Some of them coloured outside the lines, they did the unexpected, sometimes they contravened the ideals.

- Can you give some examples of well-known queens who were considered controversial or rule-breakers?

- There are lots of great examples. One of them in English history is Isabella of France. She was married to Edward II of England in the 13th century. Their marriage had its ups and downs. One of the big problems was that Edward had male favourites whom he gave a lot of attention to, and the Queen really resented these favourites. Eventually, their marriage became untenable. Isabella was back in France visiting her family on a diplomatic mission. Then she gathered troops, invaded England and dethroned her husband, had him imprisoned and eventually killed, and put her son on the throne instead. That was obviously completely outside the boundaries. Well, putting your husband in prison is not being a ‘perfect wife’. She was definitely colouring outside the lines, and she’s known as She-Wolf of France because of that.

Another woman that’s called the She-Wolf, who did a similar kind of thing, is Margaret of Anjou in the 15th century, another English queen. When her husband, Henry VI, was incapacitated, she basically took the reins and governed. The country was divided between the Lancastrians, who supported Henry VI, and the dynasty of Yorkists, which was a kind of upstart branch of the Plantagenet family. So she took on the leadership of the Lancastrian fraction and even led armies in the Wars of the Roses. Some people felt she was acting outside the boundaries of her role because of this.

- She seemed to have been acting as a man.

- Exactly!

- I wonder if it was less acceptable at that time than nowadays. Or maybe it’s something we just tend to think about the Middle Ages?

- I think more queens led armies than we might think. Recently, we had a workshop online as part of the project called 'The Queens’ Resources', and it was on queenship, finances, and warfare. And again, people were talking about different examples of queens who - for various reasons - were involved in warfare, did lead armies: sometimes in the absence of their husbands, sometimes to defend their own territories. In China, the Khitan Liao women were great warriors, and some of the women of that dynasty led armies very successfully.

- So it seems that what we think about queenship in the past is much different from what really happened.

- Definitely. There is quite a gulf between a fairy tale idea of what the queens were like and what they actually did.

- I suppose the times they lived in were much tougher than what we have nowadays. What challenges did they have to face?

- Well, it’s all situational. Some queens had peaceful reigns, and I think one thing is really interesting. There were queens who were very successful and just getting on with their job at times of peace - and we often forget about them because they were just doing a good job. They don’t make a huge impression in contemporary chronicles or in the history books etc. because they’re just doing their job.

So we do have a lot of queens who are not given much attention because there were peaceful times and they were just doing their role really, really well. They were contributing to the peace and stability of the country. We tend to know more about the women who were dealing with tough times, difficult situations, times of war or rebellion, or queens who did the unexpected, like we were just talking about. It is kind of an irony that the queens who are just doing a really good job often get unnoticed.

- So the queens we would like to be our leaders are not remembered?

- Exactly, not as well as the ones who did the controversial things, sadly.

- I suppose this may also refer to male rulers. We remember those who conquered, but not those who made peace, because they were less interesting.

- Yes, it’s also true.

- What do you think the queens from the past can teach today’s politicians? What can we learn from them?

- One of the things that I often talk about is that the things that we’re looking at as queenship scholars really map to today. I mean, obviously, there are still queens today. And recently, not too long ago, we had the death of Queen Elizabeth II in England. And again, all those same questions about coronation rituals, and the transfer of power, and what happens when the queen is dead (‘Long live the king’ etc.) are still relevant in the context of modern royal families, and certainly all across Europe from the surviving monarchies. There’s also a number of women who are going to inherit thrones in the coming years, so it’s still relevant in that way. But it’s also relevant in terms of female politicians and those same struggles of women who hold power, and the expectations of women holding power in a patriarchal traditional society, even though we’re changing so much in terms of gender equality, and it’s giving more and more opportunities to women. Still, there are issues and prejudices against women in power. These are the same issues that some of those queens faced.

- So they still have to be perfect in many ways.

- Yes, exactly. And sometimes we’re critical of female politicians who we think don’t stand up to those ideals. We set very high expectations of them as women, as role models for other women as well. And we’re equally quick to criticize the royal women and female leaders of today as we were to the queens of the past. So I think there’s still a lot of work to be done for women to ‘push open doors’ and break the glass ceiling today.

- Can history help in that way?

- I hope so. Thinking about how some of the women of the past successfully navigated those challenges, I believe there are lessons there for the politicians of today. Today, there are the same challenges around women holding power, and the women who got it right and the women who got it wrong both have lessons to tell the women of today.

- What would you like the students to get from the workshops and lectures you give?

- Well, I’m hoping that they will see queens as co-rulers, that they will appreciate how important women were in the exercise of monarchy, and hopefully when they think about the reigns of the past, they won’t just think about kings but they’ll understand the women, the mothers, the wives, the sisters etc., who are also part of the mechanism of rule. And I’m hoping it reframes the way they look at monarchy.

- Thank you very much!

Elena Woodacre (University of Winchester) is a specialist in the study of royal power and courts. She is the author of numerous publications, including two recent monographs: Queens and Queenship (ARC, 2021) and Joan of Navarre: Infanta, Duchess, Queen, Witch? (Routledge, 2022). She is also the organiser of the Kings & Queens conference series, founder of the Royal Studies Network, and editor-in-chief of the Royal Studies Journal. She is co-editor of two book series with Routledge (Lives of Royal Women) and ARC Humanities Press (Gender and Power in the Premodern World) and editor-in-chief of Winchester University Press. Prof. E. Woodacre also leads an international project entitled 'Examining the Resources and Revenues of Premodern European Royal Women'.

In the summer semester of 2024/2025, she was a guest at the Faculty of History of the University of Gdańsk as part of the ‘UG Visiting Professors’ programme at the invitation of dr Aleksandra Girsztowt-Biskup.