Monday 3 January 2005
Secondhand Queens
Only a handful of women in history have had the
distinction of becoming queen twice. Of those who have been crowned twice, most reigned in
different lands, either concurrently or at different times.
Eleanor of Aquitaine is perhaps the first such
historical queen who comes to mind. On July 22, 1137, at barely 15 years of age but already Duchess of Aquitaine in her own
right, she married the 17-year-old heir to the French throne. One month later, her
father-in-law died and her husband became King Louis VII. For almost 15 years, Eleanor
reigned as Queen Consort in France,
bearing her husband two daughters and even going on Crusade with him. But the marriage was
not successful and the couple managed to have the marriage annulled on the grounds of
consanguinity in 1152. With barely the blink of an eye, Eleanor seized her window of
opportunity and six weeks after her marriage to the King of France ended, she married
Henry Plantagenet – the future Henry II of England – and by 1154 was Queen Consort once again.
Another variation of the two time queen is the
woman who is queen both by marriage and in her own right. Two significant examples of this
type are, coincidentally, the royal cousins Mary I of England and Mary, Queen of Scots. The Scottish Mary became Queen of Scotland in her
own right at a mere six days old in 1542. In 1558, she married the French dauphin who
became King Francois II of France a
little over a year later. Unfortunately for Mary, her reign as Queen Consort in France lasted less than two years and, though her
reign as Queen of Scotland lasted nearly 25 years, it was – as we well know –
far from successful.
Nor did the Queen of Scots’ cousin, Mary of
England, fare much better. By the time she ascended to the throne of England in 1553, Mary was 37, unmarried and quite
unattractive – not exactly an ideal position for any woman of the time, never mind a
queen in need of an heir. But her one advantage – her kingdom – likely did
wonders in securing a marriage for her with Spain’s Prince Philip, himself heir to the Spanish throne. And, naturally,
when he became King of Spain in 1556, Mary herself became his Queen Consort, although she
never actually stepped foot in Spain.
Mary was not destined to hold onto her foreign crown for long – she died less than
two years later in 1558.
These three women – and others like them
– certainly made their marks in history, but, becoming queen twice in two different
kingdoms is one thing – becoming queen twice in the same kingdom is another matter entirely. In England and France, only two women have ever had that unique distinction – Emma of
Normandy in England and Anne of
Brittany in France. Secondhand queens
they might have been, but Emma of Normandy and Anne of Brittany were no mere castoffs.
Both women left a strong and lasting impression on their respective kingdoms, both
politically and personally. But their lives were not all glitter and gold, filled as they
were with violence, danger and political intrigue. The fact that both women managed to
effectively navigate the dangerous waters of their time is a testament to their lives.
Born in Normandy between 982 and 986 to Richard I, Duke of Normandy, and his Danish wife
Gunnora, there was little to portend that Emma was to become a pioneer among queens. But,
in an age when foreign marriage alliances were still something of a rarity, her
circumstances of birth would make both an ideal marriage pawn and prize. Her father was
only the third Duke of Normandy, a title that had first been given to his grandfather, the
Viking invader Rollo, who secured Normandy for himself and his heirs in 911. Naturally, with its strong Viking
heritage, Normandy was a meeting place
for Viking fleets bent on attacking England – a circumstance that was not lost on the King of England, Ethelred II
the Unready. By the early 990s, England
had successfully fought off one of the biggest Viking invasions in 100 years, but was
facing continued Viking aggression nonetheless and was in desperate need of some relief.
Ethelred thus turned to Emma’s brother, Richard II – now Duke of Normandy –
to arrange a diplomatic marriage to Emma and cut off at least one line of attack.
In 1002, without a modicum of free will, Emma
sailed to England where she married
Ethelred and made her home in Winchester. As she was a very young woman – possibly 18 or so – and in a
foreign land, things couldn’t have been easy for her. In addition to having to learn
the Anglo-Saxon language, she also had to fulfill her most important role as queen consort
– that of producing an heir. Nevertheless, it seems that she did both very
effectively. By 1004, Emma had borne her husband two male heirs, Alfred and Edward, had
taken an Anglo-Saxon name and was consequently on her way to becoming an important and
powerful figure in her adopted country. All during an age when the role of queen consort
was only just beginning to gain respectability and importance and in spite of the fact
that her husband was not only ineffective as a ruler, but also took his frustrations out
– often violently – on her.
But even with her growing personal power, Emma
could do nothing to defend England
from foreign invasions and, in 1013, when the country was overcome by the Danes under
Sweyn Forkbeard, Ethelred, Emma and their children were forced to flee to safety in Normandy. Although Ethelred returned to England in 1014 and regained his throne, which he
kept until his death in London on April 23, 1016, Emma and her children remained in Normandy under the protection of her brother. After
the death of Ethelred, the struggle for power in England was fought between Ethelred’s eldest son (by his first wife), Edmund
Ironside, and Sweyn Forkbeard’s son, the Danish Cnut (or Canute). By the end of 1016,
the crown rested firmly with Cnut.
With all that was happening in England, Emma might have continued to stay in Normandy, where her safety was assured. Instead,
she left her sons in Normandy and made
her way back to England, where it is
said she boldly proposed herself in marriage to King Cnut. According to some historians,
Emma’s writings seem to indicate that she was a Danish nationalist who wished to see England and Denmark joined, so it’s quite possible that it was to this end that she
proposed a marriage alliance with Cnut. Of course, it’s equally possible, as many
more historians suggest, that she was simply looking out for herself and her children.
Either way, Cnut – like Ethelred before him – saw the value of an alliance with
Emma, who brought both her Norman and English connections to the foreign king.
The couple was married in 1017, but not without
their respective sacrifices. For Cnut, he first had to give up his mistress – the
mother of his two illegitimate sons. As for Emma, she agreed that any children the couple
had would be first in line to the English throne, effectively cutting out her children by
Ethelred, who remained in Normandy. It
was a decision that would come back to haunt her; but, in the meantime, Emma produced a
male heir for Cnut, Harthacanute, around 1018, and her personal power and influence seemed
only to grow. Her position was further heightened as, through her husband’s claims,
she was also queen consort of Denmark
and Norway. In her own right, she
became a generous patron of many churches and monasteries, both in England and on the Continent, but her ultimate
contributions to England were still
yet to come. In 1035, King Cnut died and, with Harthacanute – his rightful heir
– away in Denmark, Cnut’s
illegitimate son, Harold Harefoot, was chosen King of England instead.
Emma’s sons by Ethelred finally returned to England in 1036, possibly to attempt to overthrow
Harold. The attempt was unsuccessful and Emma’s eldest son, Alfred, died after being
captured, while Edward escaped to Normandy and Emma to Flanders. It
was in 1040, during her exile in Flanders, that Emma did something no queen had ever done – she commissioned the Encomium Emmae Reginae – a written account
of her life, the original of which is now in the British Library.
Finally, in 1040, the usurper Harold Harefoot died
and Harthacanute became King of England. Without any children, the new king recalled his
half-brother Edward back to England
and named him as his heir. Emma also returned to England and continued living in Winchester, where she allegedly had an affair with her confessor – a bishop, no
less. To prove the allegation false, Emma is said to have walked barefoot on nine red-hot
plowshares – a test legend tells us she passed without a single burn. But a greater
test was awaiting Emma. When Harthacanute died in 1042, Emma’s eldest son, known as
Edward the Confessor, became King of England. One of his first acts as king was to strip
his mother of all her estates and valuables because, Anglo-Saxon chroniclers tell us, he
felt that she had neglected him as a child.
Emma died in 1052, but she still had one more
major contribution to make, even after death. While Edward the Confessor left no
legitimate heirs to take the throne, Emma’s grandnephew, William, Duke of Normandy,
claimed that Edward promised him the throne in 1051. When the throne passed instead to
Harold of Wessex and William took England by force in 1066, he used his relationship to Emma bolster his claim to the
throne. Tenuous as that claim was, it certainly says something that he considered a
relationship to a mere woman as proof of his connection to the English crown.
While Emma herself may have orchestrated her
second marriage, Anne of Brittany was contractually bound to hers. As the sole heir to the
French duchy of Brittany, Anne was an
extremely valuable commodity on the marriage market, a position that was only heightened
after her father’s death in 1488 when she was only 11 years old. Before his death,
her father had promised the French government that Anne would only marry with the consent
of the French crown – a situation that virtually guaranteed a marriage that would
enrich France. As a result, when Anne
became Duchess in her own right, Austria, England and Spain – all fearing that France would seize the duchy and increase its
continental power – sent armed forces to Anne’s aid and a marriage by proxy was
ultimately arranged to Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I in 1490.
But this was not to be her first go around as a
crowned head. Before the marriage could be consummated, King Charles VIII of France invaded Brittany in 1491 and forced Anne to annul the marriage to Maximilian and instead
marry Charles, which she did on December 6th. Even with Brittany safely under French control, no chances
were being taken. A law was created that ensured that if Charles died without an heir by
Anne, she would be forced to marry the next in line to the throne. Almost as if by cruel
fate, each of Anne and Charles’ four children died in childhood and, when Charles
died in 1498, the throne went to his cousin, who became Louis XII of France. Bound by the law created just for this
purpose, Anne married Louis on January 8, 1499, after he divorced his first wife, Joan of France, for the purpose of
marrying Anne and keeping Brittany
with the Crown.
If fate seemed cruel to Anne in marriage, it
served her only slightly better in her other pursuits. Anne was incredibly fond of Brittany, which had secured from Charles VIII a
guarantee of independence that had enabled Anne to administer the duchy – one of the
richest in Europe – as its
sovereign. By all accounts, she was a highly effective and intelligent duchess and spent
her life guarding Brittany’s
autonomy from the French – an ambition that might have been fully realized had she
produced more than one living male heir. If that had been the case, the French crown would
have passed to the eldest son, and the Duchy of Brittany to the second. As it turned out,
Anne and Louis had only two surviving daughters. By right, the eldest, Claudia, inherited Brittany on Anne’s death in January 1514, but
in May of that year, she married her cousin, Louis of Angoulême, who would become King
Francis I of France the following
year. As a result of the union, Brittany was finally blended with the French crown.
In addition to bringing Brittany to the crown, Anne left an indelible mark on French court life by
introducing the concept of the queen’s maids of honor. She was also a generous patron
of the arts and even commissioned the Book of Hours
– a collection of French manuscripts.
Until next week,
- Tori Van Orden Martínez
*************
For more information, I suggest the following
books:
Emma: The
Twice-Crowned Queen, by Isabella Strachan
Anne of Brittany:
The story of a duchess and twice-crowned queen, by Helen J Sanborn
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