This week, we discuss Japan’s brief early history of female rule, both legendary and historical, and talk about how that all officially ended with the Meiji Restoration, leading indirectly to today’s possible succession crisis. Who run Japan? Not girls!
Mary of Teck was perhaps England’s first modern Queen Consort, enduring the hardships right along with her subjects, including two world wars and a succession crisis. She was a constant to her husband and her family, and to the monarchy itself, showing that a successful consort can be a drama free consort. That she did it all absolutely dripping in jewels, well, all the better. She modeled wartime rationing at its sparkliest!
Elizabeth Woodville, Cinderella story? This week, we talk about England’s first “commoner queen” and her marriage to Edward VI. She’s got a bad reputation, but is it earned? Her politics and family connections were messy, but how much of that is due to a grasping woman trying to improve her station in life or to events beyond her control? Whatever the case, she became matriarch to an impressive royal lineage, not bad for a woman with few connections doing the best she could during the Wars of the Roses.
This week, we discuss Eleanor, the famous Lady of Courtly Love, Queen of both France and England, and mother and regent of the Angevin Kings. Trust us, Disney got this tale all wrong!
In 1840, a young man aimed a pistol at Queen Victoria as she rode in her carriage. Throughout the remaining 60 years of her reign, similar events happened no less than 7 more times. Why was her public trying to kill her? Were they just insane? Were they even trying to shoot her? This week, we discuss all of these questions and more, as we chart the rule of the Queen in the Victorian Era and into the 20th century, and all the new forms of terror and threat that brought.
400 years before Edward VI’s succession concerns, England faced the question of female rule for the first time, and the ultimate answer was very different. Matilda set a precedent for female power to be wielded in a less direct way, through male heirs or husbands, but her precedent was set through 20 years of civil war.
Sources:
She-Wolves: The Women Who Ruled England Before Elizabeth, Helen Castor
It’s Mary, Queen of Scots vs. Elizabeth I this week, as two women find themselves in history’s favorite gossip drama, the female catfight! But really, there’s a lot of family history and religious drama at play, and each woman firmly believed in her right wear the crown of England. History is told by the winners, so we unpack Mary’s story and whether she truly tried to push her cousin off the throne.
A Queen for England! Edward VI is dying, and England once again is facing the idea of religion vs. legitimacy, as, for the first time, a woman will rule England. But which woman? Will it be Henry VIII’s daughter Mary (legally illegitimate, problematically Catholic) or the Lady Jane Grey (Henry’s great-niece, properly Protestant)? Join us, as we discuss the age old tale of pitting woman against woman, in modern gossip and historical record!
We’re back! This series we are talking Queens of England (and some wannabe Queens), beginning with the first Queen of Great Britain, Queen Anne, Protestant niece of Charles II. But first, we catch up on all the gossip, discussing the Sussex baby, tiara drama, and Allie’s close-up glimpse of the Invictus Games!